Ss‘ POV


    75%


    Finished


    Freya turned away from me in the car, eyes fixed on the blur of streets through the window. I should have looked elsewhere, but I couldn’t drag my gaze from her.


    I hadn’t expected to overhear her exchange with Kade ckridge at the registry today. His words still rang in my ears–calling the Whitmors mad, warning her that my bloodline was a nest of lunatics. He wasn’t wrong. That’s what the packs whispered. That’s what the world believed. And yet…


    She hadn’t recoiled.


    She hadn’t doubted me.


    She’d simply said: Rumors aren’t truth. I believe what I see,


    That was Freya Thorne. Too luminous, too unyielding. A woman who stood in sunlight without fear. Compared to her, I was every shadow people whispered I was. A creature too dark, too wrong, something that should be hidden away.


    The words left my mouth before I could leash them.


    “You really don’t want to know what they say about the Whitmors?”


    Her answer was steady, unflinching. “No. I don’t care for rumors. And even if I did–who can say which are


    true?”


    Her refusal cut sharper than ws. Was she uninterested in the whispers–or simply uninterested in me?


    I pushed further. “And if some of them were true?”


    Her brow arched. “What do you mean?”


    #


    64


    40607


    T


    7


    E


    324


    ラ


    9


    2


    4


    4


    I held her gaze. “They say every Whitmor is touched with madness. That even I’m not right in the head. What if I told you that part is true?”


    –


    “Do you have a mental disease?” she asked tly.


    Her reaction caught me off guard. No fear. No disgust. Just that clean, direct question. I had expected revulsion. Hesitation. But not this.


    “No,” I said.


    “Then you’re normal,” she replied. Her voice was iron. “People are different by nature. Others can say what they like–it’s their problem. The only real madness would be you believing it yourself.”


    Her words hit me harder than any challenge. She’d looked at me with the same clear gaze she always had- no greed, no fear, no calction. As if I were just… a man.


    A lowugh escaped me, softer than I meant it to be. “You’re right. If I decide I’m not normal, then that’s when I truly lose. Freya… if you ever want to know the truth about me, or about the Whitmors–youe to me. Don’t listen to anyone else.”


    ? ???, 75%


    Finished


    She gave me one of those looks, sharp and unreadable, like she couldn’t imagine why she’d ever care <i>to </i>ask. She didn’t answer, and I let the subject die.


    By the time we reached Ashbourne, the car rolled to a stop before an exclusive styling house. Staff were already waiting at the entrance, their scents rich with perfume and polish. Freya followed me inside, soon swept away by attendants who brought her to the fitting rooms.


    I sank onto a leather couch, flipping through the catalog of dresses they ced in my hands. Pages of painted women in glittering gowns. Beauty, polished and empty. I felt nothing.


    There had never been a shortage of women circling me, shing smiles, scenting for opportunity. Some thought my disinterest meant I desired men. The truth was simpler–I desired nothing. Until Freya Thorne.


    The memory burned behind my eyes: her crossbow pressed to my temple when we first crossed paths. Her wolf–scent cutting through the cold air. Since then, every encounter had fed something in me I’d thought long dead. And it was no longer just interest. It was hunger.


    She wasn’t striking in the way other women were. Novish beauty, no painted perfection. But the clean lines of her face carried the steel of a soldier, and her lean frame radiated a kind of strength that made my wolf restless. She was smaller than me by far, yet standing near her felt like standing near the only steady ground in a storm.


    The sound of footsteps made my head snap up. And then–her.


    Freya stepped from the fitting room wearing a ck gown that fell to her ankles, slit high on one side. It was in, understated. Practical. But when my eyesnded on her, the world bled away.


    The fabric clung to her frame in all the right ways, the split shing glimpses of her long leg with every stride. She hadn’t dressed to impress–and yet I couldn’t look away.


    Her voice broke the spell. “I’ll wear this one for the banquet tomorrow.”


    The gown swayed around her as she approached, revealing and concealing in equal measure. My wolf bristled, a growl low in my chest before I smothered it. Tomorrow night, every eye in the room would be on her. Every wolf would see what I saw now. Her leg, her strength, her light.


    My jaw tightened. The thought sat wrong in me, sharp as a de.


    Send Gifts


    40