Freya’s POV


    Finished


    For a moment, silence clung to us like frost. I weighed my words carefully before I spoke. “If you choose to, then one day when you wed and sire children, you could give them what you were denied–a true home, filled with warmth.”


    The words had barely left me when I saw Ss Whitmor’s eyes flicker.


    Marriage. Children.


    He had never looked like a male who entertained such thoughts. The very mention of it seemed to gnaw at him, as though it scraped against old scars. I knew well enough why. He had spoken before of his father, of the venomous household that had birthed him. The Whitmore bond had been nothing but a farce of dominance and cruelty. To him, marriage was little more than a prison. And children? He had once snarled that he would never perpetuate such a cycle.


    But now–now he looked at me, and his voice came out rougher, startlingly raw.


    “Then will you marry me, Freya? Bear my children?”


    I froze, breath catching in my throat. My wolf surged inside me, startled, as though she hadn’t expected to be dragged into such terrain. “What–what did you just say?” I coughed, nearly choking on the word itself.


    He repeated it without hesitation, without shame. “Marriage. Children. Will you try it with me?” His face was unreadable, his /tone almost maddeningly calm, as if he were asking me whether I’d spar him at dawn.


    I dragged a hand over my brow, trying to steady the rush in my veins. Moon above, Ss’s mind leapt like lightning over ridges, and half the time, it left me stumbling to keep pace. “I only just came through my Lunar Severance Phase,” I said sharply. “I have no intention of running headlong into another bond. And more than that-” My voice dropped lower. “I don’t believe marriage and children are things one tries. Especially children. If you bring a life into this world, that life is your blood and your vow. It is not something you discard because you regret it. Wolves don’t return pups to the womb.”


    His gaze dipped,shes lowering, as though he were thinking through every syble I had spoken. For a breath, he seemed carved of stone.


    “Enough,” I muttered, straightening. “We should head back to the hall.” I turned before the strange weight of his stare could press me further, my boots crunching on the gravel path.


    But behind me, his voice rang out, low and sure.


    “Freya.”


    I halted.


    “I meant what I said before Caelum Grafton.”


    The name sent a sting through my gut, though I smothered it quickly.


    Ss’s voice grew steadier. “All of it. If you want me, I am here. If you want anything–wealth, protection, power–I willy it at your feet. If you want me in truth, I will give you that too.”


    The words pulled me back. I turned, meeting him where the moonlight fractured across his shoulders.


    The garden was hushed save for the restless whisper of vines and the heady perfume of flowers. Silver moonlight draped across his frame like frost. His features<b>, </b>cut with a cold beauty that most wolves feared to linger on, seemed softened by that glow. Yet his eyes–gods, his eyes–burned with something fierce, unyielding, and utterly foreign to the aloof Alpha I had known.


    The coldness of his stance only sharpened the fire of that gaze. It was like staring at a cier that concealed molten stone deep within.


    I realized, with a jolt, that he was utterly serious. That if I nodded–just a tilt of my head–I would belong to Ss Whitmor. His mate in all but the Moon’s formal decree. His lover, his equal, his chosen.


    It was absurd. Reckless. Dangerous. And yet the thought struck me with a visceral power, as though my wolf strained against the leash to see what such a bond would feel like.


    6.06 <b>AM </b>P P


    His lips parted, and his voice was hoarse, almost reverent. “Do you want this, Freya? Do you want me?”


    Finished


    I let the silence linger between us, let his question hang heavy as the moon. His eyes, sharp <b>as </b>a hawk’s, locked with mine. In their depths, I saw not only hunger but hope–raw and naked.


    My chest tightened. For one dangerous breath, I wondered if I should surrender, just to see where fate might drag me.


    But no. My wolf stilled, steadied, and my answer rose like <b>steel</b>.


    “I don’t.”


    His brows pinched, almost imperceptibly. “Why?” The word was brittle. “Is it Caelum? Do you still love him?”


    I shook my head, sharp. “No. Caelum is ash in my heart. There is nothing left for him there. I refuse you, Ss, because I do not love you. Not now. And because the things I want–power, freedom, my own future–I will seize with my own ws. I will not take them because a maleys them in myp.”


    For a long moment, silence wed the air between us. His jaw worked, tight, his lips pressed into a thin line. And yet when my words sank in–I do not love you–I saw it. The flicker of something fragile in his gaze.


    A wound.


    Ss Whitmor, who had boasted that he needed no one’s love–not even his parents‘, after their bond turned to venom— looked, in that instant, like a wolf robbed of something he hadn’t realized he craved.


    “Thenter,” he said suddenly, his voice low and strained.


    I blinked. “Later?”


    “Yes.” His eyes burned into mine. “If not now… what aboutter?”


    The weight of his question struck deeper than the first.


    My lips parted, words forming, but before I could speak, he stepped closer, his scent curling around me–iron, smoke, the bite of winter steel. His hand rose, calloused fingertip pressing gently against my lips.


    “You don’t need to answer.” His voice was husky, almost desperate beneath the veneer of calm. “I don’t want to hear the words unless they are the ones I crave. So keep them. Until you’re ready. Or until I make you ready.”


    I froze.


    The press of his finger was cool, but my lips burned beneath it, heat rushing like wildfire into my blood. My wolf stirred uneasily, ws scraping inside my chest, caught between recoil and longing.


    I had not expected this from him—not Ss, not the Irond Alpha who had always been the embodiment of restraint and ice. Yet here he was, breaking his own rules, demanding something more than respect, more than alliance.


    Something dangerously close to love.


    And as his touch lingered, I feared that one day, I might not be strong enough to say no.


    Send <b>Gifts </b>


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