Freya’s POV


    日外气71%會


    +5 <b>Free </b><b>Coins </b>


    I was still staying in Ss’s apartment, even though he had made it clear he wanted me to move into the Whitmor main estate. To him, it was natural–he was the Alpha of the Irond Coalition, and I was the woman he’d chosen. But to me, it felt wrong. We weren’t married. I wasn’t ready to step into his ancestral home and face the weight of thatmitment.


    <b>“</b>When do you n to marry me then?” Ss asked suddenly.


    I nearly choked on the tea I hadn’t yet swallowed. “Marry you?”


    He leaned closer, bracing his hands on the sofa on either side of me, caging me in with the raw, feral authority only an Alpha could carry. His presence pressed down on me like the shadow of a predator in the wild. My wolf stirred uneasily beneath my skin, caught between instinctive submission and a stubborn defiance.


    “Or is this just a game to you?” he murmured, his voice low, dangerous. His dark eyes glittered with a heat that was both alluring and suffocating. “A diversion, until you tire of me and cast me aside?”


    That look in his eyes–it was hunger, possessive, almost primal. For a heartbeat, I truly felt like prey cornered by a beast who would not take no for an answer.


    I forced myself to push him back gently, setting my teacup down on the table. “We’ve barely been together. Talking about marriage now is… too soon.”


    But he didn’t retreat. His arm coiled around my waist in a swift, inescapable grip, drawing me against him. His lips hovered close to mine, his voice soft but edged withmand. “You mean you’ve never imagined it? Never thought of being mine fully?”


    There was something in his tone–an Alpha’s demand wrapped in the velvet lure of desire. His eyes, usually sharp and cold, now shimmered with a/warmth that reminded me of moonlight. He was dangerous, yes. But gods, he was also devastatingly beautiful in this moment. Like a predator courting, softening its fangs only to draw you deeper into its snare.


    My throat tightened, and I swallowed hard. I wasn’t blind to the yearning in him. Nor the gentleness beneath all that dominance. He wanted me. All of me.


    But marriage… My first had been a battlefield, a mistake I had wed my way free from during the Lunar Severance Phase. I wouldn’t stumble blindly into another bond. Not again. Not without certainty.


    “I’ve already been through one broken union,” I whispered, my voice steadier than I felt. “If I marry again, I need to be sure. Ss, I care for you—I like you more than I ever expected–but I don’t yet know if it’s deep enough to bind my life to yours. Give us time. Let us truly know one another before we speak of


    VOWL.”


    His grip didn’t loosen. If anything, it tightened, as if he could anchor me to him through sheer force. His eyes darkened with an intensity that made my heart pound. “And what if time convinces you otherwise? What if you wake one day and decide I’m not enough?”


    The fear beneath his growl caught me off guard. Slowly, I lifted a hand, brushing my fingers along the sharp line of his cheek. “Then it means you deserve someone better suited to you. Someone who can give


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    <b>11:55 </b>Mon, 15 <b>Sept </b>


    s


    you everything without hesitation. But I don’t think that will happen. Because day by day, I find myself… drawn closer to you.”


    I saw the way his gaze softened then, the hard Alpha mask cracking for just a heartbeat. I leaned forward and pressed my lips to his–this time my choice, my initiation. “I think,” I murmured against his mouth, “I’ll only grow to like you more.”


    His eyes lowered, lingering not on my face but on my body. No–on my belly. His breath caught, and for a moment, he froze. Something flickered across his expression, a shadow of thought I couldn’t quite grasp.


    “Ss?” I asked softly. I had felt the shift in him, the sudden tension when moments ago he had been lost in me.


    “Nothing,” he said too quickly.


    I frowned. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve told you before–I don’t want secrets between us. If I choose to give myself to someone again, it will only be to a mate who trusts me, and whom I can trust in return.”


    His jaw tightened. He was silent for a long while, before a bitter smile pulled at his lips. “I don’t want to be what my father was. He tried to trap my mother, to bind her with blood and children. He thought control could keep love from slipping through his hands. But she still left. She left him as if he was nothing.”


    He shut his eyes, the pain raw and naked in his voice. “And I fear, Freya… that you’ll leave me the same way.”


    My chest ached at the vulnerability in him. For all his Alpha strength, Ss was haunted by abandonment. His fear wasn’t of losing dominance–it was of losing the one thing he couldn’tmand: loyalty freely given.


    I reached for his hand, entwining my fingers with his. “Then don’t chain me, Ss. Just let me choose you. If you keep being the man I can admire, the Alpha I can trust, then I promise–I won’t leave.”


    His eyes snapped open, fierce and searching, as though he wanted to etch my words into his soul. And in that moment, I knew this wasn’t just courtship. It was the slow, dangerous binding of two wolves circling closer, teeth bared and hearts unguarded, daring each other not to break away.


    L


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