Rhea lay perfectly still under the sheet, back turned to the chaise where Elias rested, but sleep refused to return.
Her heart still hammered from the nightmare and from his words, each one lingering like smoke in the air between them. The room felt smaller now, and the moonlight felt too bright, the faint crackle of the dying fire also too loud. She could feel his presence behind her, watchful and undeniably there. Her husband.
The word tasted wrong on her tongue, like it was being forced down her throat. She hated him. That much was simple and clean. She disliked how he had looked at her in the white dress during the ceremony, and the taste of his blood that still coated the back of her throat, or the ring that sat on her finger like a brand. He was everything she had been raised to despise: a creature of the night, a killer of her kind, the living embodiment of every raid that had stolen packmates from her. Kael's face flashed in her mind-his laugh, his blood in the snow-and the old rage surged hot and sharp. She should be plotting how to escape this place or something, how to burn it down from the inside, how to make Elias regret ever signing that treaty. Her pack was counting on her to remain a wolf first, not some vampire's pretty wife. Yet something else twisted beneath the rage, treacherous and unwanted. The blood bond. She could feel it now, a faint, humming thread stretched between them, warm where it should have been cold. His blood was inside her, and hers was inside him. It made her skin prickle with awareness of him even when she wasn't looking. When he had stood shirtless beside the bed, describing exactly how he would touch her, her body had betrayed her with a rush of heat she couldn't control. Not even fear Nor disgust. It made her thighs press together and her breath catch despite every vow she had made to herself. She squeezed her eyes shut tighter.
No! She was Rhea Blackridge, enforcer of her pack, sister to the fallen, daughter of wolves who had fought and died rather than kneel. She had spent her life sharpening her claws against creatures like him.
The thought of letting him close-of letting those cool hands slide over her skin, of feeling his mouth at her throat, this time not in a nightmare but in waking reality-should fill her with revulsion. Instead it filled her with a confusing ache that made her want to scream.
What kind of wolf was she if one night in his chamber could make her question everything? The pack had given her up for peace, yes, but they had not said anything about giving herself to him. Falling into this pit, even a little, would be betrayal to her.
It would mean forgetting Kael's blood on the snow, every grave she had helped dig, and that vampires had always been the enemy. Yet the bond whispered otherwise. It made her wonder what his centuries had cost him, what emptiness lay behind those gray eyes when he wasn't teasing her.
It made her wonder if the fire she carried could burn him the way he seemed to want it to. Rhea shifted slightly under the sheet, careful not to make a sound that would draw his attention. She could feel him watching her still.
The weight of his gaze was so physical, tracing the line of her back, the curve of her shoulder where the sheet had slipped. Part of her wanted to turn and meet it head-on, to snarl something cutting that would remind him she was no prize to be admired.
Another part-the part she despised-wanted to know what would happen if she let the sheet fall just a little lower.
Would his control crack? Would that arrogant composure finally scatter and show her the monster beneath? She hated that question most of all. Because it meant she was already thinking of him as more than the enemy.
The blood bond was doing its work too well, weaving threads of connection she had never asked for. Although She felt stronger somehow, as if his ancient vitality had sharpened her own edges. But strength from him felt like poison wrapped in silk.
Accepting it would mean admitting she needed him, right? And Rhea Blackridge needed no one. Her fingers brushed the wolf pendant hidden beneath the shift.
The carved wood was warm from her skin, a reminder of home, of Kael's hands shaping it for her when they were children. She gripped it tightly until the edges bit into her palm. "I am still me" she thought fiercely. "Wife on paper. Wolf in my blood. I will not fall. I will not want him! Please moon goddess!"
But even as the words echoed in her mind, her body remembered the way his voice had dropped when he spoke of tasting her, of taking her slowly, of making her shatter.
Heat bloomed low in her belly again, uninvited and insistent. She pressed her thighs together harder, angry at herself and at the way her pulse quickened at the memory of his bare chest in the moonlight.
Behind her, Elias shifted on the chaise. The sound was soft, almost nothing, but it sent another ripple through her. She wondered if he could hear the chaos inside her head.
If he could smell the conflict on her skin the same way he had smelled her reaction earlier. The thought made her cheeks burn hotter. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how deeply he unsettled her.
Tomorrow she would wake up first, maybe bathe and dress before he could watch, face him with the same cold defiance she had worn down the aisle.
She would eat with her pack if they were still here and speak to her mother, remind herself who she was. She would treat this marriage like the cage it was-something to endure and not embrace.
Rhea shoved the thought away violently and stared at the wall until her eyes felt tired. In the dark of their wedding night, with his presence filling the room like a charm, she wasn't entirely sure she could keep that promise to herself.
All those things he had said made her ashamed but it awakened some kind of need between her thighs, it drove her almost crazy, no one had ever said those things to her and it sounded so pleasant she wanted to hear more of it so badly. The conflict raged on inside her-reluctant heat and forbidden curiosity-until exhaustion finally dragged her under once more.
This time, her dreams were not of monsters. They were of gray eyes watching her beg.