Chapter 3: The Blood Moon's Embrace
The scent of my own fear—ash and sharp vanilla—filled my nostrils as MICHAEL SHOVES ME BACK TOWARDS THE TABLE AND the hard edge digs into my stomach, his body a cage of heat and muscle at my back. “You cut me,” he snarled, his voice rough with a dark thrill as his hand fisted in my hair pulling my head back. he then shoves me back as if disgusted by me and growls "ill deal with you later" as he turns around and follows bianca out of the room leaving me gasping alone cold.
I stumbled back, the cold marble of the table biting into my hips, my breath a raw scrape in the sudden silence. Out in the shadowed hallway, Michael followed the wet, wrenching sounds of Bianca's sobs, finding her slumped and shattered against the dark wood paneling. He grabbed her, pulling her into his arms, and hugged her trembling body close, comforting her with a low, steady voice she buried her face against.
I’m shaking against the table’s edge as the door closes slowly, giving me a clear view of him comforting Bianca, his large hand cradling the back of her head as she clings to him. I scoff and inhale roughly, the bond screaming inside my skull, a corrosive jealousy burning me from the inside out. I stumble into a chair, the wood scraping loudly against the floor, and close my eyes against the furious, humiliating sting of tears. A maid slips in silently, the rustle of her uniform the only sound as she pours a stream of dark, bitter coffee into the porcelain cup before me. The steam rises, carrying the familiar scent, but it tastes like ashes and salt on my tongue.
The steam rises, carrying the familiar scent, but it tastes like ashes and salt on my tongue. I decide then and there that I’d be damned if I constantly allowed them to piss me off like that. Why would I be jealous or mad when I don’t even know him? Mate, huh? I scoff out loud, thinking of how to deal with the situation, knowing full well Bianca will play the victim every time I’m in the room. She will antagonize me, and he will defend her; you know what, let them have each other and leave me the fuck alone. Let him fuck her and pay attention to her—what do I care?
Let him fuck her and pay attention to her—what do I care? I WALKED BACK TO MY ROOMS AFTER THAT PATHETIC EXCUSE OF A BREAKFAST THEN PUT ON MY RIDING PANTS, BOOTS, SHIRT, AND COAT. I walked to the stables and found a wild black savage of a horse and told the stable master to saddle him up for me; he hesitated, saying something about my safety, but I scoffed and told him to just do it. In my mind I think Michael would be elated if I were to fall off and die, don’t you worry, but I didn’t say anything. I rode the horse, riding him hard, expertly getting the wild beast under control all the while my brain was coming up with a strategy… nothing… that’s what I will give them.
The savage rhythm of the horse’s gallop hammered my plan into my bones: silence, a cold wall, absolute nothing. I reined in at the cliff's edge, the valley sprawled below in a patchwork of shadow and dying light, my breath clouding in the sharp air. Then the wind shifted, carrying the dense, oak-musk scent of him—Luca—cutting through the pine and cold earth. He emerged from the treeline, a darker silhouette against the gloom, his grey eyes catching the sunset and holding me, undoing my resolve with a single look. My body betrayed me, a hot, unwelcome pulse throbbing between my legs as the bond twisted deep in my gut.
The phantom of his hands on my hips, his cock against me, flashed through my mind with debilitating clarity. “Fuck you,” I whispered to the wind, to the bond, to myself, and jerked the horse’s head around, digging my heels hard into its flanks. I took the horse back to the stables ignoring my body's reaction to michael, reminding myself that I'm not giving him the satisfaction. I swung off the horse smoothly and unbuckled the saddle, picking up the heavy leather and almost tipping back but straightening myself. The stable master tried to stop me but I waved him off as I took a brush and brushed my horse.
The coarse bristles scraped over the horse’s flank in steady, angry strokes, each one mirroring my need to scrub away the memory of his touch, his scent, the way my own body had throbbed for him against my will. I worked until my arms ached and the beast stood gleaming and calm, then I left the stables without a backward glance, the chill evening air doing nothing to cool the heat still simmering in my veins. I WALKED BACK TO MY ROOMS SHOWERED AND WITH EVERY MOMENT MY RESOLVE HARDENED I PUT ON MY LUXURY COTTON LOUNGEWEAR SLACKS AND A MATCHING SWEATER SO SOFT IT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS FLUID OXBLOOD RED SO DEEP, THEN SEMI DRIED MY HAIR AND PULLED THE THICK DARK MASS INTO A MESSY HIGH BUN WITH TENDRILS OF HAIR FALLING ALL AROUND MY FACE, I PICKED UP MY NOTEBOOK MOLESKIN LEATHER. The supple cover felt like a shield in my hands as I settled into a chair by the cold fireplace, opening to a blank page that promised a plan, a way to build a wall he couldn’t breach. My pen hovered, a dark drop of ink threatening to fall, just as a single, firm knock sounded at my door—too assertive to be a servant, too knowing to be anyone but him.
The door opened, not on Luca's furious grey eyes, but on the composed, watchful face of Dante, Michael's trusted Beta. He stood there for a minute, and I calmly didn't rush to fill in the silence. When I spoke, it was calm and decisive. "I need a list of the kitchen inventories, the stable inventories, the artillery stocks, and guard inventories," I said, setting my pen down. "I also need a guided tour of the entire estate, a list of all staff, and a calendar of scheduled events for the upcoming six months."
Dante was taken aback at first, then nodded and said he needed to confirm with Michael. I nodded right back and told him calmly, "Of course. I just want to do what is expected of the Luna of the pack." I left it there, turning my focus back to my blank page as the door sighed shut on his retreat, the word Luna hanging in the silent room like a thrown gauntlet. Outside the window, the blood moon began its ascent, staining the gardens the color of old wine and fresh wounds. I waited, the soft wool of my sweater suddenly feeling like a cage, every silent second stretching the bond between us a fraction tighter toward breaking.
I waited, the soft wool of my sweater suddenly feeling like a cage, every silent second stretching the bond between us a fraction tighter toward breaking. DANTE GOES TO FIND MICHAEL AT HIS OFFICE AND OF COURSE BIANCA IS HANGING ON TO MICHAEL, her manicured fingers splayed possessively over his chest as he stared out the window, a crystal tumbler of amber liquid hanging from his hand. “The Luna has requested full inventories and a tour,” Dante stated flatly, his gaze deliberately avoiding the intimate scene. Michael didn’t turn, but Bianca’s laugh was a sharp, brittle sound. “Luna? That kitchen knife-wielding stray thinks giving orders makes her a Luna?”
Dante kept his expression neutral, watching the amber liquid swirl in Luca’s glass. “She wants to have something to do,” he said, the ghost of a shrug in his voice. “If you keep her preoccupied, she’ll leave you alone?” Bianca’s painted lips curled in triumph, but Luca finally turned, his grey eyes black in the dim light, the bond howling as he felt Lexi’s cold resolve solidify like armor. He drained his glass, the blood moon’s light painting a path across the floor toward her room, his cock already hardening at the primal challenge she’d just issued.
He found her in the obsidian dark, a silhouette against the window’s bloody glow. “Get out,” she spat, the words a brittle shield, but he was already on her, his mouth crushing hers as he ripped the soft oxblood sweater up over her head. She shoved hard against his chest, her palm cracking across his jaw with a sound that echoed her fury. “Go back to your whore,” she snarled, but he captured her wrists, pinning them above her head against the cold windowpane, his knee forcing her thighs apart. Her body arched, a traitorous moan escaping her as his teeth found her throat, not at the claim but lower, where her pulse hammered a frantic, welcoming rhythm against his tongue.
Her resistance was a thrilling electricity under his hands. "Your fight is the best part," he growled against her mouth, the taste of her fury like dark spice. He hauled her away from the window, her back arching as he lifted her, her legs instinctively wrapping around his waist as he carried her the few stumbling steps to the vast bed.
Her hands clawed at his shoulders, but her hips ground against the hard ridge of his cock straining his trousers. He dropped her onto the silken duvet, watching her olive skin contrast against the dark fabric, her breasts rising with each ragged breath. MICHAEL'S POV: Her scent, that maddening mix of cold ash and warm vanilla, enveloped him, a primal trigger that bypassed all thought. He followed her down, his mouth claiming hers again, swallowing her gasp as his hands molded the full weight of her breasts, his thumbs scraping over her hardening nipples through the lace of her bra.
He watched her body betray her, the sharp intake of breath, the way her back arched to press herself deeper into his palms. His gaze traveled down the dramatic flare of her hips, the generous curve of her thighs he ached to bruise with his grip. "I can smell how wet you are for me," he murmured, the filthy words a vibration against her neck before he moved down her body, his intention clear.
She tried to twist away, a muttered "Don't," but he hooked his arms under her thighs, yanking her to the edge of the bed and spreading her wide. He buried his face between her legs, his tongue lashing against her soaked core through the thin barrier of her lounging slacks. She cried out, a shattered sound, her hands fisting in his hair to push him away even as her hips bucked against his mouth.
He ripped the fabric aside, the sound tearing through the room, and his tongue plunged into her, fucking her with a brutal rhythm. "You taste like fucking victory," he snarled against her, the vibration making her scream. Her writhing was uncontrollable, her pleas a broken melody of "Stop, please, no," that morphed into a shuddering, choked "Don't you dare stop." He drove her relentlessly, his tongue circling her clit, then plunging deep, until her begging dissolved into a raw, screaming climax that shook the entire bed.
He released her thighs, watching her body convulse through the final waves, her cunt clenching around nothing but air. His own need was a live wire under his skin, throbbing and urgent, as he stripped his clothes off in frantic, graceless movements. Her breath was still coming in shattered sobs when he climbed over her, the head of his cock slick with her wetness and his own precum, pressing against her swollen entrance. “Look at me,” he demanded, his voice ragged, and her dark eyes, glazed with pleasure, found his.
MY EYES ARE BLOWN WIDE MY PUPILS ENGULFING MY EYES IM LOST IN THE SENSATION AS HE COMES BACK UP TO KISS MY MOUTH I CAN TASTE MYSELF ON HIM AND SUDDENLY IM LOST IN THE SENSATION. That filthy, intimate tang on his tongue broke the last of my resistance. With a guttural sound, I pushed him over onto his back, straddling him, and plunged onto his dick inch by inch, a brutal, glorious invasion that stole all the air from the room. My palms slapped at his abdomen for balance as I took him to the hilt, a deep, stretching burn that melted into pure, electric need.
My head was thrown back, my moans so loud they echoed off the stone walls, shameless and wild. Then I looked down into his eyes, into his fucking soul, and slowly rode him, rolling my hips in a tight, grinding circle that made his jaw go slack. “Fuck,” he hissed, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks, his thrusts meeting my slow descent with escalating force. “That’s it. Take every inch. Own it.” The slap of skin on skin, the wet sound of him driving into my cunt, filled the silence between our ragged breaths. I leaned forward, bracing my hands on his chest, my hair a dark curtain around us, and changed the angle, crying out as he hit a spot so deep and perfect it sparked white behind my eyelids. “Right there,” I chanted, “god, right fucking there,” my control splintering as the climb began again, a coil tightening low in my belly. He sat up suddenly, wrapping one arm around my back, his other hand tangling in my hair, and crushed his mouth to mine, swallowing my screams as his thrusts turned punishing and deep. “Come with me,” he growled against my lips, a raw command, and I felt his rhythm stutter, the base of his cock swelling inside me. The sensation tipped me over, a detonation that ripped through my core, my cunt milking him in violent, pulsing waves as he roared, emptying himself deep inside me with a final, shuddering thrust. We collapsed together, a slick, gasping heap of limbs, the only sound our struggling lungs and the distant cry of a hawk outside the blood-stained window.
His sweat cooled on my skin where our bodies pressed, a sticky map of our violence.
I tried to move, to reclaim some fragment of myself from this tangle, but my muscles were liquid failure.
“Don’t,” he muttered, his voice gravel raw, his arm tightening around my waist like a vice.
The command was unnecessary; my body was already surrendering to the weight of him, to the slow, aftershock tremors in my thighs.
Moonlight carved the hard planes of his face, highlighting the faint scratch from my nail, the sweat beading on his temple.
I could feel his heart hammering against my back, a frantic counter-rhythm to my own.
“This changes nothing,” I whispered into the dark, the words tasting like a lie even as they left my mouth.
He laughed, a short, harsh burst of air against my neck. “It changes everything, and you know it.”
His hand slid from my waist, fingers tracing a possessive path down the curve of my hip, over the bruise beginning to blossom there.
I flinched, but the movement only pressed me deeper into the cradle of his hips, where he was still half-hard inside me.
A low groan escaped him, and he shifted, his cock thickening again, a slow, insistent pressure that made my breath hitch.
“Fuck,” I breathed, anger warring with a treacherous, rising need.
“You’re mine,” he said, not as a threat this time, but as a dark, wondering fact.
And then it happened: a sudden, visceral pull in my chest, a sensation like a hook sinking behind my sternum and yanking taut.
My vision swam; the room, the moonlight, the scent of sex and ash—all of it sharpened, then melted into a single, overwhelming current of him.
I could feel the rough texture of his thoughts, not words, but raw impressions: satisfaction, fury, a bewildering thread of fear.
His grey eyes flew open, locking onto mine, and I saw my own shock mirrored there.
The bond didn't just hum; it roared, a living cable of heat and light fusing something deep in our cores.
It was a violation and a revelation, tearing down the last wall I’d tried to build, and I knew, with a certainty that sickened and thrilled me, that I was utterly his.
BOND DEEPENS.
BOND DEEPENS. The echo of that fusion was a silence louder than any scream. Then he moved, a violent rejection of the intimacy he’d just forced, rolling me over roughly. His palm was a brand between my shoulder blades, shoving my chest down into the mattress until the duvet filled my mouth with the taste of cotton and him. He wrenched my hips up high, the angle brutal and exposing, and drove back into my slick, used cunt with a single, unforgiving thrust.
“Just a fuck,” he grunted, the words punching out of him with each piston of his hips, a mantra against the truth now sealed in our blood. His balls slapped against my clit with every savage drive, the room reduced to the smell of sweat and sex, the wet, obscene sound of his taking. “Tell me it’s just a fuck.” I couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, each slam scattering coherent thought, my fists clutching sheets already torn. He leaned over, his teeth gripping the tender skin of my shoulder near his claiming mark, a possessive counterpoint to his denial. His rhythm was pure, desperate punishment, an animal trying to fuck the connection right out of us.
I felt the sear of his release before I heard his choked roar, a flood of heat that triggered my own, a silent, shuddering collapse that felt like surrender. He stayed buried inside, his weight a cage, his breath a storm against my spine. The bond hummed, a satisfied, awful truth in the quiet.
The bond hummed, a satisfied, awful truth in the quiet. His weight was a leaden reality, his softening cock still buried inside me where his cum was already leaking out. I thought it was over, that the violation had reached its peak, and I lay there broken and used. HE DIDNT STOP THERE HE PULLED BACK AND SLID HIS HARD COCK INTO MY ASS I SCREAMED IN A MIX OF PAIN AND ECSTACY HIS PUNISHING THRUSTS HARD ENOUGH TO SHAKE THE WHOLE BED I WAS MUMBLING. “No, no, no,” a weak chant against the pillow, but my body arched back onto him, a traitorous welcome.
“You’re so fucking tight here,” he growled, his voice shredded, one hand clawing into my hip bone, the other fisting in my hair to yank my head back. “This is mine, too.” The stretch was a blinding white fire, a brutal fullness that tore a ragged sob from my throat, which melted into a guttural moan as he found a brutal, perfect rhythm. Each drive was a concussion, the bedframe slamming against the stone wall in time with my choked cries, the slick, filthy sound of it drowning out everything. “Please,” I whined, the word meaningless, a sound for the sake of sound.
“Please what?” he demanded, pistoning harder, his balls slapping against my soaked cunt with every entry. I couldn’t answer, my mind splintering, the searing pain transmuting into a deep, shocking pleasure that radiated from my core. The bond didn’t just hum now; it shrieked, a feedback loop of sensation where I could feel his own frenzied pleasure as a sharp, hot wire in my gut. He was mumbling too, filthy, broken things against the sweat-slick skin of my back. “Take it, take all of it, you perfect fucking ruin.” My vision spotted, the world narrowing to the slam of his body into mine and the coiled, impossible tension in my belly. It crested without warning, a silent, shattering seizure that clamped me around him like a vise, my ass milking his cock as he roared, pouring himself into that deepest, most claimed part of me. We collapsed, fused, the new, raw ache a more truthful claim than any mark on my neck.
We collapsed, fused, the new, raw ache a more truthful claim than any mark on my neck. His weight was a leaden blanket, his softened cock slipping from my body with a wet, final sound that made me flinch. “Fuck,” he breathed into the damp mess of my hair, the word exhausted, hollow.
He didn’t pull away. Instead, he rolled us, a heavy, graceless maneuver that dragged me with him until I was splayed across his chest, my ear pressed to the frantic, slowing drum of his heart. The bond was a live wire now, a humming, sickening clarity where I could feel the simmer of his own shock bleeding into the aftermath of his violence. “michael,” I mumbled, my mouth numb.
“Quiet.” His hand came up, not to strike, but to cradle the base of my skull, his fingers threading through my sweat-tangled hair. It was this gentle contradiction that shattered my last defense. A broken sound escaped me, half-sob, half-surrender, my body was shuddering shaking and my whimpers subsided.