“I’ll be fine,” I say softly, forcing another smile. “Go. Make the city fall in love with you all over again.”
He steps toward me, and for a moment I think he’ll kiss me, but Kian’s fingers dig deeper, and Dom settles for brushing my hair back instead. The touch feels like goodbye.
“Margaux,” Kian calls as he steers Dom toward the exit, “try not to let your mother bury our bride in tulle and trauma. I’d like her to make it to the ceremony in one piece.”
“No promises,” Margaux sings, tapping her nails against her cup in a rhythm too precise to be casual. “You know how Mother gets when fabric’s involved.”
Kian pauses at the threshold, turning back with that devastating charm that makes him so dangerous. “Oh, and Aria? Be good while we’re gone. We’ve only just gotten you housebroken.”
The doors seal behind them with terrible finality. Octavia immediately rises, leaving the room in a rush, while Margaux watches me with calculating eyes.
Alexander’s master suite inFounders’ Crest is larger than my entire childhood home. Even after three days, I’m still dwarfed by the dark marble floors, the towering bookshelves lined with leather-bound tomes, and the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the sprawling Darkmoor gardens. Past the meticulously trimmed hedgerows and ancient oaks, I can just make out where the wild woods begin, the boundary between Eclipsera and whatever lies beyond. Vairen, if my geography lessons were correct. Though now, I wonder how much of what we were taught was truth, and how much was carefully curated fiction. The Silva archives, restricted to Founding Families alone, hold volumes upon volumes of secrets I never knew existed.
But those thoughts feel irrelevant, dissolving as my fingers drift across Alexander’s chest. His skin is still damp with exertion, his breath heavy beside me. The silk sheets pool around us, and I marvel at how a man of his age maintains such ruthless perfection. Each muscle carved with intent, every movement precise, even now, in these private moments when the world can’t see him.
“I never knew it could be like this,” I murmur, pressing closer. The soreness between my thighs is a delicious reminder of hispassion. Of how he chose me. For three exquisite days, I’ve been more than just Luna Ellis—I’ve been his.
He shifts, and I instinctively lean in, chasing the warmth of his skin, the steady rhythm of his heart. But he’s already pulling away, disentangling from my arms with infuriating grace. The loss of him leaves me raw and exposed.
“Don’t go,” I whisper, hating how needy I sound but unable to stop myself. Still, my fingers reach, brushing his arm.
“I need a shower.” His voice is distant now, stripped of heat. “The board meeting won’t wait.”
I push myself upright, the sheets sliding down to my waist. “Let me join you?” I aim for sultry, but there’s a rasp of desperation beneath it I can’t quite smooth out. “We could—”
“Luna.” My name is both warning and dismissal. His mouth tilts into that perfect, polished smile that makes my stomach tighten. “I think I can manage on my own this morning.”
He rises, and I suddenly feel too naked. Every inch of skin he’s touched, every faint bruise or scratch, exposed under the bright morning light. The intimacy of night burns off in daylight, leaving nothing but space. The bed yawns wide beside me, cold and vacant, and I pull my knees to my chest.
I watch him cross the room toward the en-suite, unable to look away from the elegant cut of his back, the strength in every step. The door clicks shut and I’m left with nothing but the echo of his touch and thoughts that won’t quiet.
I sink deeper into his bed—our bed? —and breathe in the scent he’s left on the pillows. Every morning I expect to wake and find it’s all been an elaborate dream. But it’s real. The silk sheets against my bare skin are real. The way he claimed me last night, whispering promises against my throat, that was real too.
Wasn’t it?
Doubt creeps in like rot, silent and swift. Memories I thought I’d buried claw to the surface. The boys at the Academy who asked for help with blood magic theory, their smiles never quite reaching theireyes. The ones who dated me for months, only to casually mention how pretty they found my sister. Partners in practical exams who figured being kind to the younger Ellis might earn them access to the elder. Always her. Never me.
But Alexander is different. He has to be. He choseme.
Not Aria, not any of the countless women who throw themselves at him.Me.The way he watches me when we’re alone, with that quiet intensity that says I’m rare, something worth keeping. No other man has ever made me feel so seen.
I’ve heard the whispers, of course. The smirks in the break room, the murmured comments between senior staff. Everyone knows about the others—brief entanglements behind locked doors, hurried trysts in hotel suites or his office. But none of them were brought here. None were invited into the sanctum of his private wing. Into this bed.
None of them saw the real Alexander, the man who traces constellations across my skin while murmuring his visions for the future. The one who tells me I understand him in ways his wife never could.
His wife.
The thought sends an icy spike through my chest. Vivienne sleeps somewhere in the opposite wing, likely in an equally luxurious bed. Does she know? Does she care? The stories say she turns a blind eye. That their marriage is one of convenience and power rather than love. Alexander told me so himself, his voice soft and intimate in the darkness.
The rhythm of the shower reminds me he’s still here. In a few minutes, he’ll reemerge as the immovable force who governs Eclipsera with unshakable authority. But I know the man beneath the suit now. I’ve tasted his desire, felt the weight of his need. He might have to maintain appearances at work, keep our relationship discreet, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
Does it?
No, I won’t let doubt poison this. I am Alexander Darkmoor’s chosen one, and I will prove to him—to everyone—that I deserve to be here. In his bed. In his life. In his future.
The bathroom door opens in a swirl of steam and Alexander steps out, a towel slung low around his hips, water still glistening across his skin. Droplets trace slow paths over the sharp lines of his chest, catching in the dark hair there. I watch transfixed as he moves through his morning ritual. Every motion deliberate and controlled. Even without his tailored armor, the authority never leaves him, it clings to the breadth of his shoulders, the unbothered grace of a man who bends the world to his will.
He crosses to the closet, and I can’t look away. Muscles flex and roll beneath skin with each step, the very same arms that had caged me against the sheets hours ago. The ones that make me deliciously small every time they wrap around me. He reaches for one of dozens of perfectly cut suits, and as his biceps tense, the towel slips lower, then drops.
