Chapter 196
Chapter 196:
I couldn’t take the agonizing confusion anymore. The memory of his punishing kiss at the Blood Ring clashed violently with everything I thought I knew.
I turned my head slightly on the pillow.
“Why did you kiss me, Kain?” I whispered, my voice trembling in the quiet room. “I know about you and Fletcher. You don’t have to pretend p>
The air in the room instantly solidified. The cedar scent spiked, growing dark, rich, and overwhelmingly possessive. Kain shifted, turning his body to face me. His eyes caught the faint glow of the city lights, gleaming with a dangerous, predatory intensity that made my breath hitch.
“I kissed you,” he rasped, his voice a low, vibrating growl that sent a violent shiver straight to my core, “because I was tired of you looking at my Beta. I wanted you to look at me p>
𝖲𝗍о𝗋іеs 𝗒𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝗼n’𝘵 𝗽𝗎𝘵 𝖽o𝘄ո 𝗈n
The words branded themselves onto my soul.
The kiss wasn’t a cruel mockery to conceal a secret lover. It was pure, unadulterated jealousy. A terrifying, electric jolt shot through my veins, awakening a primal ache I had tried so desperately to bury. Fletcher was just a Beta. Kain’s anger, his distance, his cruelty — it had all been fueled by a possessive rage he couldn’t control.
Neither of us spoke another word. We lay there in the dark, pretending the silence hadn’t just been shattered into a million pieces. But as the hours bled into the early morning, the invisible tether of the mate-bond did its work. Unconsciously, inevitably, we drifted across the charcoal silk, drawn together by a gravity neither of us could fight anymore.
Adelina POV
I drifted on a sea of warmth, anchored by a heavy, comforting weight. As consciousness slowly returned, the scent of ancient cedar and my own wild rose wrapped around me, thick and intoxicating.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t on my side of the California king bed anymore. I was plastered against Kain’s chest, his massive arm banded around my waist like an iron vise. Our legs were intimately tangled beneath the charcoal silk sheets, and Jaxon was nowhere between us — the pup had rolled entirely to the foot of the mattress during the night.
The memory of last night crashed into my waking mind. I wanted you to look at me.
Panic, sharp and cold, pierced through the lingering haze of sleep. I was wolfless. Broken. This intoxicating closeness, this illusion of a perfect mate-bond, was a dangerous fire I couldn’t afford to play with. I jerked backward and tumbled off the edge of the mattress.
Kain shifted, his dark eyes already open and tracking my frantic movements. A lazy, devastating smirk played on his lips.
“Sleep well, my little wolf?” he murmured, his morning voice a gravelly rasp that sent a traitorous heat straight to my cheeks.
“I — I’m sorry,” I stammered, clutching the sheet to my chest as I scrambled off the bed. “I didn’t mean to invade your space p>