Page 88 of Haunted Crowns
His hands were fire, palms dragging down her spine, gripping her hips, his mouth hot and hungry at her throat. She was burning from the inside out, needing him as desperately as air. The world tilted, and suddenly, she wasn’t standing anymore—just heat, and weight, and him.
His breath seared her skin, his body trembling above hers.
She tried to speak, tried to ask something, but the words never formed. Only breathy sounds escaped her, whimpers and moans that pushed him closer to the edge. He was losing his mind.
Her limbs gripped him instinctively, back arching, thighs parting, fingers tangling in his hair. Her body knew him, knew what it needed, knew what he was. It wasn’t thought. It was hunger. A knowing buried in her bones.
He kissed her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder. Her moan was soft and aching, her hips lifting in offering. She reached for his face, breathless, barely aware of her own voice.
“Kareon… What’s happening to me?”
His mouth brushed her ear, his growl, rough and reverent. “You feel it, don’t you? That ache in your bones—your blood calling to mine. You were made for this, Eris. For me. Let me give you back what was always yours.”
Her eyes dragged open like waking from a dream she hadn’t meant to leave. The tent spun around her, her body trembling beneath his. Then a distant voice called from outside.
“Alpha?”
He ignored it, pressing harder into her.
“Alpha!”
The voice came again, sharper, more urgent.
He snarled, pain flashing across his face like lightning. With a sound that was half roar, half wound, he tore himself from her and sat up, panting like a man clawing his way out of death.
“What?” he snapped.
“The convoy’s been hit,” came the voice—clear now, cutting through everything.
The words hit like ice water. Kareon blinked, heartbeat slamming back into focus. Everything in him shifted as the Alpha instinct surged forward. The bond recoiled, demanding duty, command, focus.
He turned to her, her body limp, lips red, pupils blown. She was still panting, still flushed, still his.
He cupped her face gently, like she was something breakable, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I have to go.”
She blinked, drowsy. His voice felt distant. Her world was blurred. Pulsing.
“What…?” she whispered. But he was gone. The tent fell silent.
Eris sat upright slowly, one hand tangled in the blankets, the other pressed to her lips. Her heart stuttered, thighs aching, skin tingling where his hands had been. She looked around.
The tent smelled of him—heat, musk, and soul-deep longing. She didn’t know how she’d gotten there, only that her body remembered more than her mind did.
“A Lycan’s eyes don’t look at you.
They look through you.”
Lycan Oral Teaching
Chapter 18
The sun should’ve warmed the clearing, but the light was bent too sharp, too quiet. Something waited beneath the silence. Something wrong.
Kareon’s eyes swept the clearing, instincts already bristling. The convoy lay in ruin: crates smashed, supplies scattered, his men bound, gagged, and laid out like trophies. Their bodies writhed weakly beneath the ropes, struggling against the binds.
Varis swore. Taric’s fingers twitched toward his blade.
Kareon said nothing. His golden eyes lifted to the figures waiting at the edge of the clearing.
