Chapter 41: Wrong asnswer
Zaliver’s POV
Her brows were naturally arched, like they were always judging the world, or me. Her nose was small and delicate, and those lashes, dark and thick, casting shadows over her cheeks. When she tilted her head just right, it gave her that sultry, half-daring look she wore without trying. The same one she had when I kissed her.
My gaze dropped to her lips, full, soft, and slightly parted in sleep. I had the sudden, almost painful urge to trace them.
Her skin, pale as moonlight and smooth. I ached to touch her. To mark her. To make her mine again and again.
But instead, I just stood there.
Watching. Wanting.
Waiting.
She barely reached my chest, small in frame but lush in all the right places. I remembered too vividly how that body had felt the moment she opened her eyes beneath mine, warm and soft, trembling yet fearless. The memory alone stirred something primal in me, had my body reacting before I could will it not to. It was maddening, how easily she got under my skin.
Vivian was a paradox, innocence wrapped in the kind of temptation that would bring lesser men to their knees. Every subtle movement she made, every breath, every flutter of her lashes, pulled at the animal inside me. And not just me. Any male with working instincts would feel it. That’s why I couldn’t risk letting her out of my sight. She was danger dressed in sweetness, and I had to lock that danger away, for her safety and everyone else’s.
I reached down, winding a strand of her silky dark hair around my fingers, letting the texture soothe my fraying thoughts. It was almost a habit now, touching her, needing to know she was real.
She shifted on the bed beside me, inching closer until our bodies nearly touched. A small sigh slipped from her lips, soft and almost relieved, like some part of her recognized me even in sleep and chose me anyway. The tension in her brows faded. I didn’t need sleep like most wolves did, hell, I didn’t need it at all. But since Vivian arrived, I’d started following her to bed, not because I needed rest, but because I needed her. Watching her breathe. Hearing the steady beat of her heart. It lulled me like nothing else ever had, and I had lived long enough to know that was not a small thing.
It should’ve been unsettling, this obsession. But it wasn’t. It was grounding.
What had she done to me?
Before her, my pleasures had been simpler. Land. Power. War. Blood. The satisfaction of victory, clean and uncomplicated, repeated until it lost whatever meaning it had started with. I had taken what I wanted from the world and given nothing back because there was nothing I cared to give. I moved through centuries like a force of weather, indifferent to what I leveled. There had been others in my bed, over the years. Warmth of a kind. But I had never stayed to watch them breathe. Never found myself counting heartbeats. Never sat in the dark simply because another person was sleeping in it and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Then she arrived, chained to my bed and furious about it, and somehow the ground had shifted. Now I felt warmth just by sitting beside her. Peace. And that, that terrified me more than any blade ever could.
I shook the thoughts away and glanced at her neck, still bare. No mark. No symbol that she was mine.
The bond was incomplete. Uncertain. And that uncertainty gnawed at me like poison. I couldn’t afford to wait. I needed to make my claim, one way or another. Not that anyone would dare touch her. They knew better. But possibility was a dangerous thing. I’d once built a kingdom on possibility and it nearly destroyed me.
A dozen ways to mark her flickered through my mind, some ancient, others brutal, but one idea brought a smirk to my lips.
"I wonder how she feels about tattoos."
The files on your desk. Albericus’s voice echoed in my head.
I didn’t reply. Instead, I gave Vivian one last lingering look and slipped out of the room, making my way down the dark corridor to my office. Albericus waited inside, standing beside the desk with that ever-present knowing look on his face.
I picked up the green file and flipped it open, scanning through the contents. Vivian’s work. Her data. Everything we’d tested and pulled together.
"Pass this along: from now on, no more kiwi on the island. Shut down all imports. Tell the pack to eat what’s left or dump it. Anyone who has a problem with it can come to me directly," I said, eyes still on the papers.
Albericus raised a brow. "And may I ask why?"
I glanced up, catching the flicker of amusement in his expression.
"She’s allergic," I said simply.
He chuckled, but I could tell he understood. No risks. Not with her.
He leaned forward, tapping the folder impatiently. "So? What’s it say?"
I didn’t answer right away. I combed through the text again, cautious. I couldn’t miss anything. Not now.
"According to this, after twenty-four hours, my blood returned to baseline. No abnormalities. No reaction to the contact with hers. Everything seems..." My voice trailed off as my eyes caught something further down the page.
"Interesting," I muttered. "Very interesting."
Albericus straightened. "What is? What’s interesting?"
I passed the file to him, watching as his eyes darted across the page. I saw it the moment it hit him, surprise, then disbelief, then silent awe.
"You’re right. That’s... wow. That’s something."
I nodded slowly, thoughts already moving.
"Indeed."
Whatever fog I’d been living in lifted in a single instant. I stood at the window for a long moment, the night pressing dark and close against the glass, and turned the implications carefully over in my mind. If the results meant what I thought they meant, everything I’d been waiting for was already in motion.
And the storm rolling in? It had my name written all over it.
Time to stop waiting and start moving. Whatever those results said about her, about us, it changed the timeline. It changed absolutely everything.
Comments