Moonlit Dominion
The city was never silent—not even at midnight.
Its towers gleamed like fangs against the night sky, windows glowing with ambition, secrets, and something older than greed. Beneath the marble lobbies and polished glass, something darker pulsed: a heartbeat that didn’t belong to machines or men.
Velaris Prime belonged to predators. Some wore suits. Some wore scars. And some—like the one watching her from behind mirrored glass—wore nothing but control.
Rhea Salazar didn’t know she’d stepped into a den of monsters. Not yet. She thought she’d won the internship of a lifetime. That she could leave her haunted past behind and rewrite her story from inside one of the city’s most powerful towers.
She was wrong.
This is not a story of fate.
It’s a story of control—and what happens when it breaks.
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CHAPTER ONE
Glass Towers and Ghosts
The elevator climbed with the smooth, soundless precision of a machine that cost more than her entire education. Rhea Salazar stood at the back of the mirrored box, clutching the thin leather strap of her tote, trying to look like she belonged. Her blazer was secondhand. Her boots had a scuffed heel. Her confidence was paper-thin.
The number 72 lit up overhead. Top floor.
She swallowed hard.
VossCorp. The most powerful private biotech firm in Velaris Prime. Rumored to influence government policy, stock markets, even medicine itself. Getting a summer internship here wasn’t just lucky—it was borderline miraculous. Tens of thousands had applied. Forty were chosen. And somehow, Rhea Salazar from the wrong end of the city, with no legacy, no funding, and no connections, had slipped through the cracks.
Or had been pulled through them.
The elevator doors opened with a hush of pressurized air. Chrome and shadow greeted her.
No welcome desk. No receptionist. Just a long hallway lined with black glass panels and silence so heavy it felt physical. Every step her boots made echoed with unsettling clarity.
"This isn’t intimidating at all," she muttered under her breath.
At the end of the hall, a woman stood waiting. Tall. Ice-blonde. Pinned smile.
“Rhea Salazar?”
Rhea nodded.
“Follow me. And don’t touch anything.”
Great start.
The tour was brief, efficient, and oddly devoid of people. Rhea was shown her desk—minimalist, corner cubicle, near a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the shimmering chaos of Velaris Prime. Then came the nondisclosure forms. The biometric wrist scan. The polite threat that she could be terminated for "curiosity outside her role."
She was not told who her direct supervisor was. Only that she’d “be informed when needed.”
Her stomach twisted.
It wasn’t the job. It was the feeling. That she’d stepped into something vast and old and watching.
Hours passed. She input data. Corrected formatting errors. Read endless documents on experimental gene therapy and something called “chromalytic decay.” The language was technical, dense, deliberately obfuscating.
Just past 9:00 PM, the office began to empty. The lights dimmed. But no one told her to leave.
She decided to take the hint.
Tote on shoulder, she passed the elevator—then froze.
The black glass panel on the far end of the hallway flickered. Just for a second. Like static. Then again.
A narrow seam split open in the wall. A hidden door.
Curiosity overrode caution.
Don’t touch anything, the blonde had said.
But the air drifting from the hidden doorway smelled…wrong. Not like chemicals or ozone. Like earth. Rain. Metal.
Like blood.
She stepped inside.
The lights were low, red-tinted. This wasn’t an office space. It felt like a lab, but too clean. Too quiet.
Then she saw it: the thick glass chamber in the center of the room.
Inside it—something moved.
Massive. Hunched. Muscles rippled under torn fabric. Clawed fingers twitched at its sides. A low, animal growl vibrated through the floor.
The creature’s head turned. Glowing amber eyes locked onto hers.
Rhea didn’t scream.
She should have. She wanted to.
Instead, she stepped forward.
The creature didn’t lunge. Didn’t snarl.
It…watched.
And somewhere, in the blur of terror and disbelief, a voice—human, low, viciously calm—spoke behind her.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
She turned.
The man standing there was tall, lean, and dressed in black. His eyes were the same amber as the beast’s. His voice carved through the room like glass.
She recognized him instantly.
Arden Voss.
CEO. Billionaire. Reaper in a suit.
His gaze didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.
“You saw it,” he said softly, not asking.
Rhea’s mouth parted, dry. “Is it…human?”
Arden tilted his head. “That depends on how generous you are with your definitions.”
A pause.
“Come back tomorrow,” he said. “Your internship has been reassigned. You work for me now.”
