Ardena’s POV
There is something about the music tonight. The way it crawls through the building, as if pulsing with a life of its own, needing to be heard. It bleeds through the cracks, finding its way to where I stand in front of the door, my skin flushed and my eyes droopy.
“Ready?” Draven asks, angling his head in my direction. “You know you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
I nod. He’s right. But that is the thing. I want to.
For a whole year, I have been stuck in the four walls of the Obsidian Faction, seeing nothing more than the servants and an Alpha King who I’m scared to admit doesn’t care about me. But I might be wrong.
I always am.
When the doors push open, plunging us into the heart of the song, I close my eyes to take it all in, to memorize the smell of over a hundred packs gathered in the ballroom.
Draven isn’t the most patient person, but he waits. I hear his feet shuffle on the stone ground, his eyes dart a million times towards the crowd, and then back to my features.
“Ardena,” he breathes, a tinge of rigidity in his tone. “We need to move.”
I stretched my arm to him, but he didn’t take it. Instead, he pushes ahead of me, waves of his dominance hitting me. I allow myself to feel nothing tonight, waltzing in behind him and trying so hard to put on a show.
I hear their whispers as we float in, the awe in their eyes and the excitement buzzing through their skins, just like the music seeps into mine.
“I wish I were her,” I pick one up, my ears traveling through space. “She is mated to the most powerful man in the whole faction. Is that luck?”
Someone else scoffs. I don’t need to see her to know it is my sister.
Lyssa.
“Luck?” she laughs, her sing-song voice carrying into the air. “Ardena doesn’t know luck, even if it slapped her face. She doesn’t deserve Alpha Draven. I still don’t understand why he chose someone as ugly as her to be the Luna of the whole faction. Talk about lack of taste.”
“I doubt it,” the first person murmurs. “Alpha Draven doesn’t make a move without properly thinking it through. Ardena…”
“She seduced him. I am certain….”
A sad smile touches my lips as I drown them out, joining Draven at the head of the room, in a seat that feels too foreign to be called mine. I wait for the feel of his arms around my body, to drown myself in his warmth rather than this cold I have been subjected to.
But Draven keeps his eyes fixed on the crowd, who have gone back to enjoying the ball. When he sees Alpha Rian, the Alpha King of the Auren Faction, he rises immediately, disappearing into the crowd and leaving me to my silence.
I swallow, pulling my gaze away from his retreating figure. The doors at the other end push open suddenly, just as the music reaches its peak, threatening to drown us all in its raw need.
And at that moment, everything inside of me stops.
He walks in, and every inch of the room seems to be aware of him. It is strange how one moment your mind can be so fixated on one thing and the next, you find yourself drowning in another, much more intense.
More … alluring, like the stars in the skies.
I swallow when the doors close behind him, the soft thud carrying across the space. I leaned forward slowly, my gaze feeling hazy as I watched him breathe, taking in the space. He moves to the side, and the smell of the ocean hits me, soft, calm, raging.
My eyes flicker closed for a moment, and when they open again, I find him easily, standing by the cocktail table, a glass in his hand.
He looks like….
Mine.
His eyes snapped up at me at that moment, knocking out all the air from my lungs. My heart claws hard at my chest, and I feel such a sharp burn on my shoulders. I doubled forward at once, my hand flying to the spot, my eyes still focused on him.
On the pools of green watching me.
“Luna,” Rose rushes to my corner. “Are you fine? Do you feel…”
He takes a step closer, a wary look in his gaze. The pain lowers strangely, and when I don’t say a word to Rose, she stands straight. I notice the minute she sees him, too, the purse of her lips and the tilt of her head.
But she says nothing when I rise from my seat, heading in his direction. A server passes me and I grab a glass, bringing the rim to my lips. I take a small sip, and the liquor burns down my throat. He narrows his eyes, but his lips barely move.
Another piece of music starts when we reach the centre of the ballroom. My breath comes out in a rage, and my heart thuds so hard as if trying to claw its way out of my chest.
The smell of the ocean is stronger. I feel the wind in the air, even if we are in an enclosed space, and that feeling that it is about to rain.
Smack in the middle of summer.
He draws closer slowly. “You look sad,” he whispers. His deep baritone courses through me like the chord from a lost song, and I move impossibly closer. One more step and I will be right in his face, close to his lips.
Too close.
I swallow again when his eyes brush mine. He sucks in a sharp breath when I trap my bottom lip between my teeth, when my glossy gaze finds it impossible to waver.
“Heavens,” he whispers. “You are beautiful.”
It is the first time anyone has said those words to me. My shoulders pick up the burn, and I feel my wolf for the first time ever. She tries to push out, frenzy and thrashing.
And I hear her speak. “Mate.”
My head whips to the side when the doors open again and someone charges in.
“Taren!”
