Rhea pov :
The dark was always the hardest part.
During the day, I could look at the Lycan King in the war room and see exactly what he was: a warlord. The Reaper. A brilliant, lethal tactician with a heart locked entirely in ice.
But at night, in the suffocating darkness of my bedchamber, the lines blurred. Between us, there was a strange, mistimed friction that I couldn't quite hide, no matter how hard I tried to keep my walls up.
His heavy body moved over mine in the cold sheets, his skin burning with that familiar, intoxicating heat. But every time his hands touched me, my brain violently misfired. My body remembered a version of Alaric that didn't exist yet.
When he reached for my waist, my spine was automatically arched, waiting for the slow, gentle drag of his thumb t
