Ruined by the Sovereign

Chapter Six

The reinforced glass was fifty degrees against her spine, but the thumb pressing into her throat felt like a branding iron.

Jane tried to find her boxes. She desperately searched for the neat, sterile compartments in her mind where she stored her panic. She stared at the reflection of the city lights behind Michael’s broad shoulder, forcing herself to count the red aviation beacons on the distant skyscrapers.

One. Two. Three.

It didn’t work. The clinical detachment wouldn't hold. The feral venom in her bloodstream was a live wire, sparking against her nerve endings, making her lower abdomen clench with an agonizingly wet ache.

Michael didn’t kiss her. He didn’t tear her high-collared silk dress. He simply held his thumb over the hidden puncture wounds until her pulse rabbit-kicked against his calloused skin. He let her feel the absolute, suffocating weight of his control.

"Breathe, Jane," he whispered.

She took a shallow, jagged breath. It tasted like bergamot and violence.

He dropped his hand. The sudden absence of his touch was somehow worse than the pressure. He stepped back, casually adjusting his perfectly tailored cuffs. The beast vanished, replaced instantly by the tactical surgeon. His amber eyes cooled to a flat, unreadable gold.

"My office is down the hall," Michael said, his tone entirely conversational. "The Elder Council’s financial ledgers are in disarray. I expect them cross-referenced by noon. We have a pack to restructure."

He turned and walked out of the room. He didn't look back.

Jane stood trembling against the window for a full minute. She smoothed her skirt. She walked over to the wet bar, poured a glass of ice water, and drank it in three precise swallows.

Then, she went to work.

Two hours later, Jane sat behind the massive mahogany desk in the penthouse office. The room smelled of expensive leather, printer ink, and the lingering, heavy scent of pine. She aligned the edges of a manila folder, tapping them twice against the polished wood.

Her body was betraying her. Every time she shifted in the leather chair, a phantom friction burned between her thighs. Her skin felt too tight. She ignored it, focusing entirely on a discrepancy in Ryan’s offshore accounts.

The heavy oak door clicked open.

Jane didn't flinch. She deliberately placed her silver pen down perfectly parallel to her notepad.

Elena walked in.

Her younger half-sister looked like a golden-hour photograph. Elena wore a soft cashmere sweater that clung to her curves, her blonde hair falling in loose, effortless waves. She smelled of vanilla and Ryan’s arrogant, shallow pine scent. It was the scent of a female who thought she owned the world because a boy had handed her a crown.

"Jane," Elena breathed, pressing a manicured hand to her chest. "Oh, thank the Goddess. Ryan said you were trapped up here."

Jane looked at her. She felt nothing. "Hello, Elena. You’re on the wrong floor."

Elena closed the door, her heels clicking softly on the Persian rug. The faux-concern on her face melted into something sharper, something smug. She paced in front of the desk, running a hand along the back of a leather guest chair.

"I had to see it for myself," Elena said, her voice dropping the sweet cadence. "Ryan is so worried about you. Being locked up with a madman. He's actually drafting a petition to the Council to have you safely relocated to the border territories. For your own protection, of course."

Jane picked up a paperclip. She slid it onto a stack of invoices. "That won't be necessary. I don't require extraction."

"Don't be brave, Jane. It’s pathetic." Elena leaned over the desk, planting her hands on the mahogany. "Look at yourself. You were bred to be Luna. Now you're playing secretary to a psycho who drinks blood in the dark. It's a shame about your pedigree. But Ryan is Alpha now. Purebloods don't take leftovers."

Jane looked at her sister’s hands. Elena had a tiny hangnail on her left thumb.

Under extreme threat, Jane didn't yell. She didn't cry. She got terrifyingly practical.

"Would you like a mint, Elena?" Jane asked. Her voice was completely dead. Flat. Surgical.

Elena blinked, thrown entirely off balance. "What?"

"A mint," Jane repeated, opening the top drawer and pushing a small silver tin across the desk. "Your breathing is elevated. It suggests anxiety. Peppermint settles the stomach."

Elena’s face flushed red. She slapped the tin off the desk. It clattered loudly against the hardwood floor.

"Stop looking at me like that!" Elena hissed, her golden-girl mask shattering. "You lost, Jane! You ruined yourself because you couldn't handle that Ryan wanted me. You threw yourself into a cage to prove a point, and now you’re nothing. You’re a pawn."

Elena leaned in closer, her face inches from Jane’s. She opened her mouth to deliver another insult.

Then, Elena froze.

Her nose twitched.

Wolves communicated in a language older than words. Scent didn't lie. Scent couldn't be faked.

Elena’s pupils dilated. She inhaled slowly, her chest rising, drawing in the air directly around Jane’s high silk collar.

Jane sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap.

Elena smelled the bergamot. She smelled the rain. But beneath that, buried deep in Jane’s pores, was the heavy, suffocating scent of dark pine and copper. It wasn't just the scent of an Alpha claiming territory.

It was a mating scent.

Elena’s eyes widened in absolute horror as her biology did the math. She wasn't smelling a casual encounter. She was smelling the raw, biological signature of a feral knot. She was smelling a Sovereign’s mark, buried so deep inside her sister’s body that it was actively rewriting her scent profile.

"No," Elena whispered, stumbling backward. Her heel caught on the rug. "No. That’s… he didn't."

Jane slowly stood up. She smoothed the front of her skirt.

"He’s feral," Elena stammered, her voice trembling, her hands shaking as she pointed at Jane. "Ryan said he was a monster. Ryan said he just used you to get out of the cage."

Jane walked around the desk. She didn't look like a leftover. She looked like a woman who had walked into hell and come back holding the devil's leash.

"Ryan," Jane said quietly, stopping two feet from her sister, "is a boy playing dress-up in his father's clothes."

Elena backed up until her spine hit the heavy oak door. The realization crashed over her in real-time. She had won the Mating Ceremony. She had won Ryan. But she hadn't secured the true power.

Jane tilted her head, her ice-blue eyes piercing right through Elena’s fragile, barren insecurities.

"You can tell the boy playing Alpha whatever you want, Elena," Jane whispered, her voice dropping into the exact same lethal cadence Michael used. "But if you ever walk into my territory uninvited again, I won't offer you a mint. I'll let the monster off his chain."