Claimed by my Possessive Alpha: A Dream Walkers Prey

Liraels's POV. Soren said my name like a stranger’s, and that was how I knew the night was already ruined…but that came later. His claws caught the edge of my shoulder blade, just shy of breaking skin, and I felt every one of them individually as the city smeared into streaks of light below us. He had me pinned hard against the cold window, one hand locked on my hip, the other fisted in my hair. Every thrust was deep, deliberate, almost punishing, like he knew this was the last time and wanted me to carry the shape of him for a while after. “Lira,” he growled against my throat, teeth scraping skin. “You feel like you were made for me.” I shoved back onto him, nails scoring his shoulders. Nothing existed except the heat rolling off his body and the low rumble building in his chest, the sound he only made with me. “Tell me you're mine,” I whispered. “Always, baby.” His mouth found mine, rough and certain. “No one else gets this. No one else gets you.” We’d been careful for months, sneaking nights like this while pretending we were just step-siblings. But the pull between us had never been careful. It had just always been there, since before either of us knew to be ashamed of it. “After tonight,” I said against his jaw, voice breaking, “we tell them. I don't care what they call us anymore.” He went still. Just for a breath. Then his hands gentled and he kissed my shoulder like he owed me an apology I didn't understand yet. “After tonight,” he said. My phone buzzed on the nightstand. Then again. I let it ring until his went off too, and something about the sound of that seemed to sober him faster than mine had. He cursed under his breath and reached for it. “That's Mother,” he said, already reaching for his shirt. “s**t,” he muttered. “She never calls this late unless it’s bad.” My stomach dropped. I sat up, pulling the sheet around me. “Don’t answer.” But Soren was already sliding out of bed, grabbing his pants. “If I don’t, she’ll show up here. You know how she is.” He answered on the third ring, voice calm like nothing had happened. “Yeah?” I couldn’t hear the words on the other end, but Soren's face changed. The easy post-s*x glow vanished. His jaw tightened. Eyes flicked to me, then away. “Understood. We’re on our way.” He hung up. “What is it?” I asked, already reaching for my clothes. “Mother wants us both home. Now.” *** The dining room at the estate smelled like lilies and candle wax. I slid into my seat fifteen minutes late, hair still damp, and made my face into the shape of someone who hadn't just come from a man's bed through the service stairs. “You look flushed,” Brenna Calloway said, smiling at me over her wine. A smile that for some reason didn't sit right with me. “Long drive?” “Traffic,” I said. Soren sat two chairs down, straight-backed, distant, the way he always sat at these dinners in front of people. Once, years ago, at a table just like this one, he'd kicked my foot under it until I laughed into my napkin and our father asked what was funny. Nothing, we'd said. Nothing at all. I caught his eye now and almost smiled out of habit. He looked away first. Maren rose at the head of the table and the room went quiet the way it always did for her, not out of love but practice. “I have news,” she said, and lifted her glass. “Soren has agreed to marry Brenna Calloway.” The words didn't make sense at first. I actually looked around the table for someone to explain them to me, like maybe I'd misheard, like maybe this was a different Soren she meant. Brenna's smile widened. Her hand found Soren's forearm and stayed there. “It solidifies everything between our packs,” she said, to the table, to me. “My father says the border disputes practically settle themselves once two families are one.” I looked at Soren. He looked at his wine glass. “How long,” I said, and my voice came out wrong, too flat, “have you known this?” “Lirael.” Maren's voice cut across the table, a warning wrapped in my name. I shut my mouth. My hands were shaking under the tablecloth where no one could see them, and I hated that they were, hated that some part of me still expected him to look up and tell me this was a mistake, a joke, a test I was failing on purpose. He didn't look up. “There's more,” Maren said, and something about the way she said it made my stomach drop before I understood why. “Lirael will also be married,” Maren said. “To Kaelric Ashdown.” For a second I heard the name and nothing else registered. Then the room reacted. A breath sucked in somewhere, a fork against a plate, a chair creaking as someone shifted to look at me. I sat there while my stepmother explained it like a business update, calm and even, that I would marry the Prince of Darkness on the same night she'd married off the man I loved to someone else. I looked at Soren again. He didn't look shocked. He looked relieved. That was the part I couldn't get past…not Kaelric's name, not the marriage, but the fact that Soren had known this was coming for both of us, and he'd still let me fall asleep in his arms like it was any other night. I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the floor. “I'm not hungry,” I said, to no one, to everyone, and I walked out with my back straight because I would not let this room watch me shake. Soren got up and followed me. I turned to him in the hallway, half-expecting an apology, half-expecting him to fix it, and his face was already closing off in front of me. “Tell me you didn't know,” I said. “Lira…” “Tell me!” “It was decided weeks ago.” He caught my wrists when I reached for him, not gently, and stepped back until there was air between us where there shouldn't have been any. "You want to know when I knew? The night you fell asleep on my shoulder talking about names. Ours. For kids we'll never… " He stopped himself, jaw working. "That's when I knew. That's when I called Mother and told her to make it official before I did something stupid." I flinched like he'd hit me. "Brenna gives me the north border. She gives me a seat at the table instead of a joke behind my back." His voice dropped, and that was worse than shouting. "What do you give me, Lirael? A closed door and a scandal every time someone counts the years between us and does the math?" "You said you loved me." "I did." He said it flat, like a fact he'd already filed away and moved past. "Doesn't change what we are. Doesn't change what this family needs. I let it go on too long because I'm selfish, not because it was ever going to be real." He stepped past me, back toward the light and the dinner he'd already chosen. "Stop making me say it twice." I don't remember walking to my room. I remember the rain had started again, or maybe it had never stopped, and I stood on the balcony outside my door and cried until my throat gave out and the cold stopped feeling like anything. Maren found me there. “You'll wake the staff,” she said, which from her was as close as it got to comfort. “He knew,” I said. “You told him before you told me.” “What you had with your stepbrother was never going to be allowed, Lirael. Not while I'm alive. The pack sees incest whether there's blood between you or not, you were a scandal waiting to happen, and I've spent years keeping anyone from finding out.” Her voice never rose. It never had to. “The Ashdown match isn't punishment. It's protection. There are things moving against this family you don't understand yet. What happened at the border last season should have taught you that.” “What happened at the border?” She didn't answer. She never explained herself twice. A knock sounded at the front door below, sharp and formal, and a moment later one of the staff came up the stairs holding a folded letter sealed in black wax, the Ashdown crest stamped dark and exact into the wax. Maren broke the seal herself. I watched her face change as she read it, watched her go still in the specific way she went still right before she made a decision that would cost someone something. “He's moved the wedding up,” she said. “To when?” She looked at me the way you look at someone standing too close to the edge of something. “Two weeks.”