Trained to Kill the Alpha, Trapped In His Bed

The blade was already in motion when he moved. I had planned the angle for weeks as I flew in through the window. Three silent steps across the rug, a blade under the jaw, quick and clean, before he could fully wake. It should have been finished in less than four seconds. But he turned, and his robes opened, revealing how big his d**k was, which made me hesitate for a moment before bringing down the blade slowly and steadily, thinking that I could kill him while staring at his enormous d**k. But instead, Rhys Calder’s eyes opened the moment the steel kissed his skin. Crimson burning in the dark, as if some part of him had been waiting. I drove the knife forward quickly. He twisted. The blade sliced across his collarbone instead of opening his throat. Hot blood hit my wrist, shockingly warm against skin gone cold with focus. He snarled—low, vicious, a sound that lived somewhere beneath language—and his hand locked around my forearm like iron. The world spun. My back hit the mattress hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. His weight came down on me, heavy and furious, one knee pinning my thigh, the other hand reaching for my throat. My training took over before fear could. I got my leg free and drove my knee up. He took the hit with a grunt but didn't let go. We rolled, sheets tangling around us, the headboard cracking against the wall. The knife was still in my hand. I slashed again, catching him across the ribs this time. More blood. His blood. The scent of it filled the room—rich, dark, powerful, wrong in a way I didn't have time to understand. He caught my wrist and slammed it against the headboard. Pain shot up my arm, bright and electric, stealing the strength from my fingers. The knife flew free and skittered across the floor, and for one heartbeat I felt something close to panic. I had never lost my blade before. Not once, in my years of training. "Duskfall," he growled, voice rough with sleep and rage. "Third one this year." I didn't answer. Answering wasn't the mission. I headbutted him instead, putting everything I had left into the motion. Cartilage crunched. He reared back just enough for me to shove him sideways and scramble for the edge of the bed, heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my teeth. My fingers had just closed around the hilt of the fallen knife when his arm hooked around my waist and yanked me back, effortlessly, like I weighed nothing at all. We hit the floor together. My head struck the corner of the heavy wooden nightstand with a sickening crack. White light exploded behind my eyes. The world tilted hard, then kept tilting, refusing to settle. Sound stretched and warped—his breathing, my own ragged gasps, the wet drip of blood onto the rug, all of it arriving a half-second too late, as if the room itself had slowed down around me. I tried to push up. My arms wouldn't listen. The knife felt suddenly too heavy in my hand, and then it wasn't in my hand at all. Rhys was over me again, breathing hard, blood running down his chest in dark streams that caught the low light. His eyes were pure gold now, wolf close to the surface, pupils gone to slits. He looked like he was deciding whether to finish it, and some small, distant part of me—the part that wasn't screaming with pain—waited almost calmly to find out. I tried to speak but no sound came out. Just breath, and the coppery taste of blood I couldn't tell was his or mine. The last clear thought I owned was the mission. *Freedom after the final kill.* Then the dark folded in and took everything with it. — I woke up to the smell of him. Pine. Steel. Warm skin. Something deeper and wild underneath which made my chest ache before I even understood why. It should have terrified me. Instead it felt, absurdly, like the first thing in my life that made any sense. My head throbbed in slow, vicious pulses. Every heartbeat felt like a hammer against the inside of my skull, each one dragging a fresh wave of nausea behind it. I tried to open my eyes. The lids were too heavy, weighted with something that wasn't quite sleepy. When I finally forced them apart, the room swam before it settled—dim, lit only by the low orange glow of a fire somewhere to my left, shadows breathing against the walls. I was in bed. Not on the floor or trees, where I'd spent most nights of my life with a blade under my hand and the cold as my only company. A real bed, wide and soft, with sheets that smelled like the same man whose blood I could still faintly taste in the air, copper and salt at the back of my throat. I didn't know where I was or why my body hurt so much, that every muscle screamed in protest whenever I shifted my weight. I couldn't even remember my own name. That last realization hit hardest of all—a cold, hollow drop in my stomach, like reaching for a weapon and finding only air. I searched myself for it, for anything, a face, a voice, a single memory that belonged to me, and found nothing but a vast, humming silence where a life should have been. A soft sound came from the shadows near the hearth. A chair creaked, wood settling under weight. Someone was sitting there, watching me, and had perhaps been watching for a long time. A deep voice, quiet and controlled in a way that did nothing to hide the danger underneath it, spoke into the dark. "You're awake." I stared toward the sound, heart slamming against my ribs so hard it hurt, and realized I had no idea who he was, no idea what I had done to end up bleeding and broken in his bed. And yet the scent of him—pine, steel, that deep wild undertone—made something low in my stomach pull tight with a feeling I couldn't name, sharp and unwelcome and impossible to ignore. Whoever I had been before the dark took me, some part of her was still awake in my blood, and she wasn't afraid of him at all.