The Heiress's Revenge

Chapter 3

The Gilded Mark

Ella

The pack ceremony for the Blackwood Foundation was the biggest event of the season, and as Caleb’s partner, I was the centerpiece.

I stood in our private dressing room, smoothed the fabric of a deep emerald gown not the silver-blue one yet, as Caleb said we were "saving the best for the solstice.

Caleb stepped up behind me, his reflection towering over mine. He reached around my waist, his large hand splaying across my stomach.

The moment his skin touched the silk over my hip, my breath hitched. It was that pull the one that defied logic. My mind didn't remember him, but my body seemed to sing when he was near. It was a magnetic heavy cold that made my knees weak and my thoughts go foggy.

You look breathtaking, Eva, he murmured, his nose grazing the curve of my neck.

He turned me around in his arms. His amber eyes were dark, swirling with a hunger that felt intensely personal. In these moments, it was easy to forget the rumors or the coldness of the staff. When he looked at me like this, I felt like the iceberg ready to be melt by this hotness.

"Caleb,I breathed, my hands sliding up his chest to rest on his heart. It was beating fast a rhythmic drum that matched my own. Why haven't you marked me yet? The pack... they whisper. They say if I were really yours, I would have carry your scent by now.

A flicker of something dark passed over his face guilt, or perhaps a memory but he masked it instantly with a smile. He leaned down, his lips ghosting over mine.

"Soon dear" i promised

He kissed me then, and the world dissolved. It wasn't just a kiss... it was a claim. It felt like electricity was being poured into my veins. This was feelings

that kept me tethered to him despite the holes in my memory. I was addicted to him. I was a plant turning toward the only light I knew.

The ceremony was a blur of high-stakes networking. I moved through the crowd with the grace Caleb had taught me speaking to rich CEOs and Pack Alphas with a confidence I can always feel.

Every time I felt overwhelmed I looked across the room and found him. He would always be watching me his gaze possessive and intense. It felt like protection. It felt like love.

But then, the "migraine" happened again.

I was standing by the balcony, taking a breath of the crisp night air, when a waiter walked by with a tray of drinks. A glass shattered on the marble floor.

CRACKkk.

The sound of a windshield splintering. The smell of smoke. The feeling of being trapped in a metal cage while the world tilted.

.

I gasped, clutching the stone railing so hard my knuckles turned white. My vision blurred. For a second, I wasn't at a ceremony, I was in the dirt, looking up at a dark figure standing over me.

"Ella? You’re doing it again.

I snapped back. Caleb was there, his hand firm on my elbow.

His face was a mask of concern, but his eyes were scanning the room to see if anyone had noticed my lapse.

"I’m fine, I lied, my heart racing. Just a loud noise. I thought I saw... someone.

"There is no one here but us, Caleb said, his voice dropping to that Alpha frequency soothing the jagged edges of the flashback.

"You are my Luna, he whispered, his thumb tracing my lower lip. "Everything else is just noise.

I nodded, leaning into him, letting his scent wash over me and drown out the smell of smoke. I was safe. I was loved. I was living the perfect life.

I didn't realize that the "noise" I was hearing wasn't a memory at all.

Babe!!!! “You are cold, he stated, though a feverish warmth was spreading from his touch. “And trembling. The night air is too sharp for you.

Without waiting for a reply, he guided me from the balcony, not back into the thrum of the gala, but through a concealed door disguised as paneling beside it. We entered a narrow, dimly lit corridor reserved for staff and, apparently, for Alphas seeking a moment of stolen silence.

The door clicked shut, muffling the orchestra to a distant hum. Here, there was only the sound of our breathing mine unsteady, his a low, controlled rhythm. He didn’t stop until my back met the cool, silk-covered wall, his body caging me in.

the column of my throat, over the frantic pulse at its base. Each kiss was a brand through the fabric, a promise of what was to come. My head fell back against the wall with a soft thud, my fingers tangling in the immaculate silk of his hair.

I want to feel it, I confessed, the words torn from me.

A low growl vibrated against my skin, a sound of pure Alpha satisfaction. “Patience is a form of torture, my Ella. And I am not a cruel man(Nicklaus mikealson)

His hands came up to frame my face, tilting it to meet his eyes. The hunger there was no longer a swirl.

His thumb brushed my lower lip again, but this time he followed it with his mouth. The kiss was not like the one in the dressing room that had been a claiming for an audience, even if only a mirrored one. This was a dissection. It was slow, deep, and devastatingly thorough. His tongue traced the seam of my lips until I opened for him with a gasp, and then he was exploring, tasting, mapping me as if memorizing a terrain he owned.

The biological pull wasn’t a bond now it was a anchor. It dragged under the last of my coherent thought, leaving only sensation. The hard plane of his chest against mine, the bunch of muscle in his shoulders beneath my hands, the intoxicating, clean-alpha scent of him sandalwood, frost, and something uniquely coalesced into a drug I was helpless to resist.

My hands slid from his hair, down the powerful line of his back and grabbing his butt , pulling him closer until not a whisper of air could pass between us. He broke the kiss, both of us breathing raggedly, and pressed his forehead to mine.

Do you feel that? he asked, his voice rough. He rocked his hips once, slowly, against mine, and I felt the hard, insistent proof of his desire. A sharp, answering ache bloomed deep within me.

He kissed me again, softer now, a brush of lips that was somehow more intimate than the deep exploration.

His hands left my face, sliding down my sides, over the curves of my hips, before gripping the rich fabric of my gown. With a deliberate slowness that was its own form of exquisite torment, he began to gather the skirt, the silk whispering as it slid upward, baring my legs to the cool air and the heat of his gaze.

Caleb, I breathed, a thread of uncertainty weaving through the haze of want. “Someone could…

No one will, he promised, his eyes locking on mine. The Alpha command in them was absolute, a barrier against the world. This corridor is mine. You are mine. And for tonight, this moment is ours.”

The hem of the dress pooled around my waist. His large, warm hands smoothed up the outside of my thighs, leaving trails of fire. He dropped to his knees before me, a sight so powerfully submissive and dominant at once that it stole the air from my lungs. In his bespoke tuxedo, on the floor of a service corridor, he was every bit the king and the supplicant.

Let me. he said, his breath hot against my inner thigh.

His mouth found the sensitive skin there, not with a bite, but with a slow, open-mouthed kiss that made my legs tremble with pleasure. He was tracing a path, a slow, maddening ascent, his stubble a delicious abrasion, his tongue a brand. My hands found his shoulders again, clinging as the world narrowed to the point where his lips met my skin, to the promise in his touch, to the roaring in my ears that was equal parts panic and primal need.

And in that stolen, shadowed corridor, as his lips danced ever closer to my core, I believed him completely. The graveyard of the past was silent. There was only Caleb, and the gilded, perfect future he was building for us, one searing kiss at a time

Caleb, please,” I gasped, the word less a request and more a raw exhalation of need.

His answer was a low, vibrating hum against the lace of my panties, the sensation so intense my knees buckled. His hands, strong and sure on my hips, held me steady against the wall. He didn’t tear the delicate fabric away, but instead used his mouth, his teeth, to trace the edge, to dampen it, a torturous preview that had me writhing.

Always so desperate for me, he murmured, the words a hot caress against my core. “Your body remembers what your mind tries to forget. It sings for its Alpha.

With a final, sharp tug of his teeth, the lace gave way. The cool air hit me for a fraction of a second before his mouth was on me, hot, wet, and devastatingly precise. My head thumped back against the wall, a strangled cry escaping my lips. His tongue was an artist of relentless pleasure, finding a rhythm that was both claiming and worshipful. One hand remained anchored on my hip, fingers digging into my p***y which is a wet and dripping already , a possessive brand, while the other slid up my torso, his thumb finding and circling a taut peak through the emerald silk of my bodice.

The dual assault shattered me. The pleasure was a cresting wave, building with every flick of his tongue, every rasp of his stubble on my sensitive skin. I was a live wire, every nerve ending screaming his name. The distant music, the muffled chatter from the ceremony, all of it was consumed by the roaring in my ears, by the ragged sound of my own breathing and the soft, hungry sounds he made against me.

Caleb… I’m going to… The warning was a broken whisper.

His grip tightened, his mouth became more insistent, and he drank my release as I came apart, my body convulsing against his mouth, my cries muffled by my own hand as I bit down on my knuckles. He gentled his touch, soothing me through the aftershocks with soft kisses on my trembling inner thighs, but the fire in his eyes when he looked up at me was undiminished.

He didn’t speak. He simply turned me, gently but firmly, so I faced the wall, my hands splaying against the silk-covered surface. His body covered mine, his heat searing through our clothes. One arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me back into the hard line of his body, while his other hand gathered the ruined skirt of my gown again.

“I need to be inside you, he growled into my ear, his voice thick with a need that bordered on pain. “Now. Tell me you need it too. Tell me you need your alpha c**k.

“Yes, I panted, pushing back against him, my own need a wild, untamed thing. “Please, Caleb. Now.”

He fumbled with his trousers for only a moment, a rough, hurried sound, and then he brings it out. Huge,veiny a little bit curvy with a nice pink cap. The sight of it makes me want him more and made me wet.

You like it??? He said as he tap it on my p***y.

Yes I like it!! I moaned out, give it to me now celeb.

I felt him, hard and insistent, at my entrance. There was no more gentleness, no more torturous delay. With a single, powerful thrust, he sheathed himself fully within me.

Fuck!!!, the cry that tore from my throat was one of pure, unadulterated relief. He filled the hollow, the ache, the phantom space that had haunted me. He was a perfect, burning fit. For a heartbeat, he was still, buried deep, his forehead resting against my nape, his breath ragged in my hair.

“Mine, he breathed, the word a vow and a curse.

Then he began to move.

It was not the slow, luxurious pace of a lover in a bed. This was a claiming against a wall, fueled by primal need and the relentless pull of the bond. Each thrust was deep, purposeful, driving me into the wall and then pulling me back onto him. The sound of our bodies meeting, the rustle of silk and the low growls in his throat, filled the secret corridor.

Every nerve he had already sensitized sang again, a new, deeper crescendo building at the core of me. His hand slid from my waist, over the flat of my stomach, down to where our bodies joined, his fingers finding the swollen, aching knot of my pleasure. The touch, combined with his relentless pace, was too much.

Then he grab my breast pressing it roughly and it seems to give him more pleasure.

“Caleb!” I sobbed, my vision whiting out as a second, more violent climax ripped through me. My c******s clenched around him, milking him, pulling him deeper.

With a final, guttural roar that was muffled against my shoulder, he followed me over the edge, his own release pulsing hot within me, his body shuddering as he held me pinned between himself and the wall.

For long minutes, there was only the sound of our heaving breaths, the faint drift of music from another world. He stayed buried within me, his weight a comforting anchor, his lips pressing soft, almost reverent kisses to my shoulder, my neck.

Slowly, carefully, he withdrew, turning me in his arms to face him. He looked wrecked his hair disheveled, my lipstick smudged on his mouth, his eyes dark with satiation and something fiercer. He tenderly rearranged my dress, his fingers lingering on the torn lace he’d created.

“See?” he whispered, tucking a damp strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb brushed my swollen lips. “No mark on your neck yet. But you are marked, Ella. Every part of you. It’s in your scent now, in your skin, in your bones. You carry me.”

He kissed me, deep and slow, a seal on his words. And as I melted into him, the ghost of the flashback, the sound of shattering glass, felt like a distant, irrelevant dream. In this moment, marked by him in this most intimate way.