Chapter Five – Blood Ties
799 Words
The bond pulsed like a hidden flame.
Damian sat at the head of the long conference table in Blackthorn Tower, his wolves gathered around him. The city sprawled through the glass windows behind him, but his focus was elsewhere—on the faint hum beneath his skin, the pull that hadn’t left him since Selene’s bite.
It was maddening.
Every instinct screamed to bury it, to deny it. He was Alpha. He couldn’t afford weakness. Yet no matter how tightly he locked down his control, the memory of her lingered: her mouth at his throat, her body pressed against his, her hunger sinking into him until it became his own.
Marcus’s voice cut through the haze. “We can’t ignore this, Damian.”
Damian’s gaze snapped up. His beta’s arms were folded, eyes sharp, the other lieutenants shifting uneasily in their seats.
“She fed on you,” Marcus pressed. “That means something. Bonds like that—they don’t just vanish. She’s tethered to you now. And if the Court knows—”
“They don’t,” Damian growled.
“Not yet.”
The words hung heavy.
One of the younger wolves, Luca, cleared his throat nervously. “So, uh… do we, like, have to call her Luna now? ‘Cause I feel like that would make Thanksgiving really awkward.”
A few chuckles rippled around the table. Damian’s glare silenced them instantly.
“This isn’t a joke,” Marcus snapped, though his lips twitched despite himself.
“Maybe it should be,” Luca muttered under his breath. “Vampire girlfriend? Sounds like the start of a bad rom-com.”
“Luca,” Damian said, his voice smooth as glass.
“Yes, Alpha?”
“Shut up.”
Luca shut up.
⸻
Across the city, Selene was no better off.
She sat in front of her vanity mirror, staring at her reflection like it was someone else’s face. Her skin glowed faintly, her lips fuller, her eyes brighter red. Damian’s blood still coursed through her, its wild energy changing her in ways she didn’t want to name.
The High Court’s message buzzed on her phone again.
Status?
Her fingers hovered over the keys. She should report the truth—that she had bitten him, that she was closer than ever. But the thought of admitting it to them felt wrong, almost… private. As if what had happened belonged only to her and Damian.
Ridiculous. Dangerous.
Still, she typed carefully:
The Alpha is resisting. Trust will take more time.
The reply was instant, cold.
You are not to delay. Bond him. Control him. Break him. Or we will send another.
Selene’s fangs bared at the threat, unbidden. Another? The thought of anyone else touching him, sinking their teeth into him, made her chest burn. She didn’t like that feeling. She didn’t want to examine it.
She threw the phone across the room, shattering it against the wall.
“Damn it,” she whispered, gripping the edge of the vanity until the wood cracked beneath her fingers.
She was supposed to be in control. She had spent a century mastering herself, surviving on wit and hunger, bending to no one. Yet one night with Damian Blackthorn and she was unraveling.
Worse—she wasn’t sure she wanted to stop.
⸻
That night, as if pulled by invisible strings, Selene found herself at Blackthorn Tower again.
The rooftop garden was empty, the air thick with summer heat. She told herself she had come for strategy, for leverage, to push the bond further. But when Damian stepped out of the shadows, his golden eyes already locked on hers, all her careful lies dissolved.
“You shouldn’t keep coming here,” he said.
“And yet,” she murmured, “I do.”
His jaw flexed. “You’re playing with fire.”
“So are you.”
For a long moment, silence stretched, thick with everything unspoken. Then Damian stepped closer, slow, deliberate, until his heat brushed hers.
“You bit me,” he said.
Her lips curved. “And you let me.”
The air between them throbbed with memory. Selene’s hunger rose sharp again, her fangs aching, her body betraying her with every shallow breath. Damian’s wolf snarled, the bond pulling taut like a chain between them.
“Tell me you regret it,” she whispered, though her voice shook.
Damian’s gaze burned gold. “I can’t.”
Selene’s laugh was broken, breathless. “Then we’re both damned.”
The truth of it hit them both at once.
The bond wasn’t just hunger. It wasn’t just lust. It was something far more dangerous. Something neither of them could undo.
And somewhere deep inside, beneath the hunger and the fear, Selene realized the most terrifying truth of all.
She didn’t want to.
- Writer
