"Since you're so audacious in that modern world of yours, freak... Let's see if you can remain just as mocking when a wolf's teeth graze that honey pot of yours."
His authority, his honor, and that primal jealousy boiling in his veins knotted into a single point. He seized my shoulders like talons ,he slammed my back against the stone wall behind me with such force that the air escaped my lungs in a silent plea. His eyes were no longer just coal-black within them danced the crimson halos of pure madness.
"Who were your hands there for before me!" he roared.
His voice was powerful enough to crack the very plaster on the walls. The Alpha Voice this time was not a command, but the first and last cry of a monster whose soul was being torn apart.
"Answer me! What other shadow have you enthroned in that mind, in that bed, besides me, freak!"
His uncontrolled explosion—the way that unshakable titan melted and reshaped like wax between my fingers—gave me a toxic sense of power. I locked my eyes onto his burning irises. There was no longer a trace of fear in me, nor simple mockery. Only a resolve carved from ice.
"I will mark with you, Varg." I said. My voice sliced through the chaos in the room like a sharpened razor. "Tonight, right now... I will place the links of that invisible chain around my neck into your palms."
Varg went rigid at this confession. His hands were still on my shoulders, but the searing rage in his fingers gave way to a cold astonishment.
"On one condition." I continued, without so much as a blink.
"Save my friends. Drag them out from the womb of that bloody hell. If you bring Chloe, Melanie, and Dominic back to me safe and sound, my soul shall be your property, my body the slave to your mark. You can eat as much honey as you want, Alpha... The hive will be yours, and so will the fire."
The growl rising from Varg's throat no longer belonged to a wolf, but to a demon starved for centuries. He pinned me against the wall with such ferocity that the bone stays of my wedding dress stabbed into my skin like knives. His fingers gripped my chin like a vise, forcing my face upward into his darkness.
His lava-spewing eyes scanned every curve of my lips as if he wanted to burn and turn them into ash forever.
"Save my friends..." I said. My voice was trembling, but not from weakness—it was a shudder caused by the abyssal heat radiating from his skin. "I will be marked by you, Alpha of Alphas..."
Varg paused abruptly. A dark, almost sacred lust appeared on his face—a look I had never encountered in any mirror before. He buried his nose into that most sensitive hollow of my neck, right over the jugular where life pulsed like a drum. He whispered as he let out hot, ragged, and possessive breaths against my skin.
"So you'll be marked..." Every word felt like it was branding my flesh.
"Are you making this bargain with me while nursing the ghosts of other men in your mind, Vespera? When you offer your neck to me, will the cold hands of that porcelain prince be in your thoughts? Or the scent of that imaginary stranger you met on the streets?"
Suddenly, I felt his teeth right over my marking spot, on that thin line where the skin could bleed.
He didn't bite... but that pressure set every nerve ending in my brain ablaze.
"A mark only makes you a slave to me, Vespera. I don't want a mark. I want your soul." Varg whispered, his lips bathed in the heat of my skin.
"But I want to ruin you tonight. I want to uproot those fantasies that make you dip your fingers into your honey pot with my own hands. No other shadow will ever slip into that mind again. I will be the only temple there."
He slid his hand harshly down from my waist toward my hip and pulled me against him with such savagery that even the silk fabrics between us felt like insurmountable fortress walls.
"I will save your stupid human friends." he said. His voice was no longer the authority of an Alpha, but the rawest, bloodiest promise of a man.
"But when I return, I won't be the one carving that mark onto your neck.You will beg on your knees in the middle of that bed just to belong to me.You will set fire to every man, every innocent dream in your mind with your own hands."
When he suddenly let go of me, the room turned as cold as a grave with the withdrawal of that immense heat. Varg walked to the door without looking back. Just as he was about to leave, he stopped and fixed those lava-colored eyes on my soul over his shoulder.
"A word of advice... keep those fingers away from yourself until I return. Because that stranger you imagined is mine now. And I cannot tolerate the trace of anyone else on my property."
That spot on my neck-unbitten but aching as if marked-was burning like a live coal.
"Oh ,Varg." I said. I kept my voice as sweet and smooth as a hidden poison within a glass of vintage wine. "You rain down commands on me, but you're forgetting one small detail..."
Varg went stiff as if caught by an invisible electric current. Slowly, he turned back to me, the tension in his shoulders threatening to tear his shirt. The feral hunger in his gaze wanted to seal every curve of my lips with his own signature.
With slow steps, dragging the soiled skirts of my wedding dress on the floor like a funeral shroud, I approached him. I didn't stop until there were only inches and breaths between us.
I tilted my head slightly to the side, offering him that still-aching, virginal marking spot like a sacrifice.
"You can burn the dreams in my mind, you can place bans on my fingers..." I whispered, my breath breaking against his rough, stubbled jaw.
"But what about the experiences? That first kiss stolen in a dim high school hallway by someone much kinder, much more gentle than you... By what power will you take that back from my memory, Alpha? How will you tear that from my soul?"
Varg's pupils turned into a pitch-black abyss, like fresh blood dripping onto pure white snow. The deep-seated growl rising from his chest made the chandeliers vibrate. He let go of the door and gripped my waist with such ferocity that my feet left the ground, trapping me against his massive frame.
When he pinned me against the door, the groan of the wood echoed within my very bones.
"Who was he!" Varg hissed. His voice was no longer that of a man, but the wrath of a god whose world was collapsing. "Tell me his name! Tell me who touched those lips so that tonight, I may turn the world into a hell not just for the vampires, but for the very ground that man walks upon!"
I looked into his eyes defiantly, almost pityingly. I ran my fingers slowly over his broad, war-weary chest covered in scars.
"By the time you reach him, it might be too late," I said, fanning the flames to turn him into a complete executioner.
"Now go, Varg... Go and pull my friends out of that hell. Because if Chloe and the others don't return, I'll have a very grand, very justified excuse to run to the ghost of the man who owns that kiss."
Varg's jaw went as rigid as marble. He was fighting a monumental battle of will to keep his lips from touching mine but his breath was searing enough to erase the trace of that first kiss forever.
"Tonight..." Varg said. Every word felt like a vow, making my skin tremble. "Tonight, I will burn that fortress not just to save your friends, but to turn your past into ashes, Vespera. And when I return..."
He suddenly buried his head into my neck and, not with his teeth, but with his lips, he suckled that marking spot with such hiddet that I felt my soul being drawn from my very veins.
"Oh! S-Stop."
"When I return, I will allow no other trace to remain on your body but mine, no other name to breathe in your mind but mine. Prepare yourself, my Luna... For tonight's only hunt will be you."
Varg left the room like a storm, just as he had let go of me. As the terrifying, revenge-filledhowls of the wolves outside filled the room, I looked at my stranger reflection in the mirror. There was a crimson trace on my neck, deeper than any mark and in my eyes, a fire was beginning to awaken.
If he was using me as his key, I would make him the pawn and the knight of this bloody war.
I would drag my friends out of that darkness and leave every single piece of this madness behind me.
I would build a brand new life in places where no one whispered my name, where pasts and prophecies fell silent.
I would live this life only by my own rules, in my own way.