{EMBER}
Every night, Lorcan took me—claimed me—used my body as though it were a balm for wounds I did not inflict.
He touched me like I was his, breathed against my skin like a man drowning, desperate for air. But beneath every thrust, every shudder, every whispered groan, I heard the truth he tried so hard to bury.
He wasn't seeking me.
He was chasing the shadow of someone else.
There were moments—brief, unguarded, razor-sharp—when he would gasp her name into my neck, a single fractured syllable torn from the depths of memory.
Iris.
He always pretended he hadn't said it. And I pretended it didn't carve into me like a blade.
But his wolf told a different story. It never accepted me—never marked me—never even tried. The creature inside him recoiled from me, as mine did from him.
My wolf refused to bare her neck to another, refused to recognize a mate that fate had not chosen.
None of it mattered.
