Chapter 136 Bonus Scene 2

Chapter 136 Bonus Scene 2

The Night After Returning from Aphrodite’s Pack

The estate was too quiet.

I stood at the bedroom window with my arms crossed, watching the dark stretch of trees beyond the training fields. A few days had passed since we returned from my old territory, since I had forced Ekon into Valdus’s life like a blade pressed to his throat. The house still carried the scent of unfamiliar wolves and unsettled nerves. Down the hall, Ekon’s door remained closed. He had barely spoken to either of us since the introduction.

Behind me, the shower cut off.

I didn’t turn when the bathroom door opened. I heard the soft sound of a towel being dragged across skin, then the heavier steps of bare feet on the floorboards. Valdus’s presence filled the room the way it always did—thick, watchful, impossible to ignore.

“You’re still angry,” he said.

My jaw tightened. “I’m not angry.”

“You’re standing there like you want to put your fist through the glass.”

I finally turned. He wore only a pair of dark sweatpants hanging low on his hips. Water still clung to his collarbones and the ridges of his abdomen. The scars across his chest looked darker in the low light. His hazel eyes moved over my face, reading every tight line.

“I forced him on you,” I said. The words came out flatter than I intended. “I saw the look on your face when I introduced you. You hated it. You still hate it.”

Valdus leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door and crossed his arms. “I told you I don’t like him.”

“You barely looked at him.”

“I looked long enough.”

The anger I had been swallowing for days rose fast and sharp. “He’s a child, Valdus. A child I raised. And I dragged him into a pack that already looks at me like I’m the reason everything went wrong. You could have at least pretended—”

“I don’t pretend.” His voice stayed low, but the edge in it was unmistakable. “I told you from the beginning I had a bad feeling about him. My wolf still does. That hasn’t changed just because you want it to.”

I took a step toward him. “So what am I supposed to do? Leave him there? Let him grow up without any claim to either of our packs? You said you would take care of him.”

“I will.” He pushed off the wall. “I’ll train him. I’ll protect him. I’ll make sure the pack respects the position you’re giving him. But I will not stand here and lie to you about liking the boy. I don’t. I look at him and something in me recoils. Maybe it’s the fact that he isn’t mine. Maybe it’s something else. I don’t know yet. But I’m still here. I’m still trying.”

The honesty in his voice only made the guilt cut deeper. I had seen the way his shoulders locked when Ekon said “hi.” I had felt the cold distance rolling off him. And still I had pushed.

“I hate that I need this from you,” I said, quieter now. “I hate that I can’t give you a pup of your own and now I’m asking you to raise someone else’s.”

Valdus’s expression shifted. Something raw moved behind his eyes. He closed the remaining distance between us until I had to tip my head back to hold his gaze.

“You think I don’t know what you’re carrying?” he asked. “You think I don’t see it every time you go quiet? Every time you look at your stomach like it’s a grave?” His hand rose, hovering near my waist but not touching. “I know what I did to you. I know what I took. And I know you’re trying to fix a future that no longer exists by giving me someone else’s child.”

My throat tightened. “Then why does it still feel like I’m the only one bending?”

“Because you’re the one who still believes things can be repaired.” His voice dropped. “I stopped believing that a long time ago. I just keep moving forward anyway.”

The words landed harder than I expected. For a moment neither of us spoke. The only sound was the low hum of the night outside and the uneven rhythm of our breathing.

Then Valdus exhaled and looked away. “I don’t want to fight with you tonight.”

“Too late.”

His eyes snapped back to mine. The gold was starting to bleed into the hazel. “You want a fight, Aphrodite? Or do you want something else?”

The question hung between us, heavy and charged. My pulse kicked hard against my ribs. I hated how easily he could turn the air like this—how quickly anger could slide into something hotter and more dangerous.

“I want you to stop looking at me like I’m a problem you have to solve,” I said.

“I don’t look at you like a problem.” He stepped closer still. His chest nearly brushed mine. “I look at you like the only thing that ever made me want to be better than what I was raised to be. And it pisses me off that even now I can’t seem to get it right.”

I shoved at his chest. He barely moved. “Don’t say things like that when you’re still cold to the boy I brought here.”

His hand caught my wrist and held it against his sternum. I could feel the steady, powerful beat of his heart. “I’m not cold to you.”

The last word came out rough. Before I could answer, he pulled me forward and crushed his mouth against mine.

There was nothing gentle in it. The kiss was all teeth and frustration and the sharp edge of everything we hadn’t said. I bit his lower lip hard enough to draw a growl from his throat. His free hand fisted in my hair and tugged my head back, deepening the angle until I could barely breathe.

When he finally pulled away, both of us were breathing hard.

“Still angry?” he asked, voice low.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

He walked me backward until the backs of my knees hit the bed. I went down and he followed, bracing his weight on his forearms so he wouldn’t crush me. His mouth found my throat, then the old mark that still flared hot whenever he touched it. I arched under him, fingers digging into the hard muscle of his shoulders.

He dragged my shirt up and off in one motion. The cool air of the room kissed my skin a second before his mouth did. He closed his lips around one nipple and sucked hard, the pull sharp enough to make me gasp. His hand shoved my sleep shorts down my hips. I kicked them the rest of the way off while he did the same with his own pants.

When he settled between my thighs there was no slow build, no careful checking. He pushed into me in one deep, claiming thrust that forced a broken sound from my throat. The stretch burned in the best way. I locked my legs around his waist and pulled him deeper.

Valdus’s forehead dropped against mine. For a second he held still, breathing like he’d been underwater too long. Then he started to move.

The pace was relentless. Each thrust drove me higher up the mattress. The headboard knocked softly against the wall. I met him stroke for stroke, nails raking down his back hard enough to leave marks. He growled against my neck and bit down on the mark again, not hard enough to re-mark, but hard enough to send pure heat flooding through the bond.

“You drive me insane,” he rasped. “You always have.”

I turned my head and caught his mouth in another rough kiss. “Then stop holding back.”

Something in him snapped.

He hooked one of my legs higher over his arm and drove into me harder, deeper, the angle so precise that every thrust dragged against the place that made my vision white out. The tension coiled fast and vicious at the base of my spine. I clung to him, forehead pressed to his shoulder, breathing his name like it was the only word I still knew.

When I came it tore through me in hard, shaking waves. Valdus followed almost immediately, burying himself to the hilt with a low, guttural sound and spilling inside me. His whole body shuddered once, then again, before he finally collapsed forward, careful even now to keep most of his weight on his forearms.

For a long time the only sound in the room was our uneven breathing.

Eventually he rolled onto his side and pulled me with him, still half-joined, one heavy thigh draped over both of mine. His fingers traced slow, absent patterns along the scars on my stomach. I hated how much I still needed that touch.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted into the quiet. “Any of it. Being someone’s mate. Raising a child that isn’t ours. Trying to build something that doesn’t end in blood.”

Valdus’s hand stilled. “Neither do I.”

I lifted my head enough to look at him. In the dim light his eyes were clear again, the gold gone. He looked tired. Older than he had any right to look.

“We’re both still broken,” he said. “That hasn’t changed. I still wake up some nights ready to destroy whatever’s closest. You still carry every failure like it’s carved into your bones. But I’m here. You’re here. And somehow we keep choosing this instead of walking away.”

I let my head drop back against his chest. His heartbeat was strong and steady under my ear.

“I hate that I need you,” I whispered.

His arms tightened around me. “I know. I hate it too.”

Outside, the pack settled deeper into the night. Somewhere down the hall a ten-year-old boy slept in a room that still didn’t quite feel like his. The future remained uncertain, sharp-edged, and unfinished.

But for this one hour, in this quiet room that smelled of sex and skin and the lingering scent of forest, we were simply two broken people who had nowhere else to go.

And for now, that was enough.