Chapter 137 Bonus Scene 3

Chapter 137 Bonus Scene 3

The Night After Valdus Dominated Ekon

He was too quiet.

From the moment the warriors returned and Ekon walked past us with his head down, Valdus had barely spoken. He gave me the short answers—“Fine.” “He did fine.” “Yes.”—and then the house swallowed him. By the time I finished speaking with the remaining patrol leaders and climbed the stairs, the bedroom door was already closed.

I pushed it open without knocking.

Valdus stood at the window with his back to me, shirt discarded, sweatpants hanging low on his hips. The muscles along his shoulders were locked tight. Moonlight cut across the scars on his back. He didn’t turn when I entered. He didn’t even shift his weight.

I closed the door softly behind me.

“You’re replaying it,” I said.

His voice came out low and rough. “He challenged me. In front of everyone. After I pulled him off the Alpha.”

I stayed near the door, giving him space he clearly needed and clearly hated needing. “You put him down.”

“I put him down the way my father used to put me down.” The words sounded like they scraped his throat on the way out. “Same pressure on the jaw. Same weight on the ribs. Same warning growl until the neck tilted in submission. I didn’t even think about it. My body just knew what to do.”

I crossed the room slowly and stopped a few feet behind him. The bond between us thrummed with something dark and restless.

“You were restoring order,” I said carefully. “He showed disrespect in front of the pack. You corrected it.”

Valdus let out a short, humorless breath. “That’s what Alcander used to say too.”

The name landed between us like a stone. I watched the way his hands curled into fists against the windowsill.

“I looked at Ekon on the ground and for a second I didn’t see a fifteen-year-old boy I promised to raise,” he continued. “I saw a threat. A future problem. Something that needed to be broken in early so it wouldn’t challenge me later. That’s his voice in my head, Aphrodite. That’s his way of thinking. And it felt natural.”

I stepped closer until I could see his reflection faintly in the glass. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, the gold flickering in and out like a failing flame.

“You’re not him,” I said.

“I used the exact same hold.”

“You’re not him.”

He finally turned. The expression on his face was stripped raw. There was no Alpha mask, no controlled coldness—only a man who had caught himself becoming the thing he hated most.

“I enjoyed the submission,” he admitted, voice barely above a whisper. “Just for a second. When his neck tilted and the fight left him. There was this… quiet satisfaction. And then I hated myself for it so hard I could barely lead the pack home.”

I reached up and placed both hands on either side of his face. His skin was hot. A muscle jumped under my palm.

“Look at me.”

He did. The gold had receded, leaving the hazel clear and exhausted.

“You stopped,” I said. “You corrected the challenge and you stopped. You didn’t break him for pleasure. You didn’t keep going until something inside him stayed damaged. That is the difference. Alcander never stopped.”

Valdus’s hands came up and closed around my wrists, not pulling them away, just holding on. “What if the difference gets smaller every time? What if one day I don’t notice the line anymore?”

“Then I’ll notice it for you,” I said. “And I’ll drag you back across it the same way I’ve done before.”

Something in his expression cracked. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against mine. His breath was uneven.

“I keep seeing it,” he muttered. “The way he looked at me after. There was fear, but underneath it there was also calculation. Like he was already measuring how long he would have to wait before he tried again. And part of me wanted to make sure he never got the chance.”

I slid my hands from his face to the back of his neck, fingers pushing into his hair. “You’re allowed to be afraid of what you might become. But you don’t get to decide you’re already him. Not while I’m standing here.”

His mouth found mine without warning.

The kiss was hard, almost punishing, full of every ugly thing he had just confessed. I met it with equal force. Teeth clicked. His hands dropped to my waist and yanked me against him so tightly the air left my lungs. I could feel the tension still vibrating through his body—violence with nowhere left to go except into me.

He walked me backward until my spine hit the wall. One of his thighs shoved between mine. His mouth moved to my jaw, my throat, the old mark that flared hot the second his teeth grazed it. I arched against him, fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave crescents.

“I need—” he started, then cut himself off with a growl.

“I know,” I breathed.

He spun me around and pressed my chest to the wall. His hands dragged my shirt up and over my head in one motion. The cool air hit my skin a second before his mouth did—open, hungry, moving down the side of my neck while his palms slid up my stomach and cupped my breasts. He pinched both nipples at the same time, sharp enough to make me gasp, then soothed the sting with slower strokes of his thumbs.

I pushed back against him, feeling how hard he already was. He made a low sound and shoved my sleep shorts down. I stepped out of them. His own pants followed. When he lined himself up and pushed into me in one deep thrust, the stretch forced a broken noise from my throat that he immediately swallowed with another kiss over my shoulder.

There was no slow rhythm this time.

Valdus fucked me like he was trying to outrun the version of himself he had seen in Ekon’s eyes. Each thrust was deep, almost brutal, the sound of skin meeting skin loud in the quiet room. One of his hands stayed braced on the wall beside my head; the other gripped my hip hard enough to bruise. I pushed back to meet him, chasing the same desperate erasure.

“You’re mine,” he rasped against my ear. “Not because of a bond. Because you keep choosing the worst parts of me and refusing to let them win.”

“Then stop trying to become him,” I managed between breaths. “Stay here. With me.”

His pace faltered for half a second, then grew even harder. The angle changed. Every stroke dragged against the place that made my vision spark white. The tension built fast and vicious. I came with my forehead pressed to the wall, a choked cry leaving me as my body clamped down around him. Valdus followed almost immediately, burying himself to the hilt and spilling inside me with a low, wrecked sound that sounded more like pain than pleasure.

We stayed locked together, both of us shaking, his chest heaving against my back.

After a long time he pulled out carefully and turned me to face him. His hands framed my face again. There was still darkness in his eyes, but it no longer looked like it was trying to swallow him whole.

“I don’t know how many times I’ll have to fight this,” he said quietly.

“As many as it takes,” I answered. “I’ll still be here.”

He kissed me again—slower this time, almost reverent—and then lifted me. I wrapped my legs around his waist as he carried me to the bed. We lay down facing each other in the dark. His fingers traced the marks he had left on my hip, then the older scars on my stomach, then the line of my collarbone.

Outside, the pack slept under a moon that had seen too many Alphas become monsters.

Inside, Valdus pulled me closer until there was no space left between us, and for a little while the fear of what he might become was quieter than the sound of two broken people choosing each other again.