Chapter 165: How did you meet?
"Explain to me again why we are letting a stranger watch our little spark when I could simply secure him to my chest in a tactical harness and carry him to this... 'bistro'?"
Rayder stood in front of the full-length mirror in our penthouse master suite, looking thoroughly bewildered by the concept of a silk necktie. He had discarded his usual combat gear and heavy leather vests for a tailored, midnight-blue human suit that Elias had practically forced upon him before leaving.
The fabric clung to his massive, sweeping shoulders and broad chest like a second skin, making him look less like a wild warlord of the southern plains and more like a devastatingly dangerous tech mogul.
I leaned against the marble bathroom counter, adjusting the straps of a sleek, emerald-green silk dress that felt entirely foreign against my skin. For four years, my uniform had been mud, blood, and the heavy leather wraps of Cyrus. Feeling the cool, fluid slide of silk against my thighs was almost dizzying.
"Because, Alpha," I said, a small, amused smirk tugging at my lips as I walked over to him, gently batting his massive, scarred hands away from the ruined knot of his tie, "human dating requires a concept called privacy. It means we do not bring a toddler who can chew through a solid oak table with his newborn Lycan fangs to a candlelight dinner. And Miss Eleanor isn't a stranger. She’s a certified, high-tier Southern pack nurse who survived three border skirmishes. If Winter tries to bite her, she knows exactly which pressure points to press to make him let go."
Rayder let out a low, rumbling groan deep in his chest, a vibration that I felt right through the soles of my heels as his large hands settled instinctively onto my waist.
"A wolf does not understand reservations, Selene. If I want to court my spouse, my instinct is to hunt a pristine mountain stag, lay it at your feet, and watch you tear into it under the full moon."
"And while I appreciate the sentiment of a dead animal, Rayder," I laughed, my fingers nimbly correcting his tie into a perfect, crisp Windsor knot, "tonight, you are going to learn the human ways. You are going to open the car door for me. You are going to sit across a small wooden table, look into my eyes without discussing troop movements or supply lines, and listen to jazz music while a human waiter brings us over-priced pasta."
Rayder leaned down, his golden eyes burning with a sudden, heavy intensity that chased away all the humor in the room. His lips brushed against the column of my throat, his scent—pure cedar, rain, and raw alpha dominance—completely clouding my senses. "If that is the law of the human date, Luna... I will play the gentleman. But the moment we get back to this penthouse, the human rules are canceled."
My heart fluttered, a warm, electric shockwave traveling straight down my spine. I pushed against his chest with a soft laugh, though my skin felt flushed beneath the silk. "Deal. Now go tell your son goodbye before he convinces Miss Eleanor to let him paint the living room with imported juice."
For the first time since we had met,since the blood-soaked day he pulled my disguise apart in the Northern frost,we weren't running. We weren't counting ammunition. We had actually employed a nanny. And as we walked down the penthouse steps together, my hand locked firmly in his, the heavy, suffocating winter of our lives felt like it was finally melting away into something beautiful.
The transition of the North into a modern, integrated administrative state had brought many things—high-speed fiber optics, automated greenhouses, and steel-structured buildings. But it had also brought something we were entirely unprepared for: the human media.
The moment the grand-tourer slid to a halt in front of the newly opened downtown plaza, the quiet, romantic bubble we had built inside the car exploded into a chaotic sea of blinding white light.
"Alpha Rayder! Luna Selene! Over here!"
"A picture for the Territorial Chronicle, please!"
Dozens of journalists, pack reporters, and human correspondents pressed against the velvet security ropes, their cameras clicking in a frantic, mechanical rhythm that sounded like a swarm of locusts. Beyond the press line, hundreds of ordinary citizens—both Northern wolves in modern clothing and Southern merchants who had moved up for the trade boom—lined the sidewalks.
The moment my heel hit the pavement, a massive, thunderous roar shook the surrounding glass towers.
"ALPHA! LUNA! THE SPARKS OF THE ALLIANCE!"
The chant was rhythmic, deafening, and filled with a raw, emotional adulation that made my breath catch in my throat. They weren't cheering for a tyrant who ruled through fear. They were cheering for the stability we had bled to give them.
True to his word, Rayder played the perfect human gentleman. He kept his massive body positioned between me and the aggressive flashbulbs, his large hand resting protectively against the small of my back as he guided me through the crowd. But the reporters were relentless, thrusting microphones over the security barrier like silver spears.
"Luna Selene! The public is dying to know—how did the ruthless assassin Cyrus truly capture the heart of the Southern Alpha?" a young human journalist screamed over the din, her eyes wide with the frantic energy of a tabloid writer. "Was it love at first sight, or did the romance blossom during the siege of the western sector?"
Rayder paused, a wicked, blindingly handsome grin breaking across his rugged face as he looked down at the microphone, then up at me. "I can assure you, it was absolutely not love at first sight," his deep voice boomed, sending a collective titter of laughter through the press corp. "The first time we met, she tried to drive a silver dagger through my ribs, and I threw her into a reinforced steel holding cell. It was an incredibly traditional courtship."
"And the first time he tried to speak to me," I added, leaning into the microphone with a sharp, sparkling laugh that felt entirely lighthearted, "he told me I smelled like a rogue spy and threatened to have his vanguard strip my armor. We really skipped the flowers and went straight to the property damage."
"But how did you know?" another reporter shouted, a pack wolf from the old Redmoon sectors. "When did you realize she was the true Thatcher line, Alpha?"
Rayder’s grin softened, his golden eyes turning back to look at me with a warmth so profound, so entirely genuine, that the surrounding cameras seemed to fade into a blur of meaningless white noise. He reached down, his large fingers tangling with mine publicly, letting every lens capture the absolute devotion in his grip.
"I knew the moment I realized that no matter how dark the room was, my wolf couldn't breathe unless she was in it," Rayder murmured, his voice dropping into a quiet, romantic register that the microphones barely caught, though the crowd let out a collective, emotional sigh. "She didn't just take back the North, she took the wild out of the South. We didn't fall in love during a siege—we built the peace so we could finally have the time to look at each other."