She stood before her mirror, silk falling over her curves like armor disguised as elegance. Red velvet lined with Midnight-purple shimmer, off-shoulder, daring enough to disarm but regal enough to remind senators and CEOs alike who they were dealing with.

She had dressed in power a thousand times before. Tonight felt different.

Because he was here.

The name thrummed through her like an ache she had sworn to bury. He had returned not as the reckless wolf who once promised her forever, but as a man whose absence had gutted her, whose choice to walk away had left scars she had folded into her empire. And now, whispers said he was in the city. In her orbit. In her path.

She tightened the diamond clasp at her throat and reminded herself: she was Vespera Stark. Alpha. CEO. Billionaire. A woman who turned betrayal into an empire.

But no wealth or empire could Relinquish the anxiety in her. Out of site on the balcony, two floors below, he watched her reflection in the glass. He hated himself for doing it...For letting his gaze linger on the striking angle of her shoulders, the curve of her neck, the fire that had never dimmed in her presence.

He had promised himself distance. He had promised Luna, their daughter, safety.

And yet here he was, standing face-to-face with the woman who choose power over them.

Vespera Stark had become untouchable. She bent senators with a smile, bent fortune with her will. But Eitan knew the woman behind the armor. The girl who once laughed with her shoes off in moonlit fields, whose lips had tasted of wild strawberries, whose whisper of “always” had cracked when she turned away.

His fists tightened against the railing. He should despise her. He should remember every wound she dealt him. But when she turned slightly, and the city lights caught in her eyes like stars trapped in glass, his heart betrayed him.

Always had.

Always would.

The gala burned with chandeliers and murmured ambition. Senators in tuxedos. Heiresses dripping pearls. Smiles sharpened into knives.

She swept through them like a storm cloaked in silk, every step measured, every nod a calculation. Tonight she would secure Senator Gabriel ’s support for a land-use bill that would expand “wildlife protection zones” in truth, sanctuaries for her pack. A triumph written in the fine print of politics.

But beneath her calm exterior, her skin prickled. She could feel him here. Somewhere. Watching.

And then she caught his scent.

Leather. Smoke. Wolf.

Her pulse stumbled. She turned, and there he was.

Time collapsed.

He hadn’t meant to approach her. He had meant only to observe from the edges, to remind himself that the distance he kept was necessary. But when their eyes locked across the ballroom, when silence roared louder than the music, he was lost.

The crowd blurred. All that remained was her (radiant, untouchable, and yet, somehow, unbearably near).

“Vespera,” he said when he reached her. Just her name. It felt like a confession.

Her lips parted, breath caught, but her voice was steady. “Eitan. You shouldn’t be here.”

The words cut, but the tremor in her gaze betrayed her.

She should have turned away. Should have remembered the years of silence, the emptiness he left behind. Instead, she found herself moving toward him, toward the storm in his eyes.

“I could say the same,” she whispered.

They stood too close, the hum of old memories wrapping around them like a net. And when the crowd thickened between them, when a senator dragged her into a hollow exchange of pleasantries, Eitan’s hand brushed hers as if by accident.

Heat shot through her veins.

It was enough to set her off balance.

Few Minutes later, she found herself slipping into the sidewalk, her heart racing and gasping for breath. She shouldn’t. But when Eitan followed, when the door shut behind them, darkness and silence wrapped them whole.

It was like gravity(inevitable and unstoppable).

“You still look at me the way you used to,” he said, voice low, rough.

She laughed, bitter and broken. “And you still presume too much.”

But she was trembling. He felt it as he drew closer to her, when he trapped her against the wall with only his presence, not his touch.

“I walked away,” he murmured, “to save what you couldn’t.”

Her eyes flashed. “You abandoned me.”

“I protected you.” His chest ached with truths he couldn’t yet reveal. About Luna. About the child who bore her eyes.

He shouldn’t touch her. He shouldn’t.

But when her hand curled against his shirt, dragging him closer, every vow of distance shattered.

His mouth claimed hers like fire meeting wildfire.

All the years apart, all the anger, all the longing (it ignited, fierce and unstoppable). His kiss was both punishment and plea, hers both defiance and surrender.

Her back hit the wall. His hands pinned hers above her head. She arched into him, breath breaking, lips swollen with hunger.

“I hate you,” she whispered against his mouth.

“Then hate me closer,” he growled.

And she did.

His scent, his heat, the feel of him all consumed her until she no longer knew where she ended and he began.Until the power she wore like armor melted into nothing but need.

He should have stopped. He should have remembered Luna, asleep in the safehouse, unaware that her parents were colliding again in a storm of lips and teeth.

But gods, he couldn’t stop.

Vespera was everything he’d left behind, everything he’d denied himself. And in her kiss, he tasted not just passion, but grief. Regret. A longing neither of them had ever buried.

When she broke away, gasping, eyes wet, he nearly fell apart.

“Why now?” she whispered.

“Because I still…” The word died on his tongue. He couldn’t say it. He wouldn’t risk it.

Instead, he kissed her again.

The spell broke when a distant burst of laughter echoed from the ballroom. Reality crashed in.

She pushed him away, adjusting her gown, while trying to maintain her composure as her lips burned with desire.

"This changes nothing," she exploded. Though she tried to be still but her body shook uncontrollably.

He took a step back, but his eyes burned with an unsaid truth yet to be revealed.

“Doesn’t it?” he said softly.

She turned, fled, and threw herself back into the chaos of politics.

From the shadows of the ballroom, he watched her reclaim her throne. Poised, commanding, untouchable once more.

But he saw it. The crack in her armor. The tremor in her hand when she lifted her glass.

And he knew she was hiding something. Something big.

Senator Gabriel raised his glass, the toast already poised to cement her victory.

And then it happened.

The screen behind the stage flickered alive, hijacked. Grainy photographs appeared (wolves, blood, the hidden edge of her empire laid bare). Documents flashed, contracts that had never been meant for human eyes.

Gasps tore the room apart.

Someone was inside her ranks. Someone had fed her enemies.

A mole.

And then she heard it—whispers cutting through the room like blades.

“She has a child. A hidden heir.”

She froze.

Panic roared through him. The photographs, the whispers, all too precise, too targeted.

And when the words hidden child rippled across the room, his chest locked.

Because the secret he had guarded for years (the daughter he’d stolen to protect from Vespera’s world) was suddenly on the edge of exposure.

His gaze locked on Vespera across the ballroom. Her mask was flawless, but he saw the terror beneath.

Their enemies had struck.

And the firestorm was only beginning.

The gala dissolved into chaos. Cameras flashed. Voices clashed. Allies slipped away.

And through it all, Eitan’s eyes never left hers.

They had just shared fire. Now, betrayal burned hotter.

And for the first time in years, Vespera Stark felt control slipping from her grasp.