CHAPTER 36: SHE TRIGGERED ME

🌙 𝐋𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐡

My breath caught, pulse spiking. Still, my fingers obeyed, caressing the raised ink, feeling it hum beneath my touch like something alive.

Vladimir’s jaw clenched so hard I swore I heard bone grind, his throat corded as his head tipped back. The sight rooted me where I sat. Those pale planes of muscle shifted under my palm with every controlled breath he dragged into his lungs, and still he didn’t stop me.

The air thickened, heavy, charged, every stroke of my fingers magnified by his reaction. The silence was no longer empty—it was taut, trembling, a bowstring ready to snap.

I dared another pass, slower this time, tracing the spiral as though the lines themselves commanded me. His breath fractured. A groan escaped him, rough, guttural, his body bowing slightly into my touch before he forced it still again.

"Lili..." The sound of my name, dragged raw across his tongue, nearly undid me. His accent sharpened it, made it darker, older, dripping with restraint that was beginning to fray.

I should have pulled away. I should have stopped. But the way he looked at me—eyes iced silver, shot faintly with red—made it impossible.

I trailed lower, almost trembling with the weight of what I was doing. His muscles rippled, every nerve in his body strung tight beneath my hand.

The groan that left him this time wasn’t controlled. It was a snarl, gutted and low, as though he were fighting something deeper than just the heat of my touch.

His gaze snapped to mine, a storm locked in those eyes.

"Careful, moya..." he rasped, the Russian curling rough against my ears, primal and warning. "You don’t know what you’re playing with."

Moya meant mine in Russian. I swallowed, heat pooling faster at the apex between my thighs.

But his chest rose harder, sharper, as if daring me to continue, chest expanding. Th tattoos did not hurt, it was more of the opposite The raised skin, the arcane writing scarred into his skin was sensitive; touching gave him pleasure.

The realization sparked a match in my chest, my throat dry, something churning low in my stomach, bringng with it heat.

I gulped, our eyes still locked.

Even as his muscles rippled under my finger, his gaze remained scorching.

A magnetic force coiled in my chest dragging me closer, urging me to feed the fire, my body aching for more contact. I obliged, leaning in...

The taut tension snapped in a startling instant as a knock rang at the door.

I froze but Vladimir recovered at the speed of light, rising while simultanously reaching for me and sittng back unto the bed in one fluid motion.

Unable to compute what was happening, tongue still heavy in my mouth, I could react even as he slipped on black shirt and strodded out the door.

I blinked at the closed door still booting but still, nothing made sense. His groaning, my caressing, the heavy sensual air and then the sudden snap back to reality.

I fell back unto the bed, my face tingling with embarasment. "What the hell just happened?" I asked the void.

And of course this time, Kaia awarded me no answers

---

The door clicked shut behind me, and she stopped pacing but the phantom of Lilith touch lingered like fire etched into my skin. Every raised spiral of ink still burned with memory, every nerve humming as if her fingers remained on me.

I inhaled slowly, forcing air into my lungs, but it carried her scent—warm, alive, maddening. Snow and steel warred with the ghost of her, until my restraint felt like a noose strangling me.

"What is happening to me?" I growled at a particular obnoxious wolf that had made my mind his domain, my suffering in his hobby.

And just like he was when I actually required any of his ’helpful’ insight, he replied with a cold silence.

"Typical,"

"Vladi---" Veronique began walking up to me.

I cut her off with the swift raise of my hand.

She stopped dead, chest heaving as she accessed me, her eyes boring into me trying to figure me out. Even I had not began to understand how my inhibitions had made enough of an exit for me to let that happen.

Even I didn’t fully understand the fury and hunger her touch had unlocked. That was not supposed to happen. Those markings were not meant for hands—least of all hers.

I let her see them fully, when Veronique nor my doctors, the deltas had ever laid eyes on them. They were forbidden, much less on an Alpha. If I had been found out, I could lose my title, my throne but I had no hesitation as I let her lay me bare and craved for her touch.

But she had no idea what it meant so I was safe. For now.

"You didn’t lie," I told her. "You didn’t plant the bomb. The investigation points to... them."

She let out a breath, her lips quivering up into a relieved smile. "I knew you would believe me. I knew it was that cult. I knew you would see. I knew you would believe me."

But I didn’t. It was like she couldn’t fathom that I needed investigative report to clear her. Days ago, it would never have crossed my mind but now... the fundamental changes had twisted my perception of all I knew. Mostly her.

"The wolfsbane is still in my system but the Deltas patched me up well." She continued to speak, like we were not standing on the precipice of our relationship.

"You didn’t even ask for the report on the incident?" My tone was ice, deliberate. "The Order of the Black Moon has been named in it. You’ve said nothing."

Her smile faltered. "Vladi—"

"No," I snapped, the word cutting through her like a blade. My restraint frayed further the longer I looked at her, the longer I remembered Lilith’s throat beneath Veronique’s hand. "This cult has been a plague on us for years. A virus that refuses to die. We’ve hunted them through every shadow, burned them out of every den, yet they always return."

My voice lowered, darker, edged with the storm that still churned beneath my skin. "And now they’ve crawled out again. They planted the bomb. They poisoned the wreckage with wolfsbane. And when that didn’t finish her—" my jaw locked, teeth grinding, "—they had your hands to strangle her life away."

Her breath hitched.

"And still," I growled, stepping closer, "you show no concern. No interest in their movements. Not even a question for the report." My gaze bore into hers, piercing "Almost as if their failure disappointed you. You are against them, until they serve your agenda."