Feral.The word surfaced through her shock.He’s going feral.
The males nearest the dais scattered. Guards, knights, lords—all of them fleeing from the Alpha King who’d stopped being Alpha King and started being something else entirely.
Something hungry.
His first step toward her cracked the stone.
Elsa’s legs locked. Her body refused to run, refused to do anything except stand there holding a newly cleansed crystal while the most dangerous creature on the planet stalked toward her with madness in his eyes.
“Sylas.” His name came out a whisper. A prayer. “Sylas.”
He stopped.
For a single, suspended moment, something flickered behind the feral glow. Recognition. Struggle. The Alpha King fighting the beast for control of their shared body.
Then his muzzle pressed into her hair, inhaling so deeply his chest expanded against hers, and the growl that escaped him was possessive and wild and broken all at once.
“Mine.”
18
Sylas
The beast had him.
Not the familiar presence that prowled beneath his skin—the one he’d learned to negotiate with over fifteen years of rule. This was something else. Something that had cracked through every wall he’d built, every chain he’d forged, every careful containment that kept the Moon Tear madness at bay.
And it wantedher.
Sylas moved without deciding to move. His claws scraped stone as he descended from the dais, each step cracking the ancient floor beneath his weight. The crowd scattered—lords, knights, priests fleeing from the path of their Alpha King gone feral—but he registered them only as obstacles between himself and the female who stood frozen with a purified crystal clutched in her trembling hands.
Mine. Mine. MINE.
The word thundered through his skull, drowning out everything else. Fifteen years of careful control. Fifteen years of fighting the corruption that would turn him into one ofthe mindless Fallen. All of it shattered in the space between heartbeats when the light had erupted from her skin and the bond hadsnappedinto place.
He could feel her now. Not just her scent—though that was everywhere, Frosted Tears and something deeper, something that called to the beast in ways he couldn’t articulate—but herpresence. A thread of awareness that ran from his chest to hers, pulsing with every terrified beat of her heart.
She was afraid.
Good. She should be.
“Sylas.” His name on her lips. A whisper. A prayer. “Sylas.”
The beast hesitated.
Somewhere beneath the roaring hunger, beneath the feral need to claim and mark andpossess, the king still existed. Still fought. Still recognized the delicate female before him as something more than prey.
But the recognition didn’t stop him from closing the distance. From pressing his muzzle into her hair and inhaling until his lungs burned with the sweetness of her. From wrapping one arm around her waist and dragging her against his body with a possessiveness that had nothing to do with politics or performance.
“Mine.”
The word came out wrong. Too deep. Too rough. More growl than speech, vibrating through both their bodies where they pressed together.
Elsa’s free hand found his chest. Not pushing—she was too smart for that, even now—but anchoring. Her fingers curled into his fur, and the sensation sent sparks racing down his spine.
“Yes.” Her voice shook, but she held his gaze. Those blue eyes, wide with fear and something else. Something that looked almost like understanding. “Yours. I’m yours.”
The beastpurred.