Ch. 30：Adding a Contract Clause

‘He – He is not our mate,’ my wolf whispered and I heard the confusion in her tone.
We’d just been bonded so it would take her a while to fully understand the chaos that was my life. Our mate who just left was a cruel man blackmailing us but this man, this man whose powerful aura made my wolf flinch – was attractive.
I didn’t know how to explain it or why, but I felt a subtle attraction to Killian and now that I had shifted my emotions were even clearer. I felt the attraction deepen. He was not my mate but my wolf reacted to him.
Perhaps it was a gift of the Alpha King to seduce people by just breathing, or it may be because he was the only man I’d ever known and we were in a fake relationship, but whatever the reason, I hated this attraction.
I didn’t want to be attracted to a man like Killian. He defined our relationship from the very first day and there was no room for feelings in this false mating. He liked nothing about me asides from my body, I knew that. It was dangerous to be attracted to him. It felt like I was blurring the lines of this contract with this unwanted things I felt for him.
“Shift.” A single command from him had my bones cracking and the fur on my skin receding.
I did not want to shift, didn’t want to obey but my will took a backseat in the face of the Alpha King’s command. I’d been but a mere human before my shift but now with a wolf, I could not disobey. All wolves would bow at the Alpha King’s command whether they wanted to or not because his power was absolute.
“Who were you with?” His soft tone caressed my bare skin.
My clothes had been ripped to shreds as I shifted from man to wolf and now that I shifted back, I was left bare before him. I covered myself with my palms, hunching over to hide.
“It – It was nobody,” I stuttered, unable to look at him.
Asides from my wolf who was meeting him for the first time and faced with a scenario where she was attracted to a strange man and not her mate, there was also the pounding in my heart from the fear Noah evoked in me. My head still pounded from the blow he dealt me.
“Nobody has a particular scent,” Killian sneered. “Look at me.” My gaze snapped up to his. His red eyes danced with flames that made me swallow. “Congratulations on your shift,” His velvety voice went low as he gripped my chin. “Now tell me whose scent is on you.” He didn’t yell but his tone frightened me more than a yell would.
“J – Just a man I used to – used to know.” Usually, I was more composed than this but I turned my face away from him.
There was no demarcation between what I felt and what my wolf felt. Her emotions leaked into me and they were new and confusing. I felt vulnerable as my emotions ran amok. Confusion, fear and attraction flitted through me.
“Just a man you used to know.” I blinked in surprise at Killian’s cold chuckle. “What was he doing with you?” He demanded.
“He came to – to cheer me on for my shift.” It was the wrong answer. I felt it in the sudden stillness of the forest and the cold seeping out of the king.
First shifts were sacred. Only immediate family members and close friends had the privilege of watching a wolf’s first shift. Suffice to say, it wasn’t something that ‘a man I used to know’ should witness.
“A man you used to know came to witness your first shift?” Ice poured off him. “Look at me,” he commanded and again, I couldn’t help but look into his burning eyes. He was angry. Pissed. Furious. I swallowed and looked away.
“From the beginning,” he started, his voice softening as he tilted his head to the side as if trying to disguise the danger wafting off him by appearing calm. “I told you from the beginning that you are not allowed to look at another man even if you find your mate.” Did he? He’d told me a lot of things – He gripped my jaw, forcing my gaze back on him.
“I wasn’t seeing –“ He cut me off.
“Today, I will let it go as a gift for your first shift.” His eyes gleamed as brightly as the moon. “Next time I catch this scent on you –“ He trailed off, his eyes conveying the rest of the sentence. I shuddered.
His gaze dropped from my face to my exposed shoulders. He pursed his lips as he took off his coat and draped the heavy cloth around me.
“T – Thank you.” My head lowered but since it didn’t seat well with something inside me, I raised my head, looking up as I spoke.
“You are a white wolf,” he said, ignoring my thanks. I nodded. “White wolves are rare.” I knew that already. Most Alpha wolves were black and other wolves were brown or multi-coloured – most often white and black.
“What I do not understand is why your scent is still vague.” I froze as he ran his cold nose along my neck, sniffing me. “It’s annoying,” he muttered, pulling away with a frown as he started walking.
“What do I smell like?” I sniffed myself but I couldn’t perceive anything aside a scent that my brain interpreted as mine. Most wolves couldn’t tell their scent, relying on someone else to tell them what they smelt like as our scents were too familiar to us to decipher.
“Like apples and sandalwood and something I can’t place.” I stopped walking, pausing to contemplate his words. “It’s not unusual for a wolf to like different things after their first shift but it’s the scent I can’t place that bothers me. It does not smell like wolf. Could it be your former pack?” He asked.
No.
I never smelt like Red Lake wolves because I was never made an official member of the pack. My mother wasn’t a part of the pack so I couldn’t inherit her connection to Red Lake and the Alpha never bothered to induct me into the pack. It was something I didn’t know I would ever be grateful for, but it was the reason Noah couldn’t locate me after I left. We didn’t have any connection outside of an unconsummated mate bond.
Remembering Noah had me panicking inside. He would stop at nothing to use me and bring me down. I had to get rid of him before he became too big a problem for me. But how? I hadn’t officially become the Luna Queen yet so I was still as useless as I was at the beginning.
Killian.
Could I tell the man walking beside me?
I shuddered to think of how he would react if he heard that I deceived him. He asked and I lied straight through my teeth. I deceived him. Killian would hunt down Noah and then he would cut off my head for lying to him. He was that brutal.
“What are you thinking about so deeply?” He asked, sparing me a glance.
“Would you kill me?” I blurted. “If you have no use for me anymore, would you do away with me?”
“Why would I kill my mate?” He raised a brow. “I cannot tell what the future holds but do not tempt me into ending your life.” Those were the words he used but what he meant was ‘don’t betray me.’
We got back to the room and I shrugged off his coat and climbed into bed, curling under the covers. I heard his clothes rustle as he took them off and I felt it when he climbed into the bed. On the first night we shared this bed, we’d both taken opposite ends of the bed and ended up in the middle the next day but now, we both settled in the middle of the bed within reach of each other.
He pulled my back into his hard chest and I swallowed, feeling his bare skin against mine. My insides quivered as he rested a palm on my bare chest.
“Your Majesty,” I called and he hummed, playing with my nipples. “I know we cannot keep up this charade forever so I think it is best we set a time period for this fake mating,” I muttered. He stilled beside me. “When you find your mate or when you get rid of Alpha Hawke, you can stage my death or something and let me go.”
It would be better than staying in this fake mating for an indefinite time, fearing he would have no use for me one day and slaughter me to be rid of me.
“Let you go.” He let out a harsh chuckle. “Let you go into the arms of the bastard ‘nobody’ whose scent you still carry, right?” He growled, his embrace tightening.