Chapter 11. I Take

‘It must have been the mate bond,’ Althea continued, blaming the mate bond because of the weird sensations crawling all over her body.

And then there was the way he was possessive toward her. It should have terrified her. But it didn’t. Against her better judgment, she liked it.

The intensity in Gavriel’s eyes, the way he touched her like he owned her, and the way his presence consumed every corner of the room stirred something deep inside her. Something she didn’t know had been starved for so long.

The feeling of being desired. Wanted…

‘Yes... that’s probably it,’ she mused, heart pounding. Because that was something she never had, not in her old home, not within the walls of the Shadowthorn Pack. There, everything was a battlefield. Everyone was constantly at war for status, for power, for the fleeting attention of her father, Alpha Cain.

Althea had been born into that chaos, but not welcomed by it.

In a world where blood meant everything, s