The knock ricocheted through the chamber like a gunshot. Grayson hovered at the threshold, spine rigid as a ramrod, his gaze darting between Caleb's sprawled form and Luna's veiled silhouette. Moonlight bled through leaded windows, fracturing the room into knife-edged shadows.
Caleb didn't lift his eyes from the dagger he was polishing—a 15th-century stiletto with a pommel carved from a raven's skull. "Speak."
"The eastern kennels, sir." Grayson's Adam's apple bobbed. "The handlers report… restlessness among the new pack."
Luna's fingers stilled on her mortar and pestle. The Thorn estate's "kennels" weren't for spaniels. Last midnight, she'd glimpsed massive shapes pacing behind electrified fences—wolves with eyes that glowed arsenic green under her penlight.
Caleb set the blade aside, the movement fluid as spilled mercury. "Hungry, are they?" His gaze slid to Luna, lingering on the bruise blooming beneath her choker. "Perhaps we'll host a hunt soon. Let them taste fresh game."
Grayson paled. "Sir, the doctor's waiting—"
"Dismissed."
The butler fled.
Luna measured crushed valerian root into a sachet. "Your family's medical files listed chronic fatigue. They failed to mention the lycanthropy."
Caleb's laugh was a dark rumble. "Would you have come, little healer? If you'd known?"
She didn't flinch as he circled her worktable. The air thickened with his scent—bourbon and burnt ozone, the tang of adrenaline souring into exhaustion.
"You're favoring your left leg," she noted. "Sciatic nerve inflammation. How many days since you slept?"
His smile died. "Careful."
"Three? Four?" Luna lifted a vial of poppy tincture to the light. "Your pupils are blown. Tremors in the dominant hand. And that cologne isn't masking the ketosis breath."
The dagger thunked into the table, quivering an inch from her fingers. "Play nurse elsewhere."
"Can't." She met his glare. "Your grandmother's ordered me to 'revitalize the bloodline.' I'm told that requires a conscious husband."
Caleb's fist clenched. A vein throbbed at his temple. For a heartbeat, Luna glimpsed it—the fracture in his armor. The way his breath hitched on inhalation, ribs expanding like a bellows on the verge of rupture.
Then he moved.
Her back hit the tapestry wall, Caleb's forearm braced against her throat. Ancient threads unraveled beneath her nails as she scrabbled for purchase.
"You presume," he hissed, pupils swallowing irises whole, "to know my body?"
Luna's knee found his groin. Caleb twisted, taking the blow on his thigh. She whipped the acupuncture needle from her hair—
—and froze.
Cold steel kissed her jugular. The raven dagger's edge bit skin.
"Drop it," Caleb growled.
Her fingers uncurled. The needle clattered to the floor.
"Now." His breath scorched her cheek. "What's your real game? Carter spy? Voss pawn?"
Luna's laugh was all teeth. "If I were, you'd be dead." Her palm flattened over his racing heart. "Your pulse is 140. Pupils unresponsive. You're three minutes from collapse."
The blade trembled.
She pressed closer, ignoring the sting of steel. "Let me help."
"No one helps me." But his grip slackened.
The collapse came gently. Caleb's knees buckled, his weight dragging them both to the floor. Luna rolled free, scrambling for her satchel.
"Grayson!" She tore open vials with her teeth. "I need hot water! Now!"
The butler materialized, face ashen. "His condition—the doctors said—"
"Fuck the doctors." Luna crushed jujube seeds between molars, spitting the paste into willow bark tea. "Hold his head up."
Caleb's seizure hit like a thunderclap. Muscles corded, spine arching inhumanly. Grayson cried out as his master's skull cracked against flagstones.
Luna straddled Caleb's chest, forcing the tonic between locked teeth. "Breathe, damn you! Breathe!"
His eyes flew open—black, endless. A snarl ripped from his throat.
The needle found his philtrum first, then the Shen Men point at his ear. Luna worked blind, years of treating epileptic farmhands guiding her hands. Four more needles along his scalp.
Suddenly, stillness.
Caleb's chest rose—a shuddering, wet inhalation. Color bled back into his lips.
Grayson wept openly.
Luna slumped against the bedpost, sweat-drenched curls clinging to her neck. The veil had slipped, revealing the scar—a jagged lightning bolt from temple to jawline, pale against flushed skin.
Caleb's fingers brushed her cheek. "Who gave you that?"
She jerked away. "A reminder."
"Of?"
"How easily beauty curdles." Luna retied the veil, hands steady now. "Sleep. The tincture will hold for six hours."
He caught her wrist. "Stay."
"To watch you drool? Pass."
"Stay," he repeated, voice raw, "because they'll come for you tonight."
Ice trickled down her spine. "They?"
Caleb's smile was a death's-head rictus. "The vultures circling my corpse. They've tasted your blood in the air." His thumb swept her pulse point. "You're safest here. In the lion's den."
Moonlight slithered through the room, gilding the dagger still embedded in the table. Somewhere beyond the estate walls, wolves howled.
Luna settled against the bedframe, scalpel hidden in her sleeve. "Six hours. Then you're on your own."
Caleb's breathing deepened. Minutes passed before he spoke again, words slurred by herbs. "The scar… It's not ugly."
Her laugh was bitter. "Spoken like a man who's never been commodity."
His hand found hers in the dark—a fleeting press of calloused skin. "Sleep, wife. I'll watch the shadows."
Dawn stained the sky arsenic gray when the first attack came.
Glass shattered. A black-clad figure lunged from the wardrobe, machete raised.
Caleb moved faster.
Luna awoke to warm blood spray across her face, the coppery tang flooding her mouth. Caleb stood over the intruder's twitching corpse, his borrowed scalpel glinting crimson.
"Rise and shine, Mrs. Thorn." He tossed her a towel. "We've hunting to do."
She wiped her eyes, veil clinging damply. "Partners?"
Caleb smiled, all feral promise. "Until the wolves come home."
Somewhere below, alarms began to scream.
Moonlight lacquered the bridal chamber in quicksilver, gliding over the rise and fall of Luna's veiled silhouette. Caleb's hand hovered above the linen shroud, close enough to feel the heat of her breath misting the fabric. In sleep, she was a study in contradictions—swan-neck elegance under rough-spun cloth, warrior's callouses peeking beneath lace cuffs.
The bruise circling her throat mocked him—a violinist's necklace left by clumsy hands. Even in repose, Luna Carter refused fragility. Moonbeams caressed the scar bisecting her jawline, that old wound gleaming like a pearl-edged dagger.
He retreated to the chaise longue, its velvet embrace reeking of failed predecessors. Ten minutes. A decade's worth of stolen sleep condensed into stolen moments beside this walking contradiction. The grandfather clock's pendulum swung like a hangman's noose—tick, tock, measuring his borrowed time.
—
Dawn's fingers pried through stained glass, drenching the breakfast nook in blood-orange light. Luna stared into her gilded bowl, where lotus seeds floated like eyeballs in a witch's brew. The soup's cloying sweetness clung to her palate—honeysuckle masking hemlock.
Eleanor's diamond-crusted fingers drummed the damask tablecloth. "Those Carter eyes," the matriarch crooned, "like molten amber trapped in quartz. My great-grandchildren will bedazzle ballrooms with them." Her smile revealed dentures too perfect for a woman who'd buried three husbands. "Drink, girl. Wombs thrive on warmth."
Caleb descended the staircase, each step a blade's edge between aristocrat and apex predator. Behind him shuffled Mrs. Pritchard, bearing her sacred relic—a silk square crusted with dubious rust-colored blooms. "The bridal bloom thrives!" she cackled, waving the rag like a victory standard. Luna's stomach roiled. That stain wasn't menstrual blood—Caleb had likely slit a pheasant's throat for the effect.
"Admire my artistry?" Caleb's whisper slithered beneath her veil. "I debated using pomegranate juice, but stage blood lends... authenticity." His knuckle brushed the linen shroud. "Shall I authenticate my work?"
Luna's spoon trembled, broth slopping onto Limoges china. In one reckless motion, she shoved the utensil toward his lips. "Choke on it," she hissed, too low for Eleanor's champagne-addled ears.
Caleb's smile could've curdled milk. He accepted the offering, tongue swiping the spoon's bowl with obscene precision. "A touch heavy on the ginger," he mused, "like your bedside manner."
—
The Rolls-Royce devoured country roads, its purring engine the only sound in their gilded cage. Caleb's gaze burned through her veil—a sniper's laser sight tracing the scar's topography. She counted telephone poles like rosary beads, each one carrying her further from Thorn's gothic clutches.
When the car lurched, his hand "slipped" onto her thigh. "Apologies," he lied, fingers drumming a war march against her stockings. "Country roads demand... firm grip."
Luna's scalpel found his wrist. "So do country girls."
He laughed, the sound ricocheting off calfskin seats. "Keep that blade close, wife. You'll need it."
—
Claire materialized like a vengeful specter, patent-leather stilettos cracking like gunshots on marble. "Darling Luna," she cooed, "have you come to bless us with your... rustic fertility?" Her gaze raked Caleb's frame. "Or does Mr. Thorn require a seeing-eye dog?"
Caleb's arm cinched Luna's waist, hauling her against his tailored ruin of a body. "Miss Voss," he purred, "I'd kneel to inspect your face, but I detest close encounters with botched nose jobs."
Margaret's entrance spared bloodshed. Her Chanel suit reeked of mothballs and desperation. "How... provincial of you to visit," she simpered, eyeing Luna's veil. "Does the groom require braille instructions for wedding nights?"
Luna's laughter startled even herself. "Why, Mother—jealousy wrinkles faster than silk."
—
In the powder room, Caleb cornered her before the gilt mirror. "That scar," he murmured, hooking a finger under her veil. "Let me see the warrior, not the wound."
She headbutted his chin. "Careful, husband. This warrior bites."
His thumb swiped blood from his lip. "Promises, promises."
—
The lie had grown roots, twisting through her ribs like wisteria through a mausoleum. To uproot it now would require spilling blood—perhaps her own.