(Leonardo Ivankov's POV)
Three days of silence.Three days of pretending not to notice the way she avoided my eyes.
If I hadn't already known she was hiding something, her behavior would have told me anyway. The problem was—I didn't want to know.Every instinct said dig, confront, finish it.But my wolf said wait.
She moved through the apartment like someone trying to erase herself, quiet feet, careful hands. Her scent used to be faint, controllable, but lately it slipped out in waves whenever she forgot to guard herself. It carried that same vanilla-honey edge that had started to poison my sleep.
The second night I caught myself outside her door, fingers brushing the handle before I forced myself back to my own room.
Pathetic.
I was Leonardo Ivankov—Alpha of the Capital District, head of the Council, a man feared by half the continent—and I couldn't stop thinking about a trembling little Omega who couldn't even look me in the eye.
On the fourth night, a storm rolled in.I remember because the air pressure shifted, thick with ozone and pheromones that didn't belong to me.
Her heat hit without warning.
The scent slammed through the hall like a physical force—sweet, desperate, raw. My body reacted before my brain caught up.
By the time I reached her door, she was already on the floor, clutching a pillow, sweat beading across her forehead. Her pupils blown wide, lips parted.
"Leonardo," she gasped, voice cracking on my name.
Everything in me locked. The sound of my name in her mouth—like a confession—undid the last of my restraint.
I crouched beside her, trying to keep my tone neutral. "You didn't take suppressants?"
She shook her head weakly. "Didn't… expect it. It came early."
Of course it did. Stress, fear, exhaustion—any of them could trigger it.
I should have called a medic, left the room, done anything else. But the thought of another Alpha anywhere near her made my vision blurs.
So I stayed.
"Breathe," I said quietly, brushing damp curls from her face. "Don't fight it. Just breathe."
Her scent clung to my skin, to the walls, to every rational thought I had left. I held her until the worst tremor passed, forcing my own pheromones into a steady, grounding rhythm—dominant enough to calm, not to claim.
Slowly, her breathing eased. She sagged against me, trembling, whispering half-dreamed apologies.
"I didn't mean to cause trouble," she murmured.
"You didn't."
A lie. But one I wanted to believe.
When she finally fell asleep, I carried her to the bed. Her cheek brushed against my shoulder; the scent of her hair filled the space between thought and instinct.
That was when I saw it—a slip of paper half-tucked beneath her blanket. My own handwriting stared back at me.
A letter. One I'd written years ago, before the coronation, to no one in particular. A journal entry I'd thrown away, not meant for anyone to keep.
Yet here it was, folded neatly, the edges worn from touch.
I looked down at her sleeping face, at the faint scars that still marked her otherwise soft skin, and something inside me clicked.
She wasn't just the woman from the notebook. She was the girl who'd stood in the rain that night years ago, watching from the crowd as I walked through the ruins of the old district.
She'd been there.
The stalker story, the obsession, the apartment across the street—it all fit now.
But what didn't fit was her.
Because the woman sleeping before me wasn't dangerous, or crazed, or manipulative. She was broken in the same way I was—someone who'd looked too long into the dark and forgotten how to live anywhere else.
I clenched the letter in my fist until the paper crumpled.
When she woke, I'd ask. I'd demand the truth.
But not tonight.
Tonight I let her sleep, her hand still curled loosely against my shirt, her scent still threading through my pulse like a drug.
And for the first time in years, I didn't feel like the Alpha King.I just felt human.