Chapter Three

THREE AND HALF YEARS AGO

My step-sister wants my husband.

She has never needed to say it outright. Not in front of anyone who matters. But her intent leaks through the cracks. It is subtle, poisonous and deliberate. It’s in the way her eyes hold his a moment too long. The way her fingers brush his arm during family dinners, her painted nails lingering against his sleeve like she’s daring me to call her out. She always manages to sit beside him, always leans in when he speaks, always laughs at his driest jokes like they’re drenched in brilliance. If he coughs, she sighs. If he frowns, she simpers. She looks at him like he was crafted to rule her, like he was born for her pleasure.

But when we’re alone, her face changes.

She drops the sugary mask, and I see the truth she tries so hard to keep hidden. The eyes go flat. The smile hardens into something mean. She shows her teeth…sharp, gleaming, like she’s proud of how well she hides the beast beneath her silk blouses and honeyed words. Her gaze strips me bare. It says: You don’t deserve him. I do.

She came into my life when I was seventeen and she was fifteen, already running before she even knew how to crawl in the world my father had built. Her mother married mine in a quiet ceremony in Lausanne, and suddenly there were four of us…my father, Polenya, her daughter Angelica, and me. My mother, Annalise, died when I was fifteen. Car crash. Her body was too damaged to retrieve. I barely remember the funeral… only that the sky was grey and the scent of burnt lilies made me nauseous.Our housekeeper Aléyne, who had raised me since birth, made space for them without complaint. She smiled even when Angelica shattered the first vase. Smiled when she tried to cut her hair like mine. Smiled when she snarled at being told no. But I never forgot the quiet conversations at night. The way Aléyne whispered warnings to me in the dark. The way she said, “That girl carries a hunger in her. One day it will show its teeth.”

Polenya has always been soft and very polished. Measured in a way that makes her seem incapable of harm. She’s the kind of woman who never raises her voice, never forgets a thank you card, never lets her emotions spill past the edges. I’ve spent the last decade trying to determine whether her kindness toward me is sincere… or simply calculated. Because loving me means loving the adopted daughter of Julian Moreaux, and that, politically, is a wise move.

Julian Moreaux is human, just like me. But that’s never stopped him from commanding a room like a predator in a den of betas. My father is not just a man. He is a presence. The founder of Aquila Maritime. The man who turned a single freighter into an empire. We command sixty-seven vessels now, charting the coldest seas and taming the wildest oceans. Oil tankers the size of stadiums. LNG carriers slicing through arctic frost and Ships that move the world’s power quietly but efficiently. My father raised me in boardrooms and taught me that strength was not about volume…it was about control.

When he arranged my marriage, I said nothing.

I knew what it was. A merger. A unification of enemies. The Moreaux and Varyn families have long ruled the maritime world in parallel…the humans on one side, the werewolves on the other. For years our companies circled like predators, watching, waiting, never quite trusting. But the tide was changing. The global shift toward supernatural transparency had made old rivalries dangerous. So my father decided it was time to act.

He picked Niklath Varyn.

And the moment I saw him, I understood why.

He was a storm inside a man’s body.

Six-foot five, broad-shouldered, carved from discipline and tradition, he stepped into the Dolder Grand’s meeting suite like he already owned everything inside it. The room, the view, the air itself. He wore power like second skin. His suit was flawless. His scent was a mix of pine, winter wind, and something deeper, wilder hit me before his voice did. When he extended his hand toward mine, my entire body reacted. The heat rolled through me so swiftly I had to grip the edge of the chair. His fingers were warm, steady and possessive. He did not shake my hand like a man greeting a business partner. He held it like he was testing it. Like he was claiming it. He never once let go of it.

And when he spoke…God, when he spoke…it was like velvet laced with stone.

“So this is the woman who took Aquila global,” he said, his tone devoid of mockery but filled with challenge. His eyes locked on mine, crystalline blue and entirely unreadable, like he was cataloguing every breath I took and weighing it for worth. His stare was so intense, I simply could not look away even if I wanted to. I was hooked.

That night, we dined in private.

I don’t remember the taste of the food. All I remember is the way he watched me…unblinking, calm, and devastating. He asked questions about my upbringing, about the routes Aquila had conquered, about my vision for our joint future. But every word felt like a double meaning. Every look suggested he was less interested in our fleets and more in how well I could submit to the tides he commanded.

By the time dessert arrived, my pulse was erratic and I could feel my skin flush under his gaze. He didn’t flirt. He didn’t charm. He simply… existed. And it unraveled me in ways I wasn’t prepared for.

When the check came, he didn’t ask if he should pay. He simply reached for the bill, signed it without looking at the amount, stood, and said, “I’ll walk you to your car.”

Outside, the air had cooled but my body hadn’t. He said nothing as we walked, his arm occasionally brushing mine, his silence louder than any conversation I’d had all year. And when we reached my car, he turned to face me. The wind caught his scent again, and I felt my thighs tighten, my core pulse with want.

I don’t remember what he said next. Only the sound of my own heart slamming against my chest like a warning. Or maybe a promise.

He didn’t kiss me.

But he looked at me like he would soon. Like he already had somewhere in a different life where wolves ruled kingdoms and queens bled loyalty from their veins. There was something ancient in the way he looked at me. Something possessive. Primal. As if, in some bone deep part of him, he already knew I was his.

I should have been afraid. But I wasn’t.

I wanted to touch the part of him that didn’t belong to boardrooms. The part that would throw me against stone and bite into my shoulder just to prove a point. The part that knew how to destroy and devour in the same breath. Because I knew, even then, that Niklath Varyn wasn’t just a man.

He was an Alpha and he had just decided I belonged to him.