Chapter 50 The Perfect Strangers
SERAPHINA
The moment his voice whispered my name. it didn’t just brush against my ears.
It sliced straight through me–passed my skin, into breath–until it lodged deep within my soul. My heart stuttered, skipped. then thudded back into rhythm like it had briefly died only to be resurrected in the space of a heartbeat.
“Seraphina.
The way
i–low, deliberate and intimate–wrapped around my wolf like a binding spell, dragging her into something
vast, dark, and unnamed.
–
But why why was his wolf speaking my name like that? With him?
Seraphina wasn’t just a name anymore. It was a lifeline. A secret. A wound. When he had said it, it felt like he’d reached into the most protected part of me and yanked it out into the light.
For a fleeting second, my grip on reality slipped. My breath caught and refused to move, caged between disbelief and dread My name sounded foreign, yet intimate and familiar all at once–because no one here was supposed to know it.
Not Ronan.
So how did he….
-Seraphina Nightbane had no place within these walls. I buried her the day I concealed my scent, applied that perfume, and bound my body in layers of silence and lies. She was the girl destined to be a perfect Luna–a pawn I had long ago rejected. That identity, that name… was meant to be hidden. For as long as I wanted.
But now–here–Ronan had brought her back with a single word.
Something inside me cracked. Even fully clothed and wearing perfume, I felt naked in front of him.
How?
How did he know?
A sharp panic flared through me, hot and electric. My mind raced to find an explanation–any explanation. But none of them
made sense.
He hadn’t left the Academy grounds–I’d watched him too closely for that. And if he had tried to sneak out, the Alpha instructors would have known. Leaving without permission was grounds for immediate expulsion. Not to mention the border wolves weren’t guards, they were monsters. Escaping unnoticed was impossible.
That left only one possibility: a background check,
But even that didn’t track.
Even if he’d dug into Seth Darven’s records, he wouldn’t have found me. Seth and I weren’t siblings. We didn’t grow up same house or pack. We were cousins- our connection was tied only by our mothers, twin sisters married into different packs to different Alphas.
No documents linked me to Seth. Nothing legal. Nothing traceable.
So how did he know!
His fingers still brushed beneath my chits, and his violet eyes burned possessively into mine. I staggered back, every cell
reamed danger. This Alpha was dangerous. The Reaper that everyone called him. But it didn’t matter.
The damage was done.
He knew too much.
More than anyone ever should
in the
Chapter 50 The Perfect Strangers
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More than was safe
And worst of all the way he looked at me–it wasn’t just with knowing.
It was claiming.
His gaze pinned me like his words earlier still echoed between us: “I want to strip this disguise and see the real you.”
Only the thought of those words made my heart race. What was this feeling raising in my chest? It was as if he were possessing me.
The fear inside me shifted, twisted, grew sharp.
Because the kind of want that he had in his eyes for me was far more dangerous than hatred.
“Alpha Ronan,” I finally spoke, my voice low like a murmur, “I admit that you got me. My wolf looked at him secretly and silently as I continued, ” And I also admit that you’ve been a threat to my disguise from the very beginning. That’s why I disliked you, avoided you, refused to engage with you at all.” My voice cracked slightly, breath hitching with rising emotion. “I still can’t believe that you and I are at the point where you know my secret. And you know too much. So much that I just want to kill you,” I said the last part with my wolf, her fury threading through my voice.
He didn’t flinch, He didn’t so much as blink. He just stared–unmoving, unreadable, terrifying in his calm.
“Killing you would be easy,” I continued, taking another step back, “but I know it’s not that simple. You’re not someone who will die easily,” I knew this truth deep in my heart but I hid the fact that I did not kill people around for my own selfishness. “I don’t know why you haven’t exposed me. I don’t know why you’re so….interested in me. And honestly, I don’t want to know what kind of madness is behind the things you said earlier. I just want you to stop.”
He finally blinked as if his soul had just returned to his body, “stop?” his voice was low and deep.
“Yes, stop,” I calmly stated. I had too much to lose, too much to bear, and too much to face if I were exposed. And I refuse to accept that fate. So even if I had to change my way of getting into Ronan’s head then I was willing to do that as well. I was ready to use a soft approach. “I will not get in your way and you do the same,” I offered. “Forget what you saw, what you heard, and what you found out about me. Let’s be perfect strangers to each other.“”
Silence fell between us.
But inside me, chaos reigned.
Had I convinced him? Could I trust that he’d let this go? Ronan was always hard to read. But he held my greatest secret in his hand–and if he decided to crush it, I was finished.
I could not let it go without confirming if he was an enemy or ally.
Finally, he spoke.
“Perfect strangers?” he murmured, and then–he smiled. Slowly. Darkly.
“I refuse.”
My heart dropped to my stomach.
“Why?”
He stepped closer, his movements unhurried, deliberate. “Because I hate it,” he said softly, towering over me, voice like velvet
and smoke.
“Hate what?“I whispered.
Being a stranger to you,” he said, and his eyes darkened. “Because I can’t be.”
He leaned down, voice barely above a whisper. “We’ll never be strangers, Seraphina. Not in this life. Not after this
“Why?” I blurted, before I could stop myself.
gaze didn’t waver. “Because it’s not your disguise or your beauty that draws me in.
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Chapter 50 The Perfect Strangers
He inhaled deeply to my scentless body, close enough that his breath grazed my skin. “It’s this.”
He gently took my hand and placed it over his chest. Right over his heart.
Where it thundered wildly.
Just like mine.
“That,” he whispered, “is why…why this heart only beats like that… for you.”
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Phina stirred violently inside me, awakened by the pulse of his soul pressing into ours. His wolf had reached for her just separated by an invisible wall between us.
His heart beats for me?
My own heart betrayed me, leaping out of rhythm, chaotic with emotions I was never supposed to feel.
1 jerked my hand away, breath ragged.
“I’m pretending I didn’t hear that,” I snapped, turning swiftly toward the door to get away from him.
But just as I reached out for the doorknob, a hand turned me around and the next thing I knew I was caged against the door with both my hands pinned above my head.
“What are you doing?!” I gasped as Ronan pressed his chest into my breast, both of our bodies completely pressed together.
“You can run all you want,” he leaned down towards my face, his wolf surfacing in his eyes looking deep into Phina, “You can hide all you want behind that perfume but make sure you do a wonderful job of running. Seraphina,” his hot breath brushed against my lips as he glanced down to my breasts and then back to my eyes. “Because now this Alpha is not going to stop until he sees the girl with Amber eyes who makes him feel a way that no other girl ever has.”
My lips parted and eyes widened at his confession as he pressed his lower body into mine, making me feel his hardness, “And when I find her and the reason behind these feelings…” he met my gaze and smiled, “I am gonna do the exact thing that you are thinking about right now.”
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