Chapter 3: Tonight, Only Remember Me
Avira's POV
When the car door shut, Callum and all those prying eyes from the club entrance were sealed outside. I leaned back into the rear seat, wrapped in Reign's coat, the black dress underneath already disheveled from the struggle earlier. The Gray Rock Alpha's scent clung stubbornly to my hair, the side of my neck, and my lips, while the wolf inside me remained restless, urging me to close the distance between myself and the man beside me — the one who still hadn't touched me on his own.
Reign raised the privacy partition and poured a glass of water, holding it out to me. "Drink it. Once you've sobered up, I'll have the driver take you anywhere you want."
"You pulled me away from Callum, and now you're going to send me back?"
"I won't mark you when you're acting out of anger."
I took the water but didn't drink it. I shifted toward him, letting my fingertips rest on the collar he'd already pulled loose, tracing slowly along the exposed skin. Reign's chest rose and fell with his breathing — the calm was only surface-level. The muscles pulled taut beneath his shirt had already betrayed just how hard he was holding himself back.
"Who said anything about you marking me?" I asked. "I just want to do something tonight that doesn't come with consequences."
Reign closed his hand around my wrist and pressed my restless fingers flat against his chest. Beneath my palm, his heartbeat was heavy and quick — nothing like the composed expression on his face.
"Then you've come to the wrong person." He looked at me. "I don't do irresponsible things with my own mate."
I tried to pull my hand back. Reign didn't let go. His thumb moved in slow strokes across the pulse point at my wrist, each pass a quiet reminder that what was between them wasn't just a split-second decision made to get back at Callum.
"You can still change your mind," he said.
"Lord Ashford, you keep giving me chances to back out — is that because you respect me, or because your self-control isn't as solid as you make it sound?"
I bent my knee and let it brush along the side of his leg, then left it there. The gray-blue in Reign's eyes gradually deepened, and the grip on my wrist tightened by a fraction. He didn't pull away. His other hand came to rest on the side of my knee, the warmth of his palm seeping through the thin stockings into my skin.
"Keep pushing me, and don't bother asking me to stop once we reach the manor."
"I'm not sure you'll make it to the manor."
Reign pulled me into his lap and brought his mouth down to mine. No Callum, no audience of watching wolves — this kiss didn't need to perform anything. I sat across his legs with my arms looped around his shoulders, my skirt riding up with the movement. His hands stayed at my waist, but every time they tightened around me, I felt exactly how much desire he was keeping leashed beneath that restraint.
His kiss moved from my lips to the corner of my mouth, then down behind my ear, his canines pausing at the one spot best suited for leaving a mark. My wolf woke up completely at that small, dangerous pressure. I tilted my neck and let my breath fall against his ear.
"Bite me if you want to."
Reign pressed his lips to that patch of skin but didn't let his canines break through. "A permanent mark isn't a souvenir a bed partner leaves behind. When you actually want to be my Luna, say that to me again."
Something tightened in my chest. Callum had spent three years teaching me that a mark was a gift I had to wait for, had to earn through patience and pleasing him. Reign's breathing had already gone unsteady from the mate pull, and he was still handing the decision back to me.
I kissed him before he could say anything else that would make me go soft. "No Luna talk tonight. No Callum either."
"Then you only get to say my name."
By the time the car turned through the manor gates, our scents had wound together until neither could be told apart. Reign carried me out of the car. The night-duty butler immediately looked away, though he still caught a glimpse of my fallen dress strap and the bite mark I'd left on Reign's lower lip. I expected him to take me straight upstairs. Instead, he set me down in front of the living room sofa, knelt down, and took off the heels I'd been wearing all night.
The proud Gray Rock Alpha was half-kneeling in front of me, one hand wrapped around my ankle, his posture seemingly humble — but when he looked up, there was still that edge in his eyes that made something in me tremble. He pressed his lips to the inside of my ankle, let them linger for a moment, then moved slowly up my calf and stopped where the hem of my skirt began. He didn't go further.
"Why did you stop?" I asked.
"I need you to say so."
I pressed my foot lightly against his chest and pushed downward along his open collar. "I'm saying so."
Reign closed his hand around my ankle and drew me to the edge of the sofa, leaning in to kiss me. My back sank into the cushions and my fingers slid into his hair. The cedar scent came down over me in layers, lips moving to my neck, my shoulder, every place the moonstone had touched — patiently erasing whatever traces the black pine had left behind.
"Reign." It was the first time I'd said his name in that kind of voice.
He stopped at my ear. "Say it again."
I didn't give him the satisfaction. Instead I bit down on his lower lip. Reign slid his hands under me and carried me upstairs. Before the master bedroom door closed, he gave me one last chance to leave. I grabbed his tie and pulled him into the room, answering him with a kiss.
The only light in the bedroom came from a single lamp beside the fireplace. Reign set me down at the edge of the bed and stayed standing a step away, as if waiting to see whether I'd make a different choice now that I'd had time to clear my head. I didn't like how composed he'd suddenly become, so I hooked my foot behind his leg and pulled him closer. "You said all those dangerous things on the way here, and now that we're actually here, you're just going to stand there and look?"
He wrapped his hand around my ankle, his palm traveling up my calf to the hem of my skirt and stopping there — not going further, but making it perfectly clear how much effort that restraint was costing him. "I'm making sure," he said, leaning in, "that the person you're seeing right now is me, not Callum's shadow."
"If I were still thinking about him, I wouldn't have kissed you in front of him." I grabbed his tie and brought his mouth to mine. "And I wouldn't have walked into this room with you." Reign held my gaze for a moment, then kissed me. This one had none of the provocation from the club, none of the testing from the car — only the want that had nowhere left to hide now that it was just the two of us.
His mouth moved along my jaw and down to the side of my neck, and every time it paused near that unmarked patch of skin, my wolf let out a low sound deep in my blood. I could feel that he wanted to bite down. I could also feel him pulling his canines back, again and again. That kind of restraint — right at the edge of danger — was more torturous than if he'd simply left the mark.
"Say stop, and I stop." His voice dropped against my skin. I reached up and covered his mouth with my hand. The heat of his breath burned against my fingertips. "I don't want to hear that word tonight. I just want you. I want more."
Reign closed his hand around my wrist and pressed my palm back into the bedding — no force, but enough that I couldn't keep using provocation to hide how unsteady my breathing had become. He looked down at me, and the gray-blue of his eyes was slowly taking on the silver that only appeared in a wolf's gaze when they were truly moved. "Then look at me," he said. "Don't treat me like a tool to get back at him."
I met his eyes and didn't look away, and I didn't bring up Callum again. I lifted my other hand and touched the bite mark on his lip — the one I'd left at the club. "If you don't want to be a tool, then make sure I wake up tomorrow still knowing why I chose you."
That made Reign lean back down and kiss me again. He still held back from leaving a permanent mark, but he stopped hiding how much he wanted to claim me. Outside, the snow was falling harder. Inside, the cedar scent grew thicker and heavier, until I couldn't find a single trace of black pine anywhere.
That night, Reign didn't complete a permanent mark — but he left his scent across every inch of bare skin. After the light went out, he still asked before every new threshold he crossed, until I finally lost all patience and pressed my hand over his mouth, telling that impossibly restrained Alpha to shut up.
In the morning, I woke up in Reign's arms, my shoulders and neck covered in the marks last night had left behind. My phone screen was stacked with seventeen missed calls from Callum. The most recent message, though, was from Leah.
[Thank you for leaving last night.]
[I'm pregnant. The baby is Callum's.]
