Chapter Eight

TWO AND HAL YEARS AGO.

It still feels strange, even now, standing here and seeing both our names carved into steel and glass as though they were always meant to sit side by side.

Moreaux-Varyn Maritime Holdings AG.

A mouthful. A merger. A message, not just to shareholders, but to every bloodline and boardroom that ever doubted us. The war is over. The old lines have blurred. We’ve joined forces.

The rebranding happened fast, almost too fast to register. Strategic, efficient, clinical. Within a week after our union, the headquarters bore the legacy crests of Aquila and Varyn; the next, they had vanished. Every emblem removed, every plaque replaced. Even the elevator keycards were redesigned. Smooth, white, branded with a new emblem which was a mountain crest flanked by silver wolves, backlit in pale blue.

A clean slate, or the illusion of one.

Six months after our wedding, the ink dried, and the merger became law. Aquila and Varyn, united as a single corporate entity, controlling more than a third of all transoceanic freight along supernatural trade corridors. In the human world, it was a record-breaking alliance. In the werewolf world, it was an event akin to prophecy. There were whispers in the Alpine clans that the union marked the beginning of a new cycle…something about balance, about power shared across bloodlines. I still don’t understand half the superstitions, but I’ve learned enough to know that wolves do not take omens lightly. When two dynasties crossbreed commerce and legacy, the ripple isn’t just financial. It’s territorial. Spiritual. Mythic.

Publicly, it was hailed as a triumph.

Privately, it was another kind of tethering.

I was already based in Zürich. I had been running Aquila from the city center since before I could vote, splitting my days between cargo terminals and investor dinners, the lake always just behind the glass. It wasn’t a hard transition. Nothing about the geography changed.

But Niklath made sure everything else did.

He didn’t want separate towers. He didn’t want divided teams or out of sync agendas. He wanted rhythm. Proximity. Control. He made the call before I could weigh in and handed it to me like a gift dressed as logic.

“You’ll be working out of Prime Tower now, Mia. It makes sense. Let’s not pretend it’s about anything else.”

And so, I moved.

Now I stand in the glass-walled office on the fortieth floor, the espresso on my desk slowly going cold, and the projections for Port Saïd glowing from my tablet. Beyond the window, Lake Zürich stretches quiet and immense, catching the faintest sheen of winter light.

Everything about this floor reflects him.

It is clinical, minimal, powerful. The chairs are matte black. The art is abstract. The conference rooms are named after constellations. The air even smells like him, faintly pine with the trace of snow. I feel the shift before I hear it. The atmosphere thickens, the temperature pulls toward the familiar. There’s a charge that always moves ahead of him, like scent or storm warning. I am always able to sense him before he even steps into the room.

“I reviewed the numbers,” Niklath says as the door clicks softly behind him, his voice deep and gruff, still laced with the possessive edge he wore last night when he dragged me back into the shower when we got home from an event. “You padded in six percent.”

I don’t turn. Not yet. The last time I saw him, I was on my knees. I need a breath before I face him again.

“Because they’ll undercut in the second round,” I reply, keeping my voice level. “They always do.”

He walks toward me slowly, the weight of him impossible to ignore even when I’m not looking. “You were already anticipating their counter?”

“I anticipated it yesterday,” I say as I finally turn, watching him close the distance between us like a man walking toward something that already belongs to him.

His stare pins me. The air between us thickens. It coils around my spine and runs between my legs. I know that look. I saw it across the dinner table at the event yesterday, and again this morning when he pushed my legs apart and growled against my throat before I could even speak.

He steps forward once. Then again.

When he stops, we’re barely apart. My hips press instinctively into the edge of the desk. I don’t move. I don’t need to. My body already knows what’s coming.

His eyes drop to my mouth. Then lower. His hand reaches out and brushes the inside of my wrist, a featherlight touch that lands like fire. His fingers trail higher, gliding up my arm, and even through the silk of my blouse, I can feel his heat, his restraint. He has never once lost control.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he says, voice low, thick with want. “The way you looked walking through that lobby. Wearing my cum and pretending you weren’t soaked for me.”

My thighs clench. My breath hitches.

His hand slides to my waist, fingers slipping under the hem of my blouse. “This skirt… I should rip it. I should bend you over this desk and fuck you until you forget your own name.”

“Niklath…”

“Let me have you…wife.”

He lifts me in one swift motion, sets me down on the desk, and spreads my legs with one knee between them. The grip on my thigh is rough, his fingers digging in, claiming. His other hand finds the clasp of my skirt and unfastens it without ceremony, dragging the fabric aside.

He growls when he finds me bare beneath. I hadn’t worn underwear. I knew exactly what kind of late morning it would be.

“You’re already dripping,” he mutters, his thumb sliding through the slickness between my thighs. “You’re always ready for me.”

I gasp, my hands clenching around the edge of the desk as he leans down, mouth brushing the hollow of my neck.

“Do you know what that does to me?” he growls against my skin. “Knowing you stay wet for me, all fucking day, just waiting.”

He drops to his knees without warning.

My breath breaks into a moan as he spreads my thighs wider, pulling me to the edge of the desk. His mouth finds my clit with no hesitation. He licks, sucks, groans against me, each movement deliberate and punishing.

I cry out, fingers tangling in his thick dark hair, my thighs trembling.

He doesn’t stop.

He devours me.

“You taste like fucking heaven,” he says between strokes of his tongue. “Sweet like mangoes…mine.”

My hips buck forward. I am right there, teetering on the edge, shaking, begging without words. He lets go only when I scream his name and shatter against his mouth, legs wrapped tight around his shoulders, back arched off the desk.

Then he rises, mouth glistening, his blue eyes wild.

“We are not done.”

He undoes his belt in one harsh motion, pants dropping just enough to free his cock, already hard and thick, pulsing with need.

“Look at how hard you make me Mia,” he rasps. “You think I can sit through a meeting like this? You think I can sign a fucking document when all I want is to be buried inside you?”

He grips himself once, then shoves into me with a growl.

I cry out, the stretch deep and overwhelming. He fills me to the hilt in one sharp thrust, hands gripping my hips like he’ll never let me go.

He fucks me hard with deep, hungry possession.

The desk shakes. My body moves with every thrust. My breasts bounce beneath my blouse. My moans grow louder, messier. I can’t form words. I can barely hold on.

“You like this,” he grunts, slamming into me. “You like being fucked like this. Fucked like you’re nothing but mine.”

“Yes,” I breathe, voice broken. “Yes…”

His hands slide up to my throat, just holding, never squeezing. “Say it.”

“I’m yours.”

He snarls, hips driving forward harder, deeper. The rhythm breaks. His jaw clenches. His breath comes faster.

“You’re so fucking tight,” he groans. “So good. Your pussy was made for me.”

My second orgasm crashes through me before I can warn him. I shudder, scream, fall forward into his chest,he pulls me flush against him as he spills inside me with a guttural growl that shakes through both of us.

We stay like that for a moment. His hands cradle my hips. My cheek rests against his chest. He kisses my temple and slowly loosens his hold on me and at that moment the door opens.

I freeze, but Niklath just calmly lifts his head with slow precision. His body shields mine without urgency, but not out of shame. He stands tall, his chest rising with calm breath, his cock still semi-hard.

Angelica stands in the doorway.

She doesn’t speak. Her eyes lock onto him and stay.

There’s a flicker in her expression, something tight and flickering beneath the surface. Her gaze drops, just briefly, to the thick length of him exposed and unmistakably marked by what we just did. She stares longer than she should. Her lips part. Not in shock, but something closer to awe and envy.

It takes her a moment to tear her eyes away. When she finally looks at me, it’s quick. Then back to him.

Niklas doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t cover himself. He doesn’t move. He simply watches her, waiting.

The silence swells before she finally steps fully into the room, and the door clicks shut behind her.