Chapter 132: Good Boy. Now, Mark Me.

One mumble-mouthed, mid-dream, mate-moaning bastard just whispered another woman’s name into the face of a princess in premium lingerie.

Celeste had stripped, shivered, straddled, and strategized her way onto an Alpha’s lap and the Alpha dream-dialed the wrong damn woman.

Her smile curdled so fast it should have come with a chemical warning.

"Celeste," she corrected in a whisper. "You want Celeste, Landon. Ce-leste. Two syllables. The pretty one."

He sniffed in his sleep. Once. Twice. His brow furrowed, the expression of a man whose subconscious had received information and was filing a complaint about it.

"Doesn’t smell like her," he mumbled into the dark.

"It does smell like her," Celeste hissed. "This is exactly what I smell like. I am wearing my signature fragrance, Landon."

His breathing evened. The correction had been submitted and rejected. His unconscious mind apparently needed to learn what it liked.

Celeste sat in his lap for a full ten seconds. Straddling the Alpha of the largest pack in Helix. In red lace. Wrapped in his blanket. Perched on a lap that smelled like another woman. While the owner of the lap murmured that woman’s name in his sleep and complained that Celeste’s signature fragrance was wrong.

"Yeah." She exhaled once through her nose, looking up at the ceiling, reconsidering every choice that had led to this moment. "I thought I could do this. I really did. But this is uncomfortable."

Uncomfortable was doing the work of forty worse words. This lap was a punishment. A rock-hard, slave-scented, wrong-name-muttering punishment that the Goddess had designed as a character test and Celeste was failing it one thigh at a time.

She swung one leg over so she was straddling him properly, knees on either side of his hips. The blanket fell off her shoulders. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his neck. Once. Twice. Working down towards his collarbone with the methodical determination of a woman who had decided that if his lap wasn’t cooperating, his neck would, and his neck was going to participate whether it had been consulted or not.

His pulse was warm against her mouth. Steady. Slow. The heartbeat of a man who had no idea what was happening to him and was having a very different dream.

Celeste Starborne had survived a priestess strip show, a head falling from the sky, masked soldiers, a courtyard tray to the forehead, and a faint that went too long. She was not going to be stopped by a sleeping Alpha who couldn’t remember her name.

She kissed down his neck with the calculated determination of a woman executing a business plan and the business was seduction and the quarterly targets were non-negotiable.

His head tilted back. Involuntary. The movement of a body whose brain was still asleep and whose neck had received a stimulus and responded the way necks respond, which is by providing access.

His neck tilted like a drawbridge lowering for an army it didn’t know was hostile. She accepted the invitation with the enthusiasm of a woman who had been waiting for any part of this man to cooperate and his neck had volunteered.

She pressed harder. Rolled her hips once. Twice. Found a rhythm that the chair didn’t approve of but couldn’t prevent.

His hips moved back.

Celeste’s grin returned. Vindicated. Victorious. The scoreboard read Celeste: 1, Unconscious Alpha: 0, and she was about to run up the score.

His hand came down on her ass so hard the sound bounced off every wall in the chamber.

"Just like that, baby."

The words came out rough and half-formed, the verbal output of a man whose brain was running a dream and whose mouth was leaking the dialogue. His eyes were still closed. His hips were still moving. The hand that had just made contact with her ass stayed there, gripping, and the grip was doing things to Celeste’s composure that she was going to journal about later.

"I’ve been a very bad girl," she whispered in his ear. She had. In every conceivable definition of the word. "Punish me, Alpha. Spank me again."

His other hand found her other ass cheek. Pulled her closer. The grind deepened and his breathing changed, heavier, faster, the sound of a man whose body had picked a lane and was accelerating.

"I love you, Nova."

The words hit the room like a glass shattering at a wedding.

Celeste’s rhythm stuttered for exactly one beat. Her jaw locked. Her left eye twitched once.

"Swap the name, Landon," she corrected, resuming the grind with renewed aggression. "Celeste. Say Celeste. That name is gross. A shit name. The kind of name a woman picks when she wants to sound like every other basic-bitch star that already got used in three bad tattoos and a stripper’s stage name."

"Nova," he murmured again, still asleep, still moving, still completely unaware that the woman on top of him was the wrong woman and the name on his lips was a restraining order wrapped in syllables.

"Ce-leste," she enunciated in his ear. "Two syllables. Ce." Hump. "Leste." Hump. "Try again."

Silence.

"Ce." Hump. "Leste." Hump.

Nothing.

"Ce." Harder. "Leste." Harder.

His mouth opened. She leaned in.

"Nova," he breathed.

"Celeste."

His mouth found her neck. Open. Warm. Then his teeth scraped the skin just below her jaw and the scrape was intentional in the way that only one thing is intentional when a wolf’s mouth finds a woman’s throat.

His fangs grazed her.

Celeste understood with absolute, crystalline clarity that the next three seconds were going to determine the rest of her life and she was vibrating.

"Correct. Good boy," she breathed, tilting her neck for him. "Mark me, Landon. Your Luna."

One bite. His venom would create a matebond between them. Permanent. Irreversible. No take backs. He only gets one. Problem solved.

The kind of commitment that transcended elder panels and reassignment protocols and every administrative obstacle that had been placed between Celeste Starborne and the crown she had been promised since birth.

She pushed her neck into him harder. "Puncture my skin, Alpha."