Chapter 112: Catherine

Later, the quiet hiss of the showerhead had completely faded into the warm, still elegance of the master suite.

Wrapped in a heavy, plush white robe that swallowed her small frame, Iris sat on the edge of the monumental bed. She held a dry towel, methodically blotting the moisture from her dark hair.

The frantic emotional haze of the morning was finally settling, leaving behind a strange, unexpected sense of calm rather than the sheer panic she had anticipated. Beneath her skin, right at her collarbone, the mark no longer burned with that agonizing, feverish pulse of unsated desire. Instead, it hummed with a quiet, steady warmth—like a hearth fire crackling softly in the background of her mind.

The heavy door to the dressing room glided open, and Alexander stepped out. He was fully dressed in a dark, ultra-soft cashmere sweater that hugged his broad chest and tailored charcoal trousers that emphasized his long, powerful legs. The raw, primal edge he had carried in the shower was once again locked securely behind an impenetrable mask of quiet authority. Yet, as his blue eyes settled on her sitting by the edge of the mattress, the sudden softness in his expression was undeniable.

He walked over smoothly, his footsteps silent against the thick Persian rug. Stopping beside her, he reached down and gently took the towel from her hands. Sitting on the mattress directly behind her, he gathered her wet hair into the terrycloth, drying the dark strands with slow, rhythmic, and incredibly careful strokes.

“You are very quiet,” Alexander noted softly, his deep baritone breaking the silence of the room.

Iris tilted her head back slightly, allowing her weight to rest against the solid expanse of his chest. She closed her eyes, taking comfort in the gentle, steady movement of his large hands working through her hair.

“I’m just thinking,” she admitted softly.

“About?”

Iris let out a long, quiet sigh, watching the morning mist swirl outside the grand floor-to-ceiling windows. “Nothing….at least, not for now.”

********

Zoey had never been particularly fond of mornings, but after the sheer, unadulterated emotional exhaustion of the previous night, she had developed a profound, almost spiritual appreciation for the kind of sleep that effectively blotted out the existence of the waking world.

The bed certainly played a monumental role in that recovery. It was monstrously enormous, layered with crisp white sheets of impossibly high thread count, dense goose-down pillows, and a mattress so perfectly calibrated that she suspected it cost significantly more than the cumulative value of everything she and Iris owned back in their cramped university flat.

The guest suite itself was equally absurd—high vaulted ceilings, hand-carved mahogany crown molding, heavy velvet drapes that shut out the morning light, a private marble bathroom, and an expanse of open floor space that could easily have swallowed their entire apartment living room whole.

If this was what sleeping in a Blackthorne guest suite felt like, Zoey was rapidly beginning to understand how billionaires cultivated such a dangerously detached relationship with reality.

She lay sprawled diagonally across the mattress, one leg hopelessly tangled in the silk sheets, her cheek pressed deep into a pillow that felt less like stuffed cotton and more like a captured cloud.

For the first time since they had stepped onto the estate, her mind wasn’t racing with frantic hypotheticals about campus gossip, overdue credit card bills, or the terrifying possibility of being hunted by ancient supernatural bloodlines.

She was drifting in absolute, blissful unconsciousness.

Well, that was until her phone began vibrating insistently against the polished wood of the bedside table.

The sound started as a dull, muffled hum, barely registering beneath the thick, narcotic fog of deep sleep. Zoey let out a low, pathetic groan, pressing her face deeper into the pillow and praying to whatever cosmic entity was listening that whoever was calling would suddenly develop basic common sense and hang up.

The phone did not stop. If anything, the vibration grew more aggressive, buzzing rhythmically against the table with an irritating, unyielding persistence.

“Oh, for the love of all that is holy…” she muttered into the down feathers, her voice thick and raspy with sleep. She blindly reached a hand out from beneath the duvet, swatting clumsily across the wood until her fingers finally hooked around the vibrating metal casing of her device.

“Whoever you are, I genuinely hope whatever emergency you are currently experiencing is worth disturbing the best dream I have had in three years.”

She dragged the phone up toward her ear without bothering to pry her eyelids open. Into the receiver, she barked a distinctly unwelcoming, “Hello?”

“WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU TWO?”

The shriek was so loud, so instantly piercing, that Zoey shot upright as though she had been struck by lightning. The silk sheets instantly tangled tighter around her waist, nearly pitching her forward off the edge of the mattress.

“What the—”

She stared down at the screen in pure disbelief, blinking rapidly against the sudden daylight as if the glowing interface might somehow explain why a banshee was screaming directly into her eardrum before seven in the morning.

The caller ID flashed a name she hadn’t expected to trigger such instant dread: Cat.

Oh. No.

Panic rushed through her veins, instantly incinerating the remnants of her sleep. She had completely, utterly forgotten.

Zoey slowly brought the phone back up to her ear, her expression undergoing a miraculous metamorphosis from groggy irritation to the painfully strained, artificial smile of someone who had just realized she was standing over an active landmine.

“Heeey, Cathy,” she said, stretching the greeting out into an awkward, high-pitched sing-song. “How are you doing, girl? It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? How was the flight?”

“Don’t you dare give me that fake-ass ‘heeey, Cathy’ routine, Zoey Brooks!” Catherine’s voice practically vibrated with furious adrenaline.

“I have been calling both of you since yesterday afternoon, and neither of you has had the basic human decency to answer a single ring! Do you have any absolute idea what kind of panic I’ve been putting myself through? I flew back into town, walked into our apartment expecting to find my best friends, only to discover that the place looked like a ghost town. Iris’s phone is going straight to voicemail, you are completely off the grid, and neither of you showed up to any of our regular spots! I even drove by Iris’s campus job, and her manager looked at me like I was insane. I was this close to dialing 911 and filing a missing persons report!”

Zoey winced, instinctively pulling the phone an inch away from her ear as Catherine paused to suck in a furious breath. Her friend had always possessed the lung capacity of an opera singer, but apparently, a red-eye flight had done nothing to tame her dramatic range.

“Okay, first of all, good morning to you too,” Zoey began in her most soothing, diplomatic tone. “Second, I am very much alive and intact, as you can probably deduce from the fact that I am currently listening to you threaten to involve law enforcement. And third, before you start drafting our joint obituary, I need you to take a deep, measured breath and calm down.”

“Calm down?” Catherine shrieked.

Zoey closed her eyes, mentally slapping herself. Wrong phrase. Definitely the wrong phrase.

“Yes, calm down. Please, Cathy, I am literally begging you,” Zoey pleaded, massaging her temples. “I know from an outside perspective this looks shady as hell, but there is a perfectly reasonable, logical explanation for everything.”

“Oh, really? Wonderful. Then explain it right now. I am listening.”

Zoey froze. Her gaze drifted slowly around the palatial guest suite. She looked at the heavy, custom-tailored drapes framing the tall windows. She looked at the ornate Persian rug beneath the bed. She looked at the marble-tiled private bathroom door standing slightly ajar across the room.

And she remembered that beyond these walls lay an entire fortified, gothic estate belonging to a three-thousand-year-old Lycan king whose species ran secret global shadow economies.

She gave her forehead a tired rub. Where on earth was she supposed to even begin stitching together a believable lie?

Hi, Cathy! Remember how I spend half my free time reading weird supernatural webnovels and watching old werewolf movies? Well, plot twist: monsters are real, and I am currently sleeping in a billionaire’s gothic fortress in the woods. Oh, and Iris accidentally hooked up with an immortal monarch who marked her as his eternal mate, and we got chauffeured here in a luxury sedan that probably costs more than our entire apartment complex.

Yes. That would definitely keep Catherine calm and rational.

“It’s… a really long story, Cathy,” Zoey finally offered, her voice dipping into a cautious register. “A profoundly long, convoluted story, and I honestly can’t break it down properly over a mobile phone connection. There are a lot of moving parts right now, and frankly, some of it isn’t even my story to tell. I need to sync up with Iris before I start tossing explanations around, so you’re just going to have to grant me a little grace.”