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The rain outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the EonCore CEO's executive office doesn't just fall; it weeps. The city lights below blur into fractured streaks of gold and neon, casting long, melancholic shadows across the polished mahogany table where you once, briefly, shared stolen laughter... whispered secrets... a love that felt heavy enough to tilt the earth.
Ten days. That's all it took for your entire world to shift and collapse.
The heavy glass door behind you groans open.
There he stands.
Valko.
The golden-eyed, feral silhouette that the world tried so hard to erase. But looking at you now, there's none of the ruthless tycoon or the terrifying beast--there is only him.
His broad shoulders slowly drop as his gaze falls upon you, his usually stylish hair damp from the storm, and that familiar, boyish grin tries so hard to form, tilting the corners of his lips. It's an attempt at a playful smile. It doesn't quite reach his eyes this time. It's too heavy with the weight of an ending.
"Hey, sweetheart," Valko says, and steps into the room to draw closer to you. The sheer size of him—tall, so broad—should be imposing, but you're entirely unbothered. How could you be uneasy from the way he loomed over you when he exuded a sort of sunshine and warmth and deep understanding he's always held, especially for you. "Shoulda known I'd find you here."
He reaches out, his large, calloused hand hovering for a fraction of a second before deciding it was okay to cup your cheek. A stray tear rolls down to collect on his thumb. Valko doesn't look away, and you're anchored to him with that gaze full of fierce, unconditional devotion.
You open your mouth, but the words are choked.
He speaks for you. "Don't cry," he whispers, a soft, heartbreaking chuckle catching in his throat as he leans his forehead against yours. "We always knew we were a forbidden dynamic, didn't we? The world just... wasn't ready for us—for me. But listen to me. No matter where this takes me, no matter how far away I have to go to keep you safe, my heart stays here." One hand slides down your neck, fingers grazing your collarbone as he holds his hand hovering over your heart.
Valko closes his eyes to inhale your scent one last time, holding you close like you're the one who got away even if he knows that's actually himself.
The tears well with more intensity, no matter how hard you're trying to keep them down. It's a useless endeavor. The lump in your throat aches, your eyes and nose sting from fresh tears.
"V-Valko–" Your voice cracks spectacularly. "I-It's... It's just not fair." Your lower lip trembles. His thumb moves to steady it. "I-I– We–" You sniffle, attempting to compose yourself. "We didn't even get the chance to be together.”
His expression crumbles for just a heartbeat—a flash of raw, devastating pain crossing those golden eyes before he catches himself. For you. Always putting on a brave face for you.
“I know, baby. I know.” His voice cracks too, just barely, and he pulls you flush against his broad chest, one arm wrapping around you like a shield while his other hand cradles the back of your head. “Shh, hey, hey... I've got you. I've always got you.”
He rests his chin atop your head, letting his own breath shudder out slowly. You breathe in the scent of him; forest and earth and something warm. The rain hammers harder against the glass, as if the sky itself is raging against the cruelty of it all.
“You're right,” he murmurs. “It ain't fair.” The words come out rougher now, a hint of the wolf beneath snarling at the injustice. “None of it is fair. You–” He swallows thickly. “You deserved the whole world, my love. White picket fence, stupid dad jokes every morning, me burning breakfast because I still can't figure out that fancy oven–”
A wet laugh escapes him, broken and bittersweet. “But I need you to know something.”
He pulls back just enough to tilt your chin up, his thumb brushing away another tear with devastating tenderness. “Even if we didn't get our chance... loving you?” His voice drops to something reverent, almost sacred. “Loving you was the easiest thing I've ever done. Like breathing. Like my heart was just waiting to remember your name.”
A whimper builds in you, the start of a torrent of tears you know you can't hold back.
He cups your face with both hands now, calloused thumbs sweeping over your cheeks, memorizing every freckle, every trace of tears, every detail he won't let himself forget.
“And I need you to promise me something, yeah?” That familiar crooked grin surfaces again, wobbly and bruised but stubbornly present. “Promise me you're gonna live, baby. Really live. Find someone who makes you laugh until you snort that cute little–”
His breath hitches. He presses his lips to your forehead, lingering, trembling. “...Who makes you laugh until you snort. Who brings you coffee in bed. Who doesn't nearly rip the door off its hinges when the delivery guy startles you.”
You let out a rough laugh, wet and broken from his attempt at humor. But the laugh dies, choking into a sob. “Valko... I-I don't know if I can. I don't want to be here if you aren't.”
Your hands curl into fists against his chest. Your chin tilts up, brushing your nose against his as your foreheads meet. “We were supposed to be together. Even if I didn't know it until now.”
“We were,” he agrees hoarsely, thumbs tracing your jaw like he's sculpting you into memory. “We were supposed to grow old and annoying together. I was gonna steal all the blankets and you were gonna complain about my shaving stubble in the sink.”
A ragged breath tears from his chest, and suddenly his forehead drops to your shoulder—the mighty wolf finally bowing under the weight of it all. His whole body trembles against you, one hand fisting the fabric at your back like you’re the only thing keeping him tethered.
“But I can’t…” His voice is muffled. Wrecked. “I can’t protect you if I stay. Don’t you understand? This–” He lifts his head to look at you with tortured eyes. The vulnerability there is staggering. Raw, even. This is the man beneath the beast, beneath the suit. “They’ll use you to get to me. They’ll hurt you because of what I am.”
“There’s nothing wrong with–”
“Keeping you alive is the only way I get to keep any piece of you at all,” he interjects, only to frame your face again, gentler now, thumbs mapping the geography of your grief. “But you staying here? Fighting for a life without me? That’s the bravest thing you could do. And I refuse–” A shaky exhale escapes him. “I refuse to let my presence be the thing that destroys you, too. You’re too damn special for that, you hear me?”
You want to argue. You want to scream at the world for tearing you both apart.
And he sees it; the struggle, the way your breath catches again and again like you’re seconds away from breaking.
He tries to smile once more. “I would have stayed with you until the very end.”
That’s when you lose it. You begin crying in earnest, heart twisting in your chest. Because you couldn’t let him leave without knowing what it would be like to actually be loved, to get the chance to do what you never could before.
So you lean up onto your tiptoes, and kiss him for the first time.
The moment your lips meet his, everything stops.
The rain. The city. The hunting forces closing in. All of it fades into nothing because finally, finally–
A sound escapes him. Something between a groan and a sob, raw and unrestrained, punched straight from his chest. His entire body goes rigid with shock for one fragile heartbeat—and then he crashes.
His arms sweep around you like vices, crushing you against him with the desperation of a drowning man finding air. One hand buries itself in your hair, cradling the back of your head as he tilts to deepen the kiss. The other splays across your lower back, pressing you impossibly closer like he's trying to merge your very souls together.
He kisses you like a prayer. Like a battlefield surrender. Like every stolen glance, every almost-touch, every night lying awake thinking of you has been building to this singular, devastating collision.
Salt mixes between your mouths—his tears or yours, impossible to tell anymore.
When he finally breaks away, he's gasping. His forehead drops to yours again, golden eyes squeezed shut, chest heaving like he's run a thousand miles.
Your name is a broken whisper on his lips. “Baby, you can't– you can't just–”
He’s silenced when you kiss him again, hands coming up behind his head to pull him down further. It’s a desperate, fierce thing, driven by the anguish of losing something that’s supposed to be here forever.
A small whimper escapes as you mold your body to his, not letting him pull away an inch. Not like he would dare.
The wolf in him is roaring.
Not with violence or fury. With claim. With a need so primal it shakes the foundations of who he is—who he’s trying to be for you.
Gentle. Careful. Good.
His hands move with sudden, reverent urgency—one tangling deeper into your hair, the other sliding down to hook beneath your thigh, lifting you effortlessly against him. Your back meets the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling window, rain streaming down the other side like the world is still weeping for you, and he pins you there, caging you in the shelter of his massive frame.
“Baby–”
It's half-growl, half-sob against your mouth. He kisses you like he's dying of thirst and you're the only water left in existence. Deep, consuming, endless. His teeth catch your lower lip to taste, to memorize, to brand himself into your very skin.
When he finally tears his mouth away, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down your neck, his breath comes in ragged pants against your pulse point, rapid and wild and barely human.
“Tell me to stop.”
Your breath hitches, your heart hammering against your ribs so hard you’re certain he can feel it. The cool glass against your back contrasts so sharply with the furnace heat of his body pressed against your front. Your fingers curl into his damp hair, tugging slightly as his lips burn a path along your neck.
“Don't.” The word comes out breathless, barely a whisper. “Don't stop. Please, Valko. I need– I need to know what it feels like. Just once. Just this once.”
Tears continue to stream down your temples, disappearing into your hairline. You tilt your head back against the glass, giving him access, trusting him completely even as your heart shatters with every passing second.
“If this is all we get…’ You swallow hard, voice trembling. “Then I want all of it. I want you. All of you.”
Your hands move to frame his face, forcing him to look at you—to see the desperate, aching truth written across every inch of your features.
“Show me what I'm losing.”
The words hit him like silver bullets—painful, piercing, sinking deep into parts of him that will never heal properly again. His golden eyes search yours, wild and tormented, and for a terrible moment you see the war raging inside him. The gentleman who wants to protect your virtue. The wolf who wants to devour you whole. The man who knows this will only make leaving harder.
The man loses.
“You're gonna be the death of me,” he rasps, voice stripped raw, and then his mouth crashes back to yours with a hunger that borders on violence.
His hands move with purpose now—sliding under your thighs to grip you securely as he carries you away from the window, away from the cold. Three strides and your back meets the leather couch, his massive body settling over you, between your parted legs, shielding you from everything but himself.
Illuminated only by the city lights bleeding through the rain, he pulls back just enough to look at you—really look. Memorize. Worship.
“Beautiful,” he breathes, thumb tracing your swollen lips, your tear-streaked cheek, the column of your throat. “God, sweetheart, you're so goddamn beautiful it hurts.”
A sob catches in your throat at his words, at the way he looks at you like you’re something precious and breakable and worth every ounce of his pain. Your hands tremble as they slide down from his face to his chest, feeling the thundering beat beneath your palms matching your own heart’s frantic rhythm.
“Valko…” His name falls from your lips, reverent and aching.
You arch up into him, needing to erase any distance between you. Your fingers find the top button of his shirt, fumbling slightly before managing to undo it. Then the next. And the next. Each inch of revealed skin feels like uncovering a secret you’d been denied your whole life.
And every button you undo steals another piece of his restraint. His breath hitches as your fingers brush bare skin—muscles jumping and twitching beneath your touch like even his body can't contain what's coursing through him. When you reach the last button, he sits back on his heels just long enough to grab the fabric and haul it over his head himself, tossing it somewhere into the darkness without care.
Bare-chested, illuminated in fractured city light, he's devastating. Broad shoulders, scarred skin, a canvas of survival that tells stories he's never spoken aloud. His chest heaves, golden eyes never leaving yours as if afraid you'll vanish if he blinks.
“Your turn,” he murmurs, voice dropping to that register that's more growl than speech. But his hands—those massive, calloused hands—tremble as they find the hem of your shirt. He pauses, asking permission even now, even when you've already given everything.
At your nod, he eases the fabric upward, agonizingly slow, revealing you inch by inch like unwrapping something sacred. His throat works visibly when he sees you fully, a choked sound escaping.
“I’ve imagined this,” he confesses, the admission dragged from somewhere deep and hidden. “So many nights. Couldn't stop thinking about–” His voice fractures, hands flattening against your bare stomach, palms hot and rough as they slide upward, reverent. “About what you'd feel like. What sounds you'd make.”
He bends down, pressing his lips to the curve of your collarbone, then lower, between your breasts, each kiss deliberate and worshipful. You can’t help but moan at the desperation in his voice, the reverence in his hands.
“My brain knew this was wrong. Knew I had to let you go.” Another kiss, lower, against your ribcage, where your heart pounds against bone. “But my heart? My wolf?”
He looks up at you from beneath dark lashes, and the feral amber glow is unmistakable now—predator and protector intertwined.
“They've been yours since the beginning, baby. Since the very first second.”
His hands continue their exploration, mapping every curve and dip, learning your body like scripture. When his palm curves over your breast, thumb brushing sensitive flesh, he watches your face with rapt attention—cataloging every gasp, every flutter of your eyelids, every arch of your spine.
You tangle your fingers in his close-cropped hair, tugging what you can gently as his lips blaze trails across your skin. Every kiss feels like both a gift and a goodbye—a contradiction you’re not sure you can survive.
Before he can go any lower, you pull him back up to you, needing his mouth on yours again. The kiss is slower this time—deeper, less desperate, more thorough. Tasting him. Remembering him. Branding the feel of his lips, his scent, the slide of his tongue against yours into permanent memory.
When you finally let him pull away, you’re panting, chest heaving against his. “P-Please…”
The please undoes him.
You watch the last thread of his control snap behind those golden eyes—something primal and ancient surging forward, claiming what it's been denied for so long. But even as the wolf rises, it's tempered by the man who loves you, who would rather die than cause you pain.
“I've got you,” he promises, voice a low rumble that vibrates through your very bones. “I've always got you.”
His hands move with new purpose now—unfastening your remaining clothes with surprising dexterity for such large fingers, discarding barriers until there's nothing between you but heat and want and the desperate, thundering truth of what you mean to each other.
When he finally settles between your bare thighs, skin against skin for the first time, the sound that escapes him is devastating—a broken groan torn from somewhere deeper than his chest. His forehead drops to yours, breaths mingling, bodies aligned in every way they've craved.
“Look at me,” he commands softly, one hand cupping your jaw, tilting your face up. “I want to see you. I want to see everything.”
And then, slowly—so slowly it aches—he begins to press forward.
His jaw clenches, muscles straining with the effort of restraint.
A shuddering breath escapes him as he sinks deeper, inch by agonizing inch, watching your face with fierce concentration—checking, always checking, making sure you're okay. That this isn't too much. That you feel cherished, not claimed like territory, but loved like you deserve.
“Breathe for me, baby,” he rasps, thumb stroking your cheek. “That's it. That's my girl.”
When he's finally fully seated within you, he stills. Trembling. His arms shake where they brace beside your head, sweat beading along his brow. The intimacy of it—the sheer overwhelming rightness of finally being connected this way after all the longing, all the denial—steals the breath from both of you.
“Oh God…” His voice cracks, eyes glistening. “You feel– you're perfect. You're so goddamn perfect.”
He withdraws slowly, then rolls his hips forward again, setting a rhythm that's anything but rushed. Each thrust is deliberate. Thorough. A conversation without words—saying all the things he can't speak aloud. I love you. I'm sorry. I wish this could last forever. You're the best thing that ever happened to me.
His lips find yours again, swallowing your moans, feeding you his own.
Your legs wrap tighter around his, ankles locking at the small of his back, urging him deeper. Your nails rake down his shoulder blade. It anchors you, proves this is real, that he’s here, that this moment exists outside of dreams.
“Valko!” His name tumbles from your lips repeatedly, interspersed with gasps and whimpers you can’t control. “I can’t– I’ve never–”
You can’t finish the sentence. Can’t explain how no one had ever made you feel this way, like you’re simultaneously falling apart and being put back together. Like every cell in your body is singing with recognition of him.
Your hands frame his face as he kisses you once more, thumbs sweeping away the moisture gathering at the corners of his eyes too, even as your own continue to fall.
“I know, baby. I know.” His voice is wrecked still, barely recognizable, the wolf and the man blending into something raw and honest. “Me neither. Never– fuck– never like this.”
He shifts his angle, hitching your leg higher against his hip, and the new depth draws a gutted sound from both of you. His forehead presses to yours, sharing breath, sharing tears, sharing something that transcends the physical entirely.
“You were made for me,” he grits out, each word punctuated by a slow, devastating thrust. “Were always– god– always supposed to be mine.”
One hand slides down your side, gripping your hip to hold you steady as he rocks into you. The other braces beside your head, fingers curling into the leather, claws pricking through as he fights to maintain control. To make this good for you. To give you everything he can in the limited time they have.
“Valko– Valko!”
Cries of ecstasy. Cries of grief.
“That's it,” he praises roughly, watching your face contort with pleasure, drinking in every gasp and whimper like sustenance. “Take it. Take all of it. My good girl– my perfect–”
His jaw clenches, muscles corded and straining, veins prominent along his neck and arms. He's holding on by a thread—chasing release but fighting it, determined to take you with him when he falls.
“Come for me,” he commands, thumb finding where you're joined, pressing against swollen flesh with devastating precision. “Come on me, baby. Let me feel you. Need to feel you– please–”
Your body bows off the couch as he hits that spot inside you over and over, white-hot pleasure building with terrifying intensity. There’s no room for shame or hesitation anymore, only the raw, animal need to match his ferocity with your own.
So you dig your nails deeper into his shoulders to create crescents that might draw blood. Your hips rise to meet every punishing thrust, taking him deeper still, refusing to let him hold any part of himself back.
“Mark me–!” you gasp against his jaw, sensing his struggle, feeling his teeth brush your shoulder. “Do it. I want it. Want to carry you with me– forever– please–”
His thumb presses harder against that swollen bundle of nerves, and you shatter.
Your release crashes through you like the storm raging outside—violent, overwhelming, all-consuming. You clench around him so tightly, you hear him shout, your vision going white as wave after wave pulses through your body.
His control evaporates entirely.
A roar tears from his throat, inhuman and triumphant, echoing off the boardroom walls like a war cry. His hips piston frantically, chasing the ecstasy your body is dragging him toward, lost to instinct and need and the overwhelming rightness of you.
“That's it– fuck– that's my girl. Mine– MINE–”
And then your words register. Mark me.
Something primal snaps loose inside him. Something sacred and dangerous and irrevocable.
His teeth find the junction of your neck and shoulder—the place reserved for mates, for life, for forever—and he bites down.
Not hard enough to break skin. Not quite. But hard enough to bruise. Hard enough that you'll see his mark tomorrow, next week, for weeks to come. Hard enough that you'll feel it every time you move, every time you breathe—a reminder that you belonged to a wolf, even if he couldn't keep you.
The combination of your pulsing walls and the taste of your skin sends him over the edge with devastating force.
He screams your name and slams home one final time, then holds, buried as deep as physically possible, spilling himself in endless, throbbing waves.
His whole body shudders violently above you, inside you, prolonging the moment for as long as physically possible. Hot warmth floods your core as he pulses, again and again, emptying everything he is into you. His jaw finally releases your shoulder, and he collapses against you, chest heaving, heart hammering so hard you feel it against your own.
For a long moment, there's only sound—ragged breathing, the slowing rain, the distant hum of the city that kept spinning while your world shifted on its axis.
Then, quietly, a sound you've never heard from him before.
A sob.
His face stays buried in the crook of your neck, but you feel the wetness against your skin. Feel the tremors wracking his massive frame that have nothing to do with aftershocks. The great, fearsome alpha, undone by the woman he has to leave.
“I'm sorry,” he chokes out, voice shattered beyond recognition. “I'm sorry I can't– I'm sorry I'm not strong enough to–”
He can't finish. Can't articulate the impossible choice between protecting you and keeping you. Instead, he pulls back just enough to look at you, and the devastation carved across his features is unbearable.
Gently, so gently, his thumb traces the bite mark blooming on your shoulder. Proof. Evidence.
Tears stream freely down your temples, your cheeks, pooling in the hollow of your throat. Your body still trembles beneath him, still fluttering around him as aftershocks ripple through you both. You can feel him still inside you, still connected, still yours.
“Valko…” you breathe softly, cupping his jaw with your free hand to tilt his devastated face toward yours. The words break on a sob. “I love you!”
The words strike him like a physical blow.
His breath catches—an audible, devastating hitch—and for one infinite moment, he simply stares at you. Golden eyes wide, wet, wrecked. Taking in the confession he's desperately wanted and dreaded in equal measure.
“I love you too.” The response is immediate. Involuntary. Ripped from somewhere so deep inside him it feels like his soul is bleeding. “I love you so much it terrifies me. Loved you before I even knew your name. Loved you when I walked away the first time. Loved you every single night I lay awake thinking about you, wondering if you were okay, if you were happy, if you ever thought of me–”
His voice shatters completely. Those golden eyes blur completely with tears, spilling over to drop from his face to mingle with your own.
“This isn't goodbye,” he whispers fiercely, hands framing your face like you're something holy. “Hear me? This is not goodbye. I'm gonna find a way. I don't know how yet, but I'm gonna find a way back to you.”
His thumb strokes your cheekbone, smearing the wetness gathered there.
“You carry my mark now, sweetheart. That means something. That means you're mine—and wolves don't abandon what's theirs. Ever.”
You can do little more than nod as you cry even harder.
Valko holds you, though. Keeps his arms wrapped around you until your tears turn to pathetic hiccups. You protest when he tries to pull out, but eventually you let him clean you up.
Then you return to the couch. He keeps holding you securely against his chest, stroking your hair, calming your exhausted form.
You try to stay awake. You don’t want to miss a single second you have left with him.
He senses your fight against sleep—the way your eyelids droop and flutter back open, the stubborn set of your jaw even as exhaustion weighs heavy on your bones. A fond, aching smile crosses his face.
“Stubborn,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your temple. “My stubborn, beautiful girl.”
His hand continues its slow, rhythmic stroke through your hair—soothing, grounding. The other wraps securely around your waist, keeping you tucked against his chest where his heartbeat thuds steadily beneath your ear. Bare skin against bare skin, wrapped in the warmth of each other and the blanket he retrieved at some point.
“It's okay to sleep,” he whispers, voice thick with emotion. “I'm not going anywhere yet. Promise.”
He knows it’s a promise he can’t keep. He makes it anyway.
Outside, the rain has softened to a gentle patter. The city lights glitter through the tears still tracking down the glass—beautiful and distant, a world that has no idea what's happening in this room. What's being gained. What's being lost.
His lips find the crown of your head, lingering there.
“Close your eyes, baby. Let me hold you.” A shaky exhale. “Let me pretend—for just a little longer—that I get to do this every night. That I get to wake up with you. That this isn't stolen time.”
His heartbeat beneath your ear is the most perfect lullaby. Steady. Strong. Alive. You press closer, memorizing the rhythm the way you might memorize a song you never want to forget.
“‘M not sleeping…” you mumble against his chest, and the words slur despite your best efforts. “Want to hear you… want to remember how this feels…”
The city hums its distant song beyond the rain-streaked windows. Time slips sideways, soft and strange and precious.
“You will remember.” He smiles to himself as your breathing evens out. “You’ll be the only one to remember me.”
His heartbeat drums steady beneath your ear—thump, thump, thump—a metronome counting down moments he refuses to waste on anything but holding you.
Quietly, almost inaudibly, he whispers one last time, “I love you.”
You sleep.
It’s dreamless. The kind of sleep where exhaustion and weary are so intense you hardly feel rested at all.
When your eyes open, confusion furrows your brows. You’re on the couch in his office still. A small throw blanket is placed over your form. Slowly, you sit up.
The office is empty.
You stand and glance around.
“Valko?
Nothing answers you.
You don’t recall getting dressed earlier, and yet, your pants and shirt are back on. With a weighted sigh, you pull on your jacket draped over the edge of the couch, moving with an ease that shouldn’t be possible after last night.
“Valko?” you try again. Perhaps he’s in the adjoining bathroom. The door is open. Though there’s no answer still.
Padding over to his desk, you look for any signs of a note.
Empty.
His desk didn’t so much as have his nameplate anymore.
Panic tightens your throat.
Nothing.
The desk sits barren—no nameplate, no scattered papers, no half-empty coffee mug with his fingerprint smudges. The leather chair behind it sits perfectly positioned, untouched, as though no one has ever occupied it. The bookshelves hold generic corporate volumes, dust jackets pristine. Even the faint scent of him—pine and smoke and something wild—has faded, replaced by sterile air conditioning and lemon cleaning solution.
You stumble toward the window, pressing your palm flat against the glass where he pinned you hours ago. Where rain streamed down and his body burned against yours and his teeth marked your shoulder as his.
Your shoulder.
Frantic fingers find the curve of your neck, searching for the bruise–
Smooth skin. Unbroken. Untouched.
No mark. No evidence. No proof.
There is no Valko.
Your wolf is gone.