Chapter 10: She Must Be Playing Hard to Get

"Indeed. Why do you look upon my words with such suspicion?"

Clara forced her breathing to remain flawlessly even, maintaining a fragile mask of detachment under his gaze.

Yet, the absolute second the words left her lips, the icy shadow within Dominic’s gaze deepened by a lethal fraction.

Though his spy network had not fully unraveled Clara’s past history, Gamma Logan had already discovered that the residential deed for those border coordinates did not bear Clara's name; it belonged to an entirely different wolf.

The supreme Alpha King had already concluded that this female had woven a direct lie within his presence.

If a creature was caught masking the truth regarding a single coordinate, it meant her entire existence was saturated with hidden agendas.

Dominic pressed his lips into a harsh, silent line, refusing to violently expose her deception at this exact hour.

He turned the ignition key, unleashing the low rumble of the armored engine.

The midnight wilderness was as dark as ink, and as the vehicle tore through the shadows, both souls harbored their own silent war, refusing to bridge the distance with another word.

As they neared the outer perimeter gates of Hazel’s residential pack territory, Dominic suddenly slammed the brakes, bringing the transport to a sudden halt by the forest roadside.

"Unmask your true identity. Who exactly are you?"

The sudden, razor-sharp interrogation caught Clara completely off-guard, causing her chest to tighten with panic.

But the seasoned instincts of a relic hunter returned within a single heartbeat, smoothing her features into cool indifference. "Alpha Dominic, your Matriarch summoned my presence to her private solar tonight strictly to evaluate an ancient relic. I never calculated that our paths would cross-contaminate so inconveniently within your ancestral home."

"A relic evaluation?" Dominic’s amber eyes narrowed with deep suspicion, his predatory mind fiercely rejecting her explanation.

He could map out no logical sequence wherein his fiercely proud and proper Matriarch would abduct a strange female to her solar during the deepest hours of the night for mere trinkets.

However, the Matriarch had been relentlessly pressuring his wolf to secure a Luna, demanding he claim a mate before the seasons shifted.

Could this Clara Thorne merely be a pawn his grandmother selected to force his hand?

Yet, that deduction carried a glaring contradiction; after all, Clara already ran with a pup.

Unless... she had deliberately suppressed the existence of her offspring, hiding her maternal status to gain proximity to the supreme Matriarch's favor...

As Dominic finalized his mental calculations, a sudden, inexplicable surge of dark possessive anger corrupted his veins.

The exact moment his mind shifted back to the soft, endearing image of that silent little pup, his wolf felt an overwhelming wave of fierce, protective agony for the boy.

As a mother, Clara should be expending every ounce of her life force to hunt down elite mind-healers to mend her pup's broken consciousness; instead, she was spending her cycles plotting intricate tactical traps to ensnare a powerful male!

"Regardless of whatever game you are running, I refuse to tolerate your scent inside my ancestral den ever again."

At this exact hour, Dominic’s judgment of Clara had degraded into pure disgust.

The phantom spark of attraction that had briefly compromised his cold armor back at the pack hospital had entirely dissolved into ash.

Within his worldview, her flawless, harmless exterior was merely a weaponized illusion designed to blind and manipulate dominant males.

Throughout his cycles of rule, countless opportunistic females had attempted to breach his perimeter using similar maneuvers.

Every single one of them had triggered his absolute revulsion, and naturally, not a single bitch had ever succeeded.

"You may rest your arrogant mind, Alpha King. I merely granted the Matriarch a minor favor to settle a debt. Past this hour, unless the ancient gods dictate otherwise, I harbor absolutely no desire to cross paths with entities of your dangerous standing ever again."

Staring at his supreme, untouchable posture, a fierce flame of pride ignited within Clara's chest, her emerald gaze flashing with defiance. "Furthermore, regarding the formal feast scheduled for tomorrow evening, a critical complication has manifested within my pack schedule. I will not be accompanying your presence to dinner."

Without granting Dominic a single breath to issue a counter-argument, she threw open the armored heavy door and stepped straight out into the dark night air.

Dominic sat completely paralyzed, his calculation grid short-circuiting as the sequence defied his predictions.

He had explicitly rejected her presence, yet by the laws of his status and immense wealth, shouldn't a rogue female like her crawl back, begging for a sliver of his attention? Why had she vanished into the treeline without hesitation, even forfeiting a golden, hard-won opportunity to isolate his aura in a private dining chamber?

"Heh. She is merely playing hard to get."

After a long, brooding silence beneath the moonlight, his thin lips twisted as he rasped out the cynical conclusion.

Aside from a calculated mating game of cat and mouse, his mind could conceive no other motive.

Yet, when the sun dipped below the horizon the following evening, Dominic had still received absolutely zero correspondence from Clara Thorne.

An uncharacteristic restlessness began to gnaw at his wolf's patience. His hand repeatedly drifted down, checking the ticking gold numbers on his luxury timepiece, when the Matriarch's voice cut through his agitation from across the solar. "Dominic, the hourglass is emptying. Why is your towering frame still anchored here instead of escorting young Clara to the feast?"

Dominic pressed his lips tight, his dominant pride refusing to confess to the formidable Matriarch that a rogue female had flatly rejected his presence the night before. Forced into a corner, he rose to his full height, his voice smooth but rigid. "By your leave, Matriarch. I am departing for her territory this very second."