The Wolf God's Unwanted Luna

Vivian’s POV

I reached out and gently pulled his hand away from his face. I brought it to my lips and kissed his knuckles, then held his hand against my cheek before lacing our fingers together. I gave him a soft, encouraging smile.

He looked at me from beneath thick black lashes, blue eyes filled with something I’d never seen in them before. Vulnerability. A few strands of his hair had fallen forward, shadowing his expression, but nothing could hide what was simmering there. He didn’t look like a predator right now. He looked like someone about to hand me a piece of his soul and bracing for me to drop it.

"I had it built," he said quietly, slowly, like the words weighed a thousand pounds, "as soon as I heard."

"Heard what?" I asked gently, sensing how much this was costing him.

"That they, that they were giving me a mate."

My breath hitched. I stared at him, confused. That would’ve been a long time ago. But when we first met, he hadn’t trusted me at all, he’d gone through my head without asking. Why build a house for someone you were convinced might be a weapon aimed at you? My expression must have given me away because he kept going, trying to fill in the gaps.

"As time passed, I started to think maybe it was just a rumor. Or maybe, even if I found you, it wouldn’t work out. So I moved into the pack house and just... forgot about this place." He glanced toward the house, then back at me. "But it’s finished. Furnished. It’s been waiting."

I blinked at him. "But why? Why build it at all?"

He smiled at me then, soft and sad, and lifted a hand to tuck a loose strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers trailed lightly along my cheek before dropping away.

"Because I guess," he said quietly, "even monsters want a family to love."

He gave my hand one last squeeze, then slipped out of the car, leaving me sitting there with a thundering heart and tears threatening to spill down my face.

I sat with that for a moment before I could move.

It wasn’t the word monster that got me, or even the vulnerability of him admitting he’d built this house in secret on a hope he’d almost given up on. It was the simplicity of it. He hadn’t dressed it up or tried to make it sound like less than what it was. He’d just said it plainly, without armor, and somehow that landed harder than anything else he’d ever said to me. Six hundred years old, and the thing that broke through was this: even monsters want a family to love.

He circled the car to open my door, and by the time he appeared, I had myself mostly together. That realization, though, had settled deep. Zaliver might move through the world on dominance and instinct, but underneath all of that was still someone capable of wanting things, ordinary things, that no amount of power or centuries of living had ever managed to give him. Marking me hadn’t just been territorial. It had come from somewhere he probably didn’t even have a full name for yet, and neither did I.

When he extended his hand, I didn’t hesitate. I placed mine in his, and together we stood facing the house.

Our house.

"Do you like it?" he asked, voice unusually quiet as he pulled a key from his pocket.

I turned to look at him, letting a soft smile spread across my face. "I love it. It’s perfect."

The tension drained from his shoulders visibly. His whole face lit up with a grin so wide and unguarded, so completely unlike him, that I almost didn’t recognize it as his. Then, without any warning, he swept me off my feet.

"Zaliver!" I shrieked, laughing as he spun me in circles, the night air rushing past us, laughter coming from both of us at once.

He stopped, still holding me, and started walking up the steps to the front door.

"What are you doing?" I giggled.

"Carrying you over the threshold," he said, like that was completely obvious.

I arched a brow. "That only works if we’re married."

"I wouldn’t be too sure about that," he muttered, a cheeky smirk tugging at his mouth.

I shook my head, still smiling, as he somehow managed to unlock the front door one-handed without putting me down.

"So," he said, glancing down at me, "how’s my wooing going so far?"

I tried to hold a straight face. I failed completely. The corner of my mouth twitched upward before I could stop it.

He took that as an absolute victory. "I’ll take that as a very good sign."

Just before he stepped inside, his expression shifted. Something darker, more deliberate, moved through his eyes.

"I have to warn you, Vivian," he said, all traces of playfulness gone from his voice.

My heart skipped. "What?"

He leaned in, lowering his voice like he was sharing something scandalous. "Most of my wooing will take place here. And so will other things."

A slow smirk pulled at his lips, his blue eyes gleaming with wicked satisfaction. "The living room. The floor. The bedrooms. The walls—"

"Zaliver!" I gasped, half-laughing and absolutely mortified.

"The shower and tub. The stairs. The gym. The pool—"

"Wait." I blinked. "We have a pool?"

His smirk widened. "Yeah. Wanna go see it now? Or maybe the trampoline first, we could really—"

"Zaliver!" My face was on fire, but laughter was already bubbling up through it and there was nothing I could do about it.

His laugh echoed through the entryway as he kicked the door shut behind us, warm and full and real.

And just like that, something shifted. A large piece of the anger and confusion and hurt I’d been carrying toward him began, quietly, to loosen. Not disappear entirely, not yet, but loosen and soften at the edges. In its place, something warmer started to take up room. Something that scared me a little, if I was being honest.

But somehow, it felt like exactly the right kind of scared. The kind that meant something real was on the other side of it.

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