Very late that night, the dense, suffocating silence of the master bedroom felt less like a sanctuary and more like a high-voltage cage. The custom bed was an island of white silk, but to Malcolm Ford, it had transformed into a grid of pure, agonizing torment.
He lay perfectly still on his side, his powerful frame coiled into a tense, rigid line. Beneath the heavy fabric of his dark nightwear, his skin was glistening with a thick layer of cold sweat. A slow, terrifyingly intense wave of liquid fire was creeping through his veins, starting from the dark, pulsing mark on his neck and radiating downward into his chest, his stomach, and deep into his lower abdomen. The heat was unlike anything he had ever experienced in his entire life as an S-tier Alpha. It didn't just warm his flesh; it felt like it was actively boiling his cellular structure from the inside out, melting away his ironclad willpower piece by piece.
