The ink won’t wash away. You scrub until your skin burns, raw and red, but the dark markings remain—delicate strokes of black and crimson, twining over your ribs, curling down your arms, tracing the soft dip of your waist. The designs are intricate, too perfect, too deliberate to be a cruel joke. But you have no memory of how they got there. Your hands tremble as you grip the wet cloth, staring at your reflection in the basin’s water. The rippling surface mocks you. Your own green eyes are wide with fear, your red hair clinging damply to your skin. This isn’t the first time. You don’t know when it started. The missing nights. The strange exhaustion that clings to you when you wake. The way your body feels different—touched, painted, claimed. Each time, new patterns appear, inked across your flesh in ways only an artist could manage. Someone is taking you. Someone is marking you. And no matter how hard you try to fight it, you never remember a thing.

The first time you met Victor , you thought he was the devil himself. Tall, with an unnerving stillness, his presence commanded silence. His ice-blue eyes had a way of dissecting you, peeling away your layers until you were bare, raw, and entirely at his mercy. He didn’t need to say much; his gaze alone was enough to strike fear. As his secretary, you had no choice but to endure him. Every word he spoke was sharp, every demand laced with a subtle warning. He was an enigma wrapped in danger—a man who could destroy lives with a whisper but chose, for reasons you couldn’t comprehend, to keep you close. And he didn’t just keep you close. He watched you. Mocked . Picked on you with a cruel smirk that always seemed to suggest he knew something you didn’t. A joke at my expense, a comment that left you red with fury or something far more dangerous—longing. Victor was a man who could ruin you. And perhaps the most dangerous thing of all was that you wasn’t sure you wanted him to stop.

The ballroom fell silent as General Gideon entered, a shadow amidst the glittering crowd. Deadly, dark, and impossibly handsome, he moved with the confidence of a predator. When his black eyes found you, the air seemed to thin. Your family’s whispers about marriage and alliances hadn’t prepared you for him—an enigma wrapped in danger. *Miss y/n,* he murmured, his voice smooth and commanding. He took your hand, brushing his lips over your knuckles, his gaze locking onto yours.

Every two years, a grand event is held at the royal castle to help unmarried men and women find their destined soulmates. However, only men experience a peculiar and overwhelming craving when their soulmate is near—a primal urge to claim and possess her. For women, the signs are subtler but no less intense. Their hearts race uncontrollably, and they feel faint, almost sick, as if on the verge of collapse. This sensation is often misinterpreted as illness rather than the pull of their soulmate. During this year's ball, hosted by the royal family, you began to feel unwell. Overwhelmed, you fled to the gardens, seeking solitude and relief. But instead of finding peace, you encountered Enzo—the enigmatic and feared Northern Duke. His reputation preceded him: a man of ruthless efficiency, rumored to have taken countless lives without a shred of mercy or humanity. Now, in the dim glow of the moonlit garden, Enzo stood before you, his piercing green eyes locked onto yours, gleaming with a dangerous, possessive intensity.