The Heir Who Shouldn’t Love Me
Description
Moonfell crowns its darlings and buries its Lowline-but Mara Ilyas refuses to bow. When the city's cold-blooded heir, Cael, unlocks a bond his wolf cannot deny, a forbidden pull ignites between dungeon bars and rain-slick streets. Trials of glasswalkers, whispered marks, and lantern-season politics force them from enemies to something far more dangerous-chosen. With Aster's stubborn light in Mara's chest and Rhun's growl under Cael's skin, every touch risks a war the Wardens can't control. Secrets ring like bells across the river as power shifts, debts come due, and a found family flickers into flame. The moon was never caged-only waiting for someone to listen.
Chapter 1
Jan 4, 2026
Mara’s POV
The rain is already soaking through my cloak by the time the drums begin. Slow at first—three heartbeats apart—then faster as the High-Tide Assembly fills the amphitheater with bodies and breath and heat. Moonfell always loved spectacle. They love the echo of their own righteousness. And tonight, I’m the chosen entertainment.
Warden Kade Riven stands on the upper dais, cloak blazing with silver embroidery, shoulders squared like the sky bows for him. It doesn’t. Not even the stars bother shining for him tonight.
“Citizens of Moonfell,” he announces, voice carrying across the crescent rows, “the resonance test confirms what many suspected.” He gestures toward me. “Mara Ilyas is low-resonant.”
Whispers ripple. Some pity. Some amusement. Mostly contempt.
My jaw tightens, and deep under my ribs, a spark flares. Aster. My resonance, soft and stubborn.
“Say something,” she whispers inside my mind, bright as a pulse of warm light. No. Not here. Not now.
I mentally shove her voice back down into silence. Survival depends on quiet.
Seris Vale steps forward at Kade’s right—draped in glass-bead chains, smile sharpened like fresh-cut quartz. “It’s unfortunate,” she says lightly, “but the Lady’s mantle requires real resonance, not a… flicker.”
A few people laugh. My stomach twists—not from humiliation but from recognition. Seris has been waiting years for this moment.
Kade lifts Seris’s hand as if presenting a prize. “By decree,” he declares, “Seris Vale will ascend as future Lady at next tide.”
The drums shift, pounding harder. The scent of wet stone rises around us. My vow-ink—thin silver lines across my wrists—catches the lantern light. My heart thrashes once under my ribs. Aster presses up again.
“Let me out—just a breath.”
No. I swallow hard, dropping my gaze, refusing to feed the fire.
Seris leans close, her breath warm against my ear. “You should bow.”
“Break your own spine,” I murmur.
She recoils as if slapped.
Kade’s eyes narrow. “Still insolent. Even when your place is dust.”
Dust. That’s what Lowline means. A worker, a nonentity. A body without a voice. The rain thickens until it feels like the sky is collapsing.
“Take her,” Kade orders.
Two guards seize my arms. I don’t fight, not here. Not with half the city watching and memorizing every twitch of my face. I keep my spine straight and my chin lifted.
Seris grins while I’m dragged from the dais. “Enjoy the cellars, Mara. At dawn, you’ll be marked. Properly.”
Aster surges against my skin—hot, furious. “Let me burn him.”
Later. If we live that long.
The amphitheater fades as they haul me down the slick stone steps, lanterns blurring into streaks of gold and blue. Thunder rolls overhead. My pulse matches it.
We pass under the final arch and into the deep corridor leading toward the old stairwell. Water drips from the ceiling. The walls smell of rust and mildew. The guards’ boots splash through puddles.
“Lowline at dawn,” one guard mutters. “Couldn’t have happened to a better brat.”
The other laughs. “Wonder if she’ll break.”
Oh, I’ll break something. But not myself.
We reach the heavy cellar door. It groans open, a wet mechanical cough.
As I’m shoved inside, Aster presses one last time against my ribs, breathless and urgent. “Hold on. Just hold on.”
I nod to no one. The door slams behind me.
Dark eats the room in one slow bite. Damp stone breathes against my back; the air tastes like old iron and rain kept too long in a barrel. I stand until my knees go loose, then I sit on the step and refuse to curl small. Small is what they stamp. I choose angles.
A gutter drips in a stubborn rhythm behind the door, trying to turn itself into a song. I match my breathing to it, then break the pattern out of spite. Aster coils low and bright inside my ribs like a coal under ash. “Let me light,” she pleads. “Not here,” I breathe.
Footsteps smear past the corridor, the lazy scrape of men who think the night belongs to them. Keys jangle. A laugh hooks the air, too loud. Someone mutters about broth. Someone else says brand in the morning, don’t bother feeding pride. I roll my wrist so the vow-ink flashes once, a private answer.
I learned this trick as a child: when a room tries to swallow you, count the truths it cannot change. One: rain falls whether tyrants clap or not. Two: breath returns when you invite it. Three: a floor is still a floor, and I can stand on it. Four: I am not dust.
Memory sidles in, unasked: my mother’s voice under storm shingles, teaching me to listen past the thunder. Laleh tying ribbon to a cracked jar so I could find it in the dark. “If they make you smaller, grow sideways,” she said, smiling like a blade in cloth. I tuck the smile in my pocket.
A rat investigates my boot and decides I’m not bread. Sensible. The cell is not a cage so much as an argument: damp, narrow, determined to convince me I am already marked. I place my palm on the wall and press. “Name it,” Aster whispers. “Stone,” I say. “My spine is stone tonight.”
Water shivers down a rusted chain in the corner. I crawl to it, drag the bucket closer, drink the metallic sip it gives. Cold steadies the riot in my chest. Outside, thunder rolls again, nearer. The Assembly loves a storm; it makes cruelty feel ceremonial. I prefer honesty. Rain is rain. Pain is pain.
Boots stop outside my door. The hatch scrapes open. A square of lamplight licks the floor. A guard peers in, eyes bored, mouth full of someone else’s joke. “Comfortable?” he asks. I lift an eyebrow. He snorts. “Enjoy your beauty rest. Dawn’s busy.” The hatch shuts. His laughter trails away like a cheap ribbon.
I let my head touch the wall just once. Not surrender. Measurement. I picture the amphitheater again, the silver on Kade’s cloak, the way he said dust like a prayer to himself. Seris’s breath at my ear. The drums climbing from ceremony to sentence. The crowd’s hunger. I file every face my eyes could catch.
When I close my eyes, I test futures. In one, I crawl to the branding block and let them rename me. In another, I try to run and they break my knees. In the truest one, I wait, and I listen, and I learn the hinge of the door and the lazy step of the guard.
Aster settles, not gone, just folded small. “You keep me leashed like a dog,” she grumbles. “I keep you breathing like a friend,” I answer. Thunder answers for both of us, a heavy hand on the city’s shoulder. The stone remembers older feet than Kade’s. The tide keeps its own clock. I keep mine.
I will meet dawn standing. Not bent, listening.
The Heir Who Shouldn’t Love Me
100 Chapters
100
Contents
Save
Passion Exclusive
My Passion
Copyright © 2026 Passion
XOLY LIMITED, 400 S. 4th Street, Suite 500, Las Vegas, NV 89101