The heavy, stifling cloak of guilt that had been suffocating Roxy for three days was entirely gone by the time she walked back into the master suite.

She closed the heavy mahogany doors and walked directly to the massive, carved wardrobe standing in the corner of the room. She bypassed the thick, shapeless Northern furs and the modest, heavy wool tunics she had been hiding inside.

Instead, she reached into the very back of the armoire, pulling out a dress she had sewn herself based on earth fashion.

It was a breathtaking gown made of liquid-smooth, emerald-green silk. It possessed a plunging neckline that left nothing to the imagination, and the fabric was expertly tailored to cling flawlessly to every single curve of her body, completely highlighting the soft, beautiful swell of her new pregnancy.

Roxy slipped the dress over her head. The silk cascaded down her thighs, the emerald color making her brilliant green eyes absolutely pop.

She let her dark curls fall in a wild, untamed cascade over her bare shoulders. She pinched her cheeks to bring the color back, completely erasing the image of the pale, weeping invalid.

She looked at her reflection in the tall mirror. The fragile, broken terrestrial victim was dead. The guilty, apologizing wife was gone.

The Matriarch of the Vanguard was going to war.

Phase One of the tactical seduction game officially began: Hit and Run.

Her first target was currently brooding in the eastern corridor. Roxy slipped out of the master suite, her bare feet silent on the stone floors. As she rounded the corner, she saw Zarek walking toward her. The colossal Dragon King was scowling, his massive shoulders tense, his golden eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards as he completely lost himself in his own agonizing, stubborn pride.

The hallway was narrow, but two people could comfortably pass if one yielded to the wall.

Roxy did not yield.

She walked directly down the center of the corridor. She didn’t slow her pace, and she didn’t cast her eyes down. Just as they intersected, she didn’t step out of his way; she stepped in.

Roxy "accidentally" brushed her body entirely against his. Her soft hip slid against his muscled thigh, the smooth emerald silk generating a tantalizing friction against the roughness of his trousers.

But it wasn’t just the physical contact. Roxy deliberately flared her transmigrated core, entirely releasing the heavy, intoxicating, and fiercely sweet scent of a pregnant Matriarch. The blooming, overwhelming fragrance of vanilla, crushed jasmine, and pure, primal mating pheromones washed directly over the Dragon King like a tidal wave.

Zarek froze.

His massive combat boots locked to the floorboards. His jaw dropped slightly, a sudden, ragged intake of breath pulling her blindingly sweet scent directly into his lungs. The blistering, volcanic heat in his chest instantly spiked, a wisp of dark, heated smoke escaping his parted lips as his golden eyes dilated into massive, feral draconic slits.

He instinctively raised his large, scarred hand to grab her waist, to pull her flush against his chest and bury his face in her neck.

But Roxy was already gone.

She didn’t pause. She didn’t look over her shoulder. She simply kept walking down the corridor, the gentle sway of her hips entirely mesmerizing, leaving the terrifying King of the Dragons completely paralyzed, breathless, and intensely aroused in the middle of the hallway.

Target two was the King of the North.

Roxy found Kaelen in his private study. The majestic Wolf King was standing behind his heavy mahogany desk, his knuckles resting flat against the wood as he grimly analyzed a sprawling map of the northern territories. He was actively trying to drown his emotional agony in administrative Vanguard duties.

The heavy oak door was already ajar. Roxy pushed it open and glided into the room.

Kaelen didn’t look up, but his broad shoulders instantly tensed. His highly sensitive lupine nose caught her scent, and the temperature in the study immediately dropped three degrees as his Warlord composure fought a violent, losing battle against his biological instincts.

"Do you need something, Roxy?" Kaelen asked, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that strained with the effort of remaining distant.

Roxy didn’t answer from across the room. She walked directly around the edge of the mahogany desk, completely invading his personal space.

Kaelen’s breath hitched as she stepped right up beside him. Without a single word of hesitation, Roxy leaned intimately over the desk to look at the map. The movement caused the emerald silk of her plunging neckline to completely drape open, entirely exposing the breathtaking, soft curve of her large, pale cleavage directly in his line of sight.

Kaelen’s icy blue eyes instantly, violently snapped downward.

The stoic, impenetrable King of the North completely short-circuited. His brain forgot the map. His mind completely erased the territorial borders. Every single primal, biological mating instinct he possessed screamed at him to reach out, to drag her onto the mahogany desk, and to claim his beautiful, transmigrated mate. The heavy inkwell sitting near his hand let out a sharp crack as a localized spike of freezing, sexually frustrated magic violently shattered the glass.

Roxy let out a soft, sweet hum, tracing a delicate finger over a random mountain range on the parchment.

"Looks complicated," Roxy purrs, her voice dripping with a sultry, intoxicating innocence.

Before Kaelen could utter a single syllable, before he could even raise his trembling hand to touch her arm, Roxy abruptly stood up straight. The breathtaking view vanished.

"I should go," Roxy announced breezily, smoothing down the silk of her dress. "I need to go check on Fedor."

She turned on her heel and glided out of the study, leaving Kaelen gripping the edge of the mahogany desk so hard the thick wood actually began to violently splinter beneath his fingers, his chest heaving with deep, ragged gasps of unspent lust.

Target three required a trip to the lower levels.

Torian was in the Manor’s expansive armory and storehouse. The colossal White Tiger Alpha was using pure, brute-force labor to distract his feral mind, hauling massive, heavy wooden crates of inventory around the room as if they weighed absolutely nothing. His dark tunic was discarded, his massive, sweat-glistened back muscles flexing beautifully under the dim lantern light.

Roxy slipped into the armory, entirely silent.

She approached him from behind just as he set a massive crate down. She didn’t speak to announce her presence. She simply reached out.

Her small, incredibly soft hand rested directly on the center of Torian’s massive, bulging bicep.

The touch was feather-light, but to the hyper-sensitive White Tiger, it felt like a branding iron of pure, unadulterated pleasure. Torian completely froze, his colossal frame locking rigidly in place. A deep, heavy, and entirely involuntary purr began to violently vibrate in the center of his massive chest.

Roxy let her fingers linger, her thumb slowly, deliberately stroking the heated skin of his arm.

"You’re working entirely too hard, Torian," Roxy murmured, her breath ghosting warmly across the sensitive skin of his shoulder blade.

Torian’s bright blue eyes dilated entirely into completely black, massive feline pupils. His massive chest expanded as he sucked in a desperate breath. His Warlord pride completely snapped. He violently spun around, his hands reaching out to pull her against his sweat-slicked chest, ready to completely surrender to the Matriarch.

But his massive hands closed around empty air.

Roxy had already taken three steps backward. She offered him a devastatingly sweet, innocent smile, her green eyes sparkling with mischief, before turning around and disappearing through the heavy wooden doors.

Torian let out a low groan, his tiger tail dropping from beneath his trousers to twitch aggressively with violently frustrated mating instincts.

By late afternoon, the Iron-Wood Manor was a complete, chaotic powder keg of intensely strained Warlord biology.

Syris and Caspian, who had been observing the absolute, catastrophic deterioration of their brothers from afar, immediately recognized the lethal, tactical nature of her movements. The King of the Swamps and the King of the Seas had officially caught onto her game.

An emergency meeting was immediately called in the central parlor.

The five Vanguard Alpha Kings were pacing the room like caged, feral beasts. The air in the parlor was so thick with unspent lust, dark combat magic, and biological frustration that it was practically suffocating. Zarek was actively smoking from the nostrils. Kaelen was radiating a freezing, jagged mist. Torian was pacing the floorboards, his heavy boots thudding aggressively.

"We are under attack," Syris declared, his elegant fingers aggressively rubbing his temples as he leaned against the mantle. "She is actively, systematically hunting us."

"She is weaponizing our biology," Caspian agreed, his striking blue eyes completely dark, his voice a low, strained rasp. "She knows exactly how entirely devoted we are, and she is using our mating instincts to completely obliterate our resolve."

"I almost ripped the desk in half," Kaelen confessed, his voice completely raw, burying his face in his large hands. "I cannot do this. If she looks at me like that one more time, I am going to yield."

"No!" Zarek growled, though his massive chest was heaving with the exact same desperate agony. "We made a pact! She lied to us! We cannot just fall to our knees the second she bathes us in her scent! We have to hold the line!"

"She knows," Torian rumbled, his voice vibrating with a terrifying, primal hunger. The massive Tiger Alpha stopped pacing, his dark, dilated eyes sweeping over his brothers. "She knows exactly what she is doing to us."

Upstairs, completely hidden in the dark shadows of the grand mezzanine balcony, Roxy stood entirely still.

She was looking down through the carved wooden railing, listening to the agonizing, desperate, and fiercely aroused Warlord parliament crumbling below her. The absolute, undeniable proof of their crippling obsession washed away the last lingering shadows of her terrestrial trauma.

A slow, wicked, and incredibly beautiful smirk spread across her lips. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Roxy leaned against the railing, her brilliant green eyes flashing with the ultimate, terrifying authority of a Vanguard Matriarch who had entirely reclaimed her power.

"Let’s see how long you can last,"