Alec’s first mistake was watching her. His second was catching her when she fell. The bar was loud and bright, pulsing with cheap neon and the heavy scent of perfume, sweat, and alcohol. Talia shouldn’t have been there at all—she was the bride-to-be of Alpha Graham Norfold, and her engagement party was supposed to be a celebration of the alliance between their packs.
But the liquor barely touched her shifter metabolism, and she was giddy with the promise of her upcoming mating ceremony. She swayed on the bar top, letting her blonde hair tumble loose around her shoulders, rolling her hips to the beat while her friends cheered her on. She felt him before she saw him. A prickle down her spine, like a shadow crossing light.
Her smile faded as her gaze found the man leaning against the back wall. Short blonde hair, sharp features, and light green eyes that gleamed with dark intent. He wasn’t one of Graham’s men. She would have remembered him.
Tall, broad, and watching her as if he knew every dirty thought running through her head. She should have stopped. But she was feeling reckless, defiant, and the way his eyes lingered felt like a caress. She danced for him.
Arching her back, baring her throat, losing herself in the heat of his gaze. She didn’t know his name, but all she could feel was him. She never saw the needle slide into her drink. The world went soft, her steps faltered, and then those strong arms were catching her as she tumbled from the bar.
His scent—pine and winter wind—made her wolf purr with contentment for just a heartbeat before everything went dark. Talia woke to the vibration of a car engine and the rough burn of rope around her wrists. She was in a trunk, blindfolded and gagged, and the drugs pressing down on her system made her body feel like it was wrapped in cotton. Her wolf was dormant, trapped beneath a chemical haze.
Panic clawed at her throat, and then her mind flashed to Graham—her cold, ruthless fiancé. Whoever had taken her was a fool. Graham would come for her. Graham would make them pay.
But the drugs wore off, and her first escape attempt nearly succeeded. She shifted the moment the trunk opened, launching sixty pounds of snarling wolf at her captor’s throat. He caught her mid-leap—she was quick, but he was faster. Stronger.
His hands were gentle at the last second, guiding her to the frozen ground instead of slamming her into it, and he stroked the soft fur behind her ears even as he drove a syringe into her flank. “Nice try, princess. ”
She hated him. She hated the way her body reacted when he carried her up the mountain to a remote cabin, the way her wolf seemed to lean into his presence instead of fighting it.
She hated how safe he made her feel when she was his prisoner. Her next attempts were more desperate. A bathroom window with iron bars. The back door during a storm.
Even the chimney. Each time, he caught her. Each time, those hands that could kill her were almost tender as they brought her back. And each touch, each growl, each moment of his body pressed against hers, made her burn in ways she didn’t understand.
“Your name is Alec,” she said one day, sitting in the bath after he’d pulled her from a frozen lake. She’d tried to flee during the worst blizzard of the season, and the ice had given way beneath her. He’d pulled her out, carried her back, and warmed her until the blue left her lips. “You’re my mate, aren’t you?
”
His silence confirmed it. And then the truth came out, more horrifying than any betrayal she could have imagined. “Graham Norfold. Your fiancé.
He’s who I’m working for. He paid me to take you. ”
Her world tilted. It wasn’t the Redm clan who’d orchestrated her disappearance to start a war.
It was her own intended mate. Graham wanted her gone so he could blame the Redms, rally the other packs, and crush his oldest enemies. She was nothing but a pawn in his game. Alec was a rogue.
He claimed pack politics had nothing to do with him. But the bond between them was already forming, growing stronger with every passing day, and soon the distance between them felt like a physical wound. When she tried to leave, her body fought her. The mate bond pulled her back, and he felt it too, trapped between duty and a desire he could no longer deny.
When the fever took them both, raw instinct won. He found her in his bed, wearing his shirt, desperate with need. The mating bite sealed the bond between them in a rush of blood and pleasure, and for one perfect moment, they belonged to each other completely. It lasted less than a day.
Graham’s call came sharp and cold through the satellite phone. “I’ll assume everything is still going according to plan. ”
Alec hesitated. He hadn’t checked in for days.
Graham’s voice turned silken with warning. “So Talia is still there, then? ”
“About Talia, sir…”
“I kill her. ”
The words hit like a physical blow.
Graham wanted Talia dead. He ordered Alec to clean up the house and dump her body on the mountain. When Alec refused, the magic that bound him to the Alpha’s command turned his body against him. Blood trickled from his nose, his throat constricted, and he collapsed in agony.
“Tell me where you want to meet,” Alec gasped into the phone, blood spilling from his lips. “I’ll carry her to the car. We’ll leave her on the mountain. ”
“Good.
The mountain, then. And Alec? ” Graham’s voice carried the detached amusement of a man discussing the weather. “I want to see her body myself.
”
“Fine. ”
They drove in silence, Talia wrapped in a coat beside him, her hand gripping his. When they reached the agreed-upon spot, Graham emerged from the blizzard, immaculate in his wool coat. Power rolled off him in waves, and his eyes were empty as frozen lakes.
When he looked at Talia’s lifeless form, his lips curved into a satisfied smile. Alec didn’t wait. He lunged, and Graham raised his hand, ready to give the order that would end him. The blade appeared from nowhere—a silver arc through the falling snow.
It sliced through Graham’s throat, twisting as it tore. The sound of his shock mixed with the wet gurgle of blood on snow as the Alpha crumpled to his knees. “Your belated engagement present from Talia,” Alec said coldly. “She couldn’t give it to you herself.
”
Roy Redm materialized from the storm, dropping an invisibility cloak. His grin was all teeth. “Happy to serve as Talia Montrose’s sword. ”
But there was no victory in Alec’s chest.
He laid Talia carefully in the snow, his hands trembling as they closed around the hilt of the knife still buried in her heart. Jill had made a wish with a dark mage—that when the blade was removed, Talia would come back to life. But the seconds stretched into an eternity, and the void where her bond should have been threatened to swallow him whole. Then Talia’s eyes snapped open.
He held her, breathing her name, feeling her warmth flood back through the bond she’d brought him back from the dead with. Later, she sat beside him by a fire he couldn’t remember building. “I should have told you the truth,” she said softly. “That I’d claimed you as my mate before you left.
”
He stared at her, his wolf surging with fierce, possessive joy. “You did? ”
“At the bar. ” Her smile was small and broken.
“I told you everything would be all right. I told you I’d come back. ”
He pulled her close, burying his face in her hair. He didn’t know what the journey ahead would bring—the packs would need time to heal, the wounds were still too fresh.
But as he held his mate in his arms, with the storm finally passing outside, he knew one thing. They would face it all together.
