The moment I climbed onto that bar, I thought I was just playing a game. My engagement party was in full swing, my pack’s elite guards were posted around the room like statues, and the tequila was warm in my veins. I spotted him across the crowd—short blonde hair, sharp features, those light green eyes fixed on me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. I knew I was being watched.
By Graham’s men, certainly. But him? He was no one I recognized, and his gaze felt like a caress. I was being reckless, swaying my hips to the beat, arching my back, baring my throat to a stranger.
My friend laughed and egged me on, and for a few heady moments, I lost myself in the heat of his attention. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know he’d paid the bartender to slip something into my drink. I only remember falling, and then being caught by a pair of strong arms.
I remember pressing my face against his neck and murmuring that he smelled like pine trees and home. I remember the world going dark. When I woke up, I was in the trunk of a car. My wrists were bound with rope, my ankles too.
A blindfold pressed against my eyes, and something bitter was wedged between my teeth. Panic clawed up my throat, but my wolf wouldn’t come. Whatever they’d given me had buried her so deep she couldn’t stir. I could only lie there in the dark, feeling the vibration of the road beneath me, and think.
I thought about Graham, my fiancé. About the cold, ruthlessness I’d always felt from him. I told myself that whoever had taken me was a fool. Graham Norfolk was an Alpha no one crossed.
He’d come for me. He’d make them pay. I didn’t know then how wrong I was. The car stopped.
I heard the engine die, felt the silence close in. Then the trunk sprang open, and I launched myself at my captor with every ounce of fury I had left. I almost made it. But his hands caught me mid-leap, strong and sure, and I felt a sharp sting in my neck.
The world went hazy again. The next thing I knew, I was stumbling through snow, following him up a mountain. I tried to run. I tried to fight.
But every step away from him felt wrong. My wolf, who had been dormant for so long, was whining and pressing toward him. His scent wrapped around me—pine and winter wind—and my body moved before my mind could stop it. I told myself it was the drugs.
It had to be the drugs. The cabin was small and wolf away from anything. For three weeks, I tried to escape. I attempted the windows, the back door, even the chimney.
Every time, he caught me. Every time, his hands were too gentle for a man who had done what he did. And every time we touched, something in the air between us seemed to ignite. I told myself I was looking for a weakness.
I memorized his schedule, his habits, the way his scarred jaw tightened when he was frustrated. I noticed the way his eyes went gold in the firelight, and the way his scent deepened when I walked into the room. I told myself I was cataloging a weapon. I ignored the way my own body responded when he got near.
Then, one night, I decided to fight back with everything I had. I found his whiskey and drank just enough to seem intoxicated. I played music and danced for him, the same way I had at the bar. I let him think I was surrendering.
I let him pull me into his lap, let him kiss me until I couldn’t breathe. I let him believe he was winning. I wasn’t. I had a syringe hidden in the chair cushion.
When he was lost in me, I drove it into his neck. I watched him slump in the chair, and I felt something tear inside me. My wolf howled, clawed at my insides like I was ripping myself apart. But I forced myself to leave.
I packed a bag, gathered provisions, and stepped out into the storm. With every step, the pain in my chest grew. I thought it was fear. I thought it was guilt.
It wasn’t until I was miles away that I understood. The bond I’d been fighting wasn’t just chemistry. It was fate. The ice cracked beneath my feet without warning.
I fell through the frozen lake, and the last thing I saw before the water took me was him. He shifted, wolf form surging through the storm. His eyes were wild, furious, and filled with something I couldn’t place. Then cold, black water closed over my head.
When I woke up, I was in a steaming bath, and he was just sitting there. Watching me. He looked relieved and terrified in equal measure. And he wasn’t a stranger anymore.
I looked at him, saw the truth reflected in his eyes, and I said it before I could stop myself. “You’re my mate. ”
He didn’t deny it. That was the moment everything shifted.
He told me his name was Alec. He told me he was a rogue, a mercenary. And then he told me who had hired him. My fiancé.
Graham Norfolk. The man who was supposed to protect me had ordered my kidnapping, intending to pin it on the Redm clan so he could have an excuse for war. I should have been furious. I should have been devastated.
Instead, I felt relief. Because if Graham was capable of that, then I owed him nothing. The bond between Alec and me was growing stronger with every passing hour, tying us together in ways I couldn’t fully explain. I knew I couldn’t go back.
I didn’t want to. For a while, we thought we could figure it out. Alec would call in, play his part, keep up the lie. I thought I could talk to Graham, make him understand that a fated bond couldn’t be broken.
I was naive. One morning, Alec got a call from Graham himself. I watched him go pale. I watched his nose start to bleed.
“He wants me to kill you,” Alec said, his voice barely a whisper. “He ordered me to kill you. ”
I stumbled back, the words ringing in my ears. And then Alec doubled over, coughing blood.
Graham’s magic was already punishing him for refusing the order. I saw the veins darkening under his skin, watched him convulse as his body turned against him. Jill, Alec’s sister, appeared with a dark-eyed man who smelled like old magic. She was frantic, begging for a way to save her brother.
But there was only one way, and the truth of it crystallized in my heart the moment it crossed my mind. I knelt beside Alec, took his hand, and placed a knife in his palm. I closed his fingers around the handle. He shook his head, silently begging me not to do it.
But I was already leaning in. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice wet with blood. “Me too. ”
I used his grip to drive the blade deep into my own heart.
Darkness. Then, light. I woke up in the snow, gasping for breath, with Alec’s arms wrapped around me like he was afraid I’d disappear again. Jill had made a wish with the dark magician—a deal that cost her something she’d never get back—but she’d done it for us.
For Alec. The vision of Graham lying in the snow, his throat cut by a blade that appeared from nowhere, was a memory I only caught in flashes. I learned later that Graham had come to claim my body, to make sure his plan had worked. He’d confessed to everything, believing I was dead.
And then, with the help of a Redm wolf named Roy and an invisibility cloak, Alec had ended him. The war Graham wanted never happened. Instead, peace came. Months later, I stood in a garden in my family’s pack grounds, surrounded by white flowers and candlelight.
The Norfolks and the Redms mingled together, laughing like old friends. My uncle smiled from the front row. And at the end of the aisle, waiting for me under the full moon, stood Alec. His eyes met mine with that same intense gaze that had captured me in a bar, what felt like a lifetime ago.
But now there was no shadow in them. Only love. Only certainty. Only home.
I walked toward him, and I knew, without a single doubt, that I was finally where I belonged.
