The last thing I remembered was my little sister’s party by the hotel pool. Then waking up tied to a stranger’s bed in lingerie I’d never seen before, with a shower running somewhere close. I didn’t recognize the room. I didn’t recognize the clothes.
But when the bathroom door opened and Kieran stepped out, towel slung low, his alpha scent filling the air, I recognized him all too well. He was my sister’s mate. Her husband. The one man I’d almost married five years ago.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he purred, lowering himself onto the bed like a predator approaching prey. I should have screamed. I should have fought. But what came out of his mouth next shattered everything I thought I knew.
“You are my wife, Vivien. You’ve been my wife for the past five years. ”
I was engaged at seventeen. Early engagements were common among shifters.
Marriage led to mating bonds, and every shifter thrived for one. I’d been prepared for that. What I hadn’t been prepared for was heartbreak, or waking up married to the last man I ever expected to be tied to. Six hours earlier, I’d been standing at that pool party, watching my sister Margot glow in her lavender dress beside Kieran.
They looked happy. The perfect Alpha couple. And I’d been there for one reason only: to ask questions about Seth, an Alpha from a neighboring pack who’d gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Harry, my pack’s Alpha, had sent me to investigate.
Apparently blood samples had been traced back to this hotel, and Seth had been here too long. His pack needed him back. They were worried about his well-being. I hadn’t expected to run into Kieran, let alone have him corner me near the gardens, whispering that this all could have been mine if I’d only said yes that day all those years ago.
Why didn’t you say yes? he’d asked. Even your Alpha agreed. Our packs had the entire engagement party planned.
I never gave him a proper explanation when I ended things. We’d practically been a done deal. But then I’d broken it off, and he’d met Margot barely a month later. I’d always wondered if he’d ever truly cared or if Margot was just the easier choice.
He didn’t seem to think I owed him an explanation either. Instead, he’d stood there looking at me like I was the one who owed him closure. I hadn’t expected to run into Harry’s mate Emma either, though she seemed different in this world. Stronger.
More confident. She’d been struggling with some shifter named Cole, the hotel’s Beta, a cruel man who seemed to enjoy preying on the weak. I hadn’t expected to find myself in Kieran’s bed later that night, tied up and barely dressed, wondering how I’d gotten there in the first place. “Relax,” Kieran had told me when I’d pulled against the cuffs.
“You’re my wife. There’s nothing wrong with this. ”
I didn’t remember marrying him. I didn’t remember agreeing to any of this.
The last thing I remembered was taking a drink, then everything going blurry. But he kept saying we’d been married for five years. He kept saying I was his wife, that soon I’d be his mate, no more delaying. I didn’t believe him.
Not until he mentioned his sister’s name, until he started talking about promises made and vows exchanged, and the panic started to set in. I was tied to his bed, his hands pinned mine above my head, his mouth tracing my neck. And somewhere in the haze of it all, I realized I’d been drugged. I’d been intoxicated, likely with vampire venom, a poison that made even the strongest shifters compliant.
Vampires were involved. And rogue Alchemists. And something about a serum made from shifter blood. I’d come here to find answers.
Instead, I’d stumbled into a nightmare where I was married to my sister’s mate, where packs were disappearing, where Harry was about to get himself dosed with vampire venom to act as bait. “I’ll be right back,” Kieran had said when a knock interrupted us. “Don’t move. ”
As if I could.
My left wrist was still cuffed to his bedpost. My right had managed to break free. The door opened, and Cole appeared, muttering something about a matter of life or death. “You are my wife, Vivien.
You’ve been my wife for the past five years,” Kieran repeated before he left. “And mark my words, soon you’ll be my mate as well. ”
I didn’t know whether to be horrified or relieved. Because while I was still tied to his bed, Cole was standing in the doorway, and I could have sworn I saw a knowing glint in his eye.
That morning, before any of this had happened, Harry had told me about the missing Alpha. Seth. They’d been draining his blood. There was a whole operation happening inside these walls, right under Kieran’s nose.
Or maybe with his full knowledge. Emma had cornered me inside the hotel, her blue eyes full of desperate warning. “People disappear here,” she’d whispered. “Some come in sporting bruises.
It’s like we’re nothing but slaves to him. ”
But who was the real him? Kieran? Cole?
Or the Alchemist pulling strings from the shadows? I hadn’t had time to figure it out. Because Harry had been pressing me to help set a trap. And Jake, my own pack’s Alpha, had been acting strange all night, keeping his distance, watching me with something that looked a lot like hunger.
I hadn’t expected Jake to corner me in that office, his hands pinned my wrists against the wall, his mouth claiming mine. “You smell like him,” he’d growled. “You let him touch you. ”
I hadn’t known what he meant.
Or maybe I had, but I didn’t want to face it. Because there was something in Jake’s eyes that looked a lot like a mate’s possessiveness, and that couldn’t be right. Because Jake had never been mine. He’d never even looked at me that way before.
But tonight he was looking at me like I was his entire universe. And I had no idea why. “You said there was nothing between us,” he murmured against my throat. “In your world.
But you lied, didn’t you? You’re mine. ”
I hadn’t been able to answer. Because I didn’t know what world he was talking about.
And because his mouth was doing things that made coherent thought impossible. We hadn’t heard the footsteps until too late. Emma had burst through the door, her eyes widening, her jaw dropping before she hastily retreated. “I’m so sorry!
I mean, carry on. Pretend I’m not even here! ”
And then she had gone, leaving us standing there with the damage already done. I still didn’t know how much of this was real.
I didn’t know what was true and what was tangled in a web of memories that couldn’t possibly be mine. Five years married to my sister’s mate? A pack that ran on secrets and exploitation? An Alpha dying from a serum made of shifter blood?
None of it made sense. But one thing did. If Emma had seen me with Jake, and if she was loyal to Cole, then my little excursion to this hotel had just turned into a death sentence. Because while I still didn’t know who the true villain was, I was beginning to suspect I had stumbled into the center of a web I was never meant to find.
And someone had finally noticed I was missing.
