Elena’s POV
The rain was hammering the trailer roof like it wanted in.
I cracked one eye open on the sagging couch and stared at the water stain spreading across the ceiling. Happy birthday to me.
Something rustled on the coffee table. A handful of wild daisies, still wet from the woods, sat in a chipped mug. Next to them, a folded note in Mom’s neat handwriting.
My beautiful girl. Eighteen today. I’m so proud of the woman you’ve become. There’s toast in the kitchen. I love you more than the moon. —M
My throat went tight. I read it twice. Then I folded it small and slipped it into my back pocket.
She’d left before dawn. Again. Working multiple dead-end jobs just to keep us afloat.
I swung my boots off the couch and padded to the window. Grey sky. Grey woods. The trailer sat at the end of a dirt road, far from the packhouse, far from anyone who mattered. That was how they liked us. Forgotten.
Are you going to mope all morning, or are we moving?
Tara, my inner wolf, stretched in the back of my skull like a cat in a sunbeam.
“I’m moving,” I muttered.
I fished a stolen, half-crushed cigarette from my pocket.
That is disgusting. Our lungs, Elena.
“Your lungs are fine. Mine need this.”
You are being dramatic.
“It’s my birthday. I get to be dramatic.”
She huffed and curled up again.
I pulled on my jeans. Worn thin at the knees. Black T-shirt. Black boots, scuffed to hell but solid. I tied my hair back, platinum rope swinging past my waist, and caught my reflection in the cracked mirror by the door.
Six foot one of bad attitude. Good. I’d need it.
The walk to school was a long one in the rain. My boots squelched through mud and gravel. By the time the brick building came into view, my hair was plastered to my neck and my mood had curdled into something mean.
Inside, the hallway smelled like cheap floor wax and wet wool. Lockers slammed. Conversations hushed as I passed. I kept my chin up and my eyes forward.
Then a shoulder slammed into mine.
My face met metal with a crack that echoed down the corridor. Pain bloomed hot above my cheekbone. Something warm ran down to my jaw.
I pushed off the locker and turned.
Brock. Of course.
He grinned like he’d won a prize. Broad shoulders, stupid smirk, and Sloane hanging off his arm like a second-rate accessory. Sloane, who used to braid my hair on sleepovers. Sloane, who hadn’t looked me in the eye in years.
“Oops,” Brock said. “Didn’t see you there, Fairfax. Hard to miss a giant, though. My bad.”
“Walk away, Brock.”
He stepped closer instead. His fingers came up and brushed the blood off my cheek, slow, like he was tasting the moment.
“You know,” he said, “I bet you’d do anything for a free lunch. That why your mama still has a roof? Because you’re spreading those long legs for the kitchen staff?”
My hand curled into a fist at my side.
He slapped me.
Not hard enough to turn my head. Hard enough to sting.
“Cheap little slut.”
Tara snarled loud enough to rattle my teeth.
I smiled.
Then I brought my forehead down into his nose.
The crunch was gorgeous. Brock yelped, stumbled, and I grabbed the back of his skull and drove his face into the locker. Once. Twice. Blood smeared the metal. His knees buckled and I rode him down, kneeing him in the gut, in the jaw, until his eyes rolled white and his body went loose under me.
Somebody was screaming. Sloane, probably. The sound barely registered.
“Miss Fairfax!”
I looked up. Principal Brooks stood at the end of the hall, face purple, tie crooked. A crowd had formed.
I wiped blood off my lip with the back of my hand and stood. Brock stayed down.
“He started it,” I said calmly.
“She attacked him!” Sloane shrieked. “Out of nowhere! He didn’t do a thing, I swear—”
“Liar.”
“My office, Fairfax. Now.”
I’d been in Brooks’ office before. Posters about pack pride on the walls. A framed photo of the old Alpha. Cheap chairs.
What I hadn’t expected was the man standing beside his desk.
Three-piece suit. Charcoal. Tailored close to his body. Polished shoes that probably cost more than our trailer.
Beta Hugo.
I stopped in the doorway.
Brooks scurried in behind me, already bending at the neck, throat tipped up in that sickening little gesture of submission.
“Beta Hugo, sir, thank you for coming. The girl is, as you can see—”
“Out.”
Brooks blinked. “Sir?”
“Out.”
Brooks left so fast he nearly tripped on the rug.
Hugo turned those cool grey eyes on me. I did not tip my chin. I did not lower my gaze. I stared right back.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. Something that might’ve been amusement. Or pity. Hard to say.
“Miss Fairfax. My car is out front. Get in it.”
“No.”
“That was not a request.”
“I didn’t hear one,” I said.
He exhaled through his nose. “Alpha’s orders. You can walk out with me, or I can carry you. Your choice.”
My stomach dropped an inch. The Alpha wanted me. Personally. Over a fistfight.
This is bad, Tara murmured. Elena, this is very bad.
I followed him out.
The car was black, long, and smelled like leather. The seats were softer than my mattress. I sat with my knees pressed together and my bloody knuckles hidden in my lap and watched the town scroll past the tinted glass.
The packhouse rose at the end of a tree-lined drive. Stone and glass. Too big. Too clean. Hugo led me through doors that hushed shut behind us, down a long hall lined with portraits of dead men I didn’t care about, to a pair of carved red wood doors.
He knocked once.
“Enter.”
The voice rolled through the wood like distant thunder.
Hugo pushed the door open and stepped aside.
I walked in.
The office was vast. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A fireplace big enough to stand in. And behind a desk the size of a small boat, the Alpha.
He didn’t look up at first. He was writing something. Slow, neat strokes.
Then he did.
Sharp jaw. Brown hair combed back from a high forehead. A mouth that looked like it had never once smiled kindly. And eyes—green, not soft green, not spring green. The deep green of broken bottles. He was dressed in a crisp, expensive three-piece suit.
The man who’d let us rot out in that trailer. The man who let my mother bleed herself thin on his inflated bills. The ruthless leader who enforced our misery. The man I hated with every cell in my body.
Then his scent hit me.
Cedar. Smoke. Something dark underneath, warm and male and impossibly right. It poured into my lungs and my knees actually buckled. I grabbed the back of the chair in front of his desk.
Tara lost her mind.
MATE. MATE. MATE MATE MATE—
She was howling, clawing at the inside of my ribs, trying to get out, get closer, get to him.
No. No no no. Not him. Anyone but him.
His pen had stopped moving.
Those green eyes lifted slowly to mine. He’d gone still the way predators go still.
Did he already realize what we were to each other? Was that why he had personally summoned me over a simple schoolyard fight?
“Mate,” I whispered in absolute shock.
...
Chapter 2 Bound in Shadows
Elena’s POV
The word hung between us like smoke.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t rise. He set his pen down with the same care a man uses to close a coffin.
“Sit.”
“No.”
His jaw tightened. “Sit, Elena.”
My name in his mouth did something terrible to my insides. Tara keened, a high, broken sound that vibrated under my skin. I gripped the chair harder and stayed standing.
“How long have you known?”
He leaned back. The leather creaked. His green eyes raked over me, slow, clinical, like he was pricing a horse.
“Long enough.”
“That’s not an answer.”
A muscle jumped in his cheek. “Six years.”
The floor tilted.
“Six,” I repeated.
“I was eighteen. You were twelve.” His voice didn’t change. No apology. No softness. “I caught your scent at a pack gathering. I followed it. I saw a scrawny child with scraped knees and a dead father’s name.”
“So you walked away.”
“I walked away.”
My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against the back of the chair so he wouldn’t see.
“My father died for yours.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “He bled out on a battlefield protecting your father. And you let us starve. You let my mother work until her hands crack. You knew what I was to you, and you still—”
“Sentiment.” He said it like a slur. “Your father did his duty. That’s what warriors do.”
“He was your mate’s father.”
“You were not my mate yet.”
The sound I made wasn’t quite a laugh.
He stood. God, he was tall. Taller than me, which didn’t happen often. He came around the desk slow, buttons gleaming, and stopped just close enough that the cedar scent curled into my mouth. Tara threw herself against my ribs so hard I almost gasped.
He’s in pain too, she whined. Look at his face, Elena, look—
I didn’t look.
“Here is how this will go,” he said quietly. “I will not reject you.”
Relief tried to rise. I crushed it.
“That’s not mercy.”
“No. It isn’t.” His mouth curved, bitter. “The Peak Goddess does not forgive insulted bonds. A formal rejection would bring ruin down on this pack. Crops. Children. Warriors. I will not gamble the lives of my people on the pride of one girl.”
“Then acknowledge me.”
“Absolutely not.”
The words came flat. Final.
“You are ranked below the omegas, Elena. Your family is a cautionary tale in this pack. I will not stand in front of my people and tell them the Moon chose you to be their Luna. They would laugh. My alliances would crumble.”
“So I’m nothing.”
“You’re a problem I am solving.”
Tears burned. I refused them. I had not cried in front of this man as a child, and I would not start now.
“Here are the rules,” he continued, like he was reading a grocery list. “You speak to no one of this. Not your mother. Not a friend. No one. You will not approach me in public. You will not touch me. You will not let another male touch you.”
“And you?”
His eyes flickered.
“I will continue as I have. Viviana stays. She is useful. Her uncle’s territory borders ours.”
“Your girlfriend.”
“My artificial girlfriend.”
“You expect me to live like this.” My voice rose. “Watching you with her. Feeling it. Every time. Pretending—”
“You will adjust.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
I stepped back from the chair. My knees had stopped shaking somewhere along the way. A cold, clean fury was taking their place.
“I graduate in a few months.”
“And?”
“And then I’m gone. I’m taking my mother and leaving this pack.”
He watched me. Didn’t blink.
“You’ll do as you’re told until then.”
“Or what?”
A faint smile. Not kind.
“Don’t ask questions you can’t afford the answer to.” He gestured at the door like he was dismissing a maid who’d finished changing the sheets. “Out. I have a city drive ahead of me.”
Tara was sobbing now. Actually sobbing inside me. Don’t go, please, he doesn’t mean it, he’s hurting, stay, fight, he is ours—
I turned on my heel.
I yanked the door open and walked straight into a wall of perfume.
Viviana.
Tight red dress. Heels I couldn’t have run in if someone paid me. Lipstick painted on like a warning sign. She took one look at me, bloody cheekbone and all, and her nose wrinkled.
“Baby, why is there garbage in your office?”
“Language, sweetheart.” Marcus’s voice had gone silk-smooth behind me. His hand landed at the small of her back, light, practiced. “A school altercation. Nothing worth your attention.”
“She’s bleeding on the rug.”
“She was just leaving.”
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t glance back. He steered Viviana past me like I was a coat rack, murmuring something about a boutique in the city, an hour’s drive, whatever her heart wanted.
Her heels clicked away down the hall.
I stood there in the doorway until my lungs remembered how to work.
Outside, the rain had thinned to a drizzle. Beta Hugo stood on the terrace, hands folded behind his back, watching the long black car pull around for his Alpha. His grey eyes caught mine.
For one blink he looked sorry. Genuinely, quietly sorry.
Then his face closed and he looked away.
I walked.
Down the drive. Past the stone pillars. Onto the cracked road that led back to town. My boots hit puddles. My cheek throbbed. Tara was a wreck inside me, pacing, whining, bargaining.
He said he wouldn’t reject us. That means something. That means—
“It means he’s a coward.”
He has a pack to protect—
“He has a reputation to protect.”
Please. Please, Elena. We could make him love us. We are his mate. The Goddess chose—
“The Goddess made a mistake.”
Tara flinched like I’d slapped her. Then, small and stubborn: He’s ours.
“He’s not. And we’re not his.”
I cut between two buildings to save time. A narrow service alley. Dumpsters. A puddle of oil rainbowing in the gutter. My shortcut home.
Halfway down, a shape peeled off the brick wall.
Brock.
Gauze taped across the bridge of his ruined nose. Both eyes already turning purple.
Behind him, four more. Toby. Derek. Zane. Knox.
My stomach dropped.
“Fairfax.” Brock’s smile split his scabbed lip. “I’ve been waiting.”
Something glinted in his hand. He let it swing lazy on its strap. Silver. Worn leather. A man’s watch, too big for his wrist.
My father’s watch. The one that had gone missing from our trailer a while ago.
“Recognize it?” Brock purred. “Found it in a pawn shop. Paid practically nothing. That’s about what a dead warrior’s worth, huh?”
Tara snarled.
“Put it down,” I said.
“Come take it, worthless trash.”
Five of them. One of me. No Alpha. No pack. No one coming.
I squared my shoulders. Lifted my fists. Set my feet.
I would not cry.
Brock moved first. His knuckles cracked across my cheekbone, right on top of the split from this morning, and white sparked behind my eyes. Derek’s boot drove into my stomach and the air left me in a wheeze.
Arms locked around me from behind. Hot breath in my hair.
I slammed the back of my skull into his face. Cartilage gave. He howled.
Then all five of them came at me at once.
...
Chapter 3 Bedside Vigil
Marcus’s POV
The door clicked shut behind her, and the office went wrong.
Wrong smell. Wrong air. Wrong everything.
Her scent still hung in the room, wet rain and something warmer underneath, something that made my teeth ache. I sat back down at the desk. Picked up the pen. Set it down again.
You’re a fool.
Ronan’s voice surfaced low and ugly in my skull.
Not now.
You put that woman on your lap. With our mate in the doorway. Our mate, Marcus. You let Viviana paw at you while our mate bled on the floor.
It was necessary.
Necessary. He laughed. A wolf’s laugh is not a pleasant sound. You tell yourself pretty words. I watched you. You could barely keep your hands off Elena and you know it.
I pressed my palms flat to the desk. Wood. Solid. Real.
When I first discovered she was my mate at twelve years old, she had been just a child. The mate bond had been a whisper then, barely a hum. Easy to walk away from. But now that she is eighteen, the intense attraction she displayed completely shocked me. Today she had walked into my office with a split cheekbone and a mouth full of fire, and the hum had become a roar.
Tall. Almost my height. Hair like pale silk. Eyes that did not lower when I looked at her.
I’d wanted to put my hand on her throat and feel her pulse. I’d wanted to put my mouth on the blood at her cheekbone. I’d wanted a great many things that an Alpha in a three-piece suit cannot want in front of his political girlfriend.
Political. Ronan spat the word. You keep saying it like it’s a shield.
It is a necessary political alliance. Her uncle is an incredibly busy Alpha, and we need this connection. You want war? Because I don’t.
I want our mate.
You cannot have her. Not openly.
Ronan went quiet. That was worse.
I stood. Straightened my cuffs. Smoothed my waistcoat. Viviana was waiting in the car.
Lunch. Smile. Squeeze her hand across white linen. Order the wine she liked. Do the job.
The restaurant was the best in town, which wasn’t saying much, but the owner knew me and the corner booth was kept empty. Viviana slid in beside me instead of across. Pressed her thigh to mine under the table.
“You’ve been quiet, Marcus.”
“Meetings.”
“Mm.” Her red nails walked up my sleeve. “That little stray in your office. She’s been handled?”
I didn’t answer. I picked up the menu.
Ronan growled under my ribs.
“Marcus.”
“Drop it, sweetheart.”
She pouted. Reached for my water glass like she owned it. I let her.
The waiter came. I ordered for both of us without looking at him. Viviana talked. Something about a boutique. Something about a necklace. Her voice slid over me like oil over glass, not sinking in.
I was thinking about a bloody cheekbone and a mouth that said you’re a coward without saying it.
Then, behind my eyes, Beta Hugo slammed in.
Alpha.
Mind-link. Tight. Panicked. Hugo was never panicked.
Speak.
It’s the girl. Elena Fairfax. She was attacked in the alley behind Cramer’s. Five males. I got there too late. She’s en route to County. It’s bad, Alpha. Skull, ribs, internal—it’s bad.
The room went white around the edges.
Ronan exploded.
MOVE.
I was already on my feet. Chair scraping. Viviana’s hand falling off my arm.
“Marcus, what—”
“Stay here.”
“Where are you going? Marcus—”
I threw bills on the table without counting. I heard her call my name again, sharp now, wounded. I did not turn around. I walked out of the restaurant and broke into a run the second the door shut behind me.
The hospital corridor reeked of bleach and cheap coffee. I smelled her before I saw the room. Blood. Her blood. A great deal of it.
And underneath, another male’s scent, all over her.
Ronan lost his mind.
I shoved the door and a man spun away from the bed with his hands raised. Dark hair. Apron under his jacket. He had the hem of her shirt lifted, her ribs bared to the fluorescent light.
I hit him.
I had him against the wall before I’d decided to move. Forearm across his throat. His feet left the floor.
“Get your hands off her.”
“I’m not—” He wheezed. Didn’t fight. Didn’t even flinch. “I’m a dishwasher. Cramer’s. I pulled five guys off her in the alley. Staff here won’t touch her. Her ribs are broken, I was checking if they’d punctured—”
“You were undressing her.”
“I was saving her life.”
His eyes stayed level on mine. Grey. Calm. I hated him on sight.
He moved one slow hand to his pocket and pulled something out. Held it up between two fingers.
A watch.
“One of them dropped this. Thought it might mean something.”
I took it. I recognized it immediately. It was the timepiece my father had given to Elena’s father.
Ronan made a sound in my chest I had never heard before.
I let the dishwasher down. He straightened his collar without comment.
“Out.”
“She needs—”
“Out.”
He went.
I turned to the bed.
She was grey. Her lips had no color. A bruise was blooming black across her temple, and her breathing was shallow, catching on something broken. Dried blood crusted at her ear. An IV drip swung beside her, untouched.
Two nurses hovered by the door. A doctor stood with a clipboard, not writing.
“Why isn’t she being treated.”
The doctor cleared his throat. “Sir, Elena Fairfax is low-pack. Our policy for intake—”
I did not raise my voice.
I lowered it.
The Alpha rolled out of my chest and filled the room, and the doctor’s clipboard clattered to the floor.
“You will start a transfusion. You will administer intravenous antibiotics for her cerebral swelling. You will move her to a private suite. You will do it now. If she stops breathing while you consult your policy, I will tear this building down with my hands. Do you understand me?”
“Yes—yes, sir—”
They moved.
They moved her to a private suite at the end of the hall. Beta Hugo guarded the door outside without being asked. I did not look at him. Blaming myself for leaving her in such a helpless situation, I sat in her room and held her hand for hours.
Her fingers were cold. Small, for a girl so tall. Calluses along the knuckles where she’d hit something, someone, and meant it.
I turned her palm up in mine and pressed my thumb to the pulse at her wrist.
Come on, Ronan whispered. Come on, little one. Feel us.
The mate bond flickered between us, thin as thread. I leaned into it. Poured what I had through my skin into hers. Sparks. That was what they called it in the old stories. A mated Alpha could sew a wound shut with his own hand.
The bag emptied. A new one went up. Her color came back in fractions.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Again. Again. I didn’t have to look.
Viviana.
I silenced it and dropped it face-down on the bedside table.
Her fingers twitched in mine.
I sat up.
Her lashes fluttered. Lifted. Blue. Clouded. Confused.
“What…” Her voice was sandpaper. She tried to swallow. “What happened.”
Relief hit me so hard my ribs ached.
I leaned in. Brushed her hair off her forehead. My thumb against her temple, gentle, the way I had not been gentle with anyone in a very long time.
“You’re safe. You’re—”
And then her shirt shifted against the pillow, and that scent rose off her, and I stopped breathing.
The dishwasher. All over her collar. Her hair. Her skin.
Ronan surged up behind my eyes and I lost the reins.
I stood. The mattress tilted under my weight as I pulled back and set my palms flat on either side of her head, bracketing her. I heard myself growl. It came from somewhere low and not quite human.
Her eyes widened. She tried to shrink back into the pillow.
“Who was he.”
“What—”
“The dishwasher.” I leaned closer. My nose almost at her jaw. I dragged in a breath and my wolf snarled at what I found there. “Why is he interested in you. Why are you covered in his scent. Answer me, Elena.”
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