Chapter 2

Hazel POV:

Out in the underground corridor, I braced my palm against the icy tiled wall and gasped for air. My legs shook violently from what had just happened in the dark, every step sending a sharp ache through my core.

The motion-sensor light at the end of the hall snapped on. I threw my arm over my eyes like a thief caught in the act and ducked into the stairwell shadows.

Slipping into the staff washroom, I splashed freezing tap water over my neck to wash away the heavy cedar scent. In the mirror, my face was paper-white, and angry purple bruises bloomed across my collarbones.

Just before dawn, I dragged my battered body back into the on-call lounge and shoved my bloodstained uniform into the bottom of my locker.

The lounge door flew open and banged against the wall. Valerie strutted in on high heels, reeking of cheap perfume and stale alcohol, her sharp eyes narrowing as she scanned my hunched posture.

She stepped close, sniffing the faint trail of blood still clinging to my hair. Her gaze locked onto a dark bruise peeking above my collar, and her red lips twisted into a nasty smirk.

She lunged forward and yanked my collar down, exposing the marks on my skin. "Well, look at little Miss Pure," Valerie sneered. "Begging for overtime pay while rutting with some rogue in the supply closet."

I slapped her hand away, my chest heaving. "Get away from me! I was just updating the emergency logs."

Before I could hide the clipboard, Valerie snatched the logbook from my trembling fingers. As she flipped to the underground vault access page, her mocking grin vanished, replaced by wide-eyed shock and a sudden flash of greedy calculation.

"The VIP vault was opened?" she whispered, then shoved me hard against the lockers.

I crashed onto a metal chair as her heels clicked rapidly down the hall toward the sub-basement stairs. Five minutes later, she rushed back into the lounge clutching the bloodstained gauze I had dropped, her face flushed with wild triumph.

"Listen to me, you wolfless trash," Valerie hissed, shoving the gauze into her pocket. "You were never here tonight. If you breathe a word about switching shifts, I'll make sure your mother gets thrown into the street today. Get out!"

Knowing I had violated hospital protocol by covering an unauthorized shift—and terrified of my own shameful secret—I bit my lip until it bled, grabbed my bag, and stumbled out of the institute.

Back in my cramped, peeling apartment, I dug a small plastic bottle of Silver-rue Draught from the back of my drawer. I dry-swallowed two bitter white pills with cold tap water, praying it would stop any chance of conception.

The medicine burned all the way down my throat, a harsh side effect of herbs designed to suppress a she-wolf's reproductive cycle and heat instincts. Exhausted to the bone, I collapsed onto my narrow bed.

Sleep brought no relief, only nightmares of glowing golden eyes and that terrifying roar—Mine!—jerking me awake in cold sweat again and again.

By afternoon, harsh sunlight pierced the window, and my phone screen lit up with a final notice from the hospital billing department demanding my mother's surgery deposit by five o'clock.

I forced my aching body off the mattress, pulled on a thick turtleneck sweater to hide every mark on my neck, and took the bus back to the Pack Medical Institute. Stopping outside the finance office door, I took a deep breath, locked my fear inside, and pushed it open.

Alaric POV:

A sharp throb in my chest dragged me up from the dark abyss. My eyes snapped open, the dark gray irises clearing instantly with the cold precision of an Alpha.

I looked down at my chest. The lethal silver-claw laceration that should have crippled my inner wolf had been stitched with micro-surgical perfection and packed with high-grade neutralizing herbs. My natural Alpha regeneration was already knitting the flesh back together.

Sitting up on the steel table, my hand brushed against a square of bloodied gauze. A faint, pure scent of blooming lilies drifted into my nose.

That scent hit my bloodstream like liquid fire. My inner Dire Wolf lunged against my ribs, replaying memories of a soft, resilient body beneath mine in the pitch dark, and the blinding electric shock that had driven me into a feral mating frenzy.

I crushed the gauze in my fist, my jaw clenching tight. As the Supreme Alpha of the Kensington Pack, losing control to The Heat with an unknown woman was an unforgivable lapse in discipline.

The heavy vault door creaked open. A woman in a nurse uniform crept inside, drenched in a suffocating cloud of cheap herbal perfume.

I turned my head, unleashing a fraction of my Alpha pressure that slammed her straight onto her knees against the concrete. "Who are you?" I growled.

Shaking like a leaf, she held up an emergency logbook with both hands. "A-Alpha Kensington! I'm Valerie Sullivan, the night-shift nurse on duty. I stayed here all night extracting the silver poison from your heart!"

I narrowed my eyes, inhaling deeply to pierce through her heavy perfume. Beneath the chemical stink, I caught a faint trace of the lily scent from the gauze—clinging to her fingertips where she had just touched the cloth.

I snatched the printed duty roster from her hand. The name "Valerie Sullivan" was typed clearly in the midnight slot without a single erasure.

Deep in my mind, my wolf snarled in restless irritation, rejecting the cowardly woman trembling on the floor as the proud creature who had fought my grip in the dark.

Yet facts did not lie, and a Kensington Alpha never left a life-debt unpaid. I pulled back my aura and looked down at her coldly.

"Name your reward," I said. "Anything within the pack's power, including the chief fellowship at the Royal Medical Center."

Watching naked greed light up her face, a wave of disgust tightened my throat. I turned my back on her and strode out of the vault into the corridor, barking an order to my guards to seal all records of last night's ambush.