Chapter 3

Lucian POV: I heard her the second she woke up. The hitch in her breath. The racing of her heart. The tiny, horrified sound she made when she turned her head and saw my face. I kept my eyes closed and let her run. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. Kane paced inside my skull the whole time, snarling, clawing, demanding. My wolf had never fought me like this. Not when I was sixteen and he came to me for the first time. Not during my worst ruts. Not even the night I had to put down a rogue with my bare hands. Stop her, he roared. Mark her. She is ours. I didn't move. I listened to her scramble for her clothes. I listened to her lift my jacket and pull her underwear out from under it, and I listened to her breath catch on a tiny, mortified sob. I listened to her pause by the door. Then the door clicked shut, and she was gone. I opened my eyes and sat up. The room still smelled like her. Not like perfume. Like rain on cold stone, and something underneath that I had no name for. Something old, and silver, and quiet. I had been breathing it all night. I was going to be breathing it in my sleep for the rest of my life. Mate, Kane said, and this time the word wasn't a roar. It was a vow. I had stopped believing in mates years ago. My father hadn't waited for his. My mother had died believing she was his. And I had spent twenty-nine years refusing to let anything as stupid as fate decide who I was going to want. Then a drunk girl had stumbled through my door at midnight, burning hot, calling another man's name, and my wolf had gone to his knees for her. I looked at the pillow beside mine. A few long brown strands of hair curled against the dark linen. There had been something else last night. Something that made no sense. She was a she-wolf, she had to be. She'd been born in Silvercrest territory, I could smell it on her skin. But there was no wolf in her scent. None at all. Holding her had been like holding a locked house with the lights on inside. Wolfless. My mate was wolfless. I got up. I took a cold shower. I didn't look at the scratches she'd left across my back in the mirror, because if I did, I wasn't going to get out of this hotel today. When I came out, my clothes were laid on the sofa where Leo always left them. I dressed. I buttoned my cuffs. I put on my watch. By the time I picked up my phone, I looked like what I was supposed to be. Cold. Controlled. Ready to take a crown. Leo answered on the first ring. "Alpha." "The woman who left my room twenty minutes ago," I said. "Find her." A pause. Leo Reyes had been my Beta since we were twelve years old, and he knew every one of my silences. This one made him go very quiet. "Understood," he said. He called back in two hours. "Her name is Nora Quinn. Twenty-three. Born in Silvercrest territory, no known parents. Raised by a pack widow who died three years ago. Never shifted. She's on record as wolfless." Papers rustled. "She was at Velvet last night for her birthday with her boyfriend, a Tyler Lane. Junior analyst at Harlow Trading. His manager, Gregory Chase, had a suite on your floor. 3306." My jaw locked. "Chase," I said. "He has a reputation with unmated females. Lane got her drunk and sent her up with a keycard." Leo hesitated. "Alpha, it gets worse. The card she used wasn't a room key. It was a master key. Someone at the front desk gave Lane the wrong card. That's how she got into 3806." Into my room. Instead of into Chase's. Kane surged up so violently my vision went red at the edges. I put my hand flat against the window glass and breathed until it passed. "And?" I said. "And your uncle already knows." Leo's voice turned careful. "Someone at the hotel sold him the hallway footage of her leaving your suite. Julian's been calling the Elder all morning. He's using the words 'scandal' and 'unfit.'" Of course he was. "Send me the footage," I said. It came through thirty seconds later. A grainy still from the hallway camera. A girl in a crumpled dress running barefoot, heels in one hand, her hair a wild mess over her shoulders. She was looking back over her shoulder at my door with her lip caught between her teeth. I stared at it for a long time. Then I saved it. "One more thing, Alpha," Leo said. "You should know where she works." That night, I sat in the back of the Maybach on a dark street on the east side, in a neighborhood where cars like mine don't park. I told myself I was there to make sure Chase hadn't come looking for her. I told myself a lot of things. At ten past eight, she walked out of her building. She had on an oversized hoodie and sweatpants, and her hair was twisted up in a clip. She went into the all-night pharmacy on the corner. When she came out ten minutes later, she was holding a small black plastic bag close against her stomach like she didn't want anyone to see what was inside it. The wind shifted. I smelled the antiseptic from the bag. And under it, faint, the copper edge of a hurt that hadn't healed yet. I had done that to her. Kane went silent. For the first time in my life, my wolf was ashamed. She crossed into the convenience store, came out with a rice ball, and stood under the streetlight peeling the plastic off it. As the car pulled forward, she glanced up at us. I watched her eyes narrow on the tinted glass. I watched her start to frown. I raised the window. "Drive," I told the driver. In the mirror, she stood frozen on the sidewalk, staring after us. I looked down at the file in my lap. At the line Leo had circled in red that morning. Employer: Crown Holdings. Acquisitions Division. Floor 28. On Monday morning, my mate was going to walk into my building and ride my elevator and sit at a desk I paid for. And she had no idea who her new boss was.