Novels by Daphne Scott

Ivy’s POVRoman stood abruptly and paced toward the window, his movements restless with anger.“Five years,” he muttered. “Five years of believing I knew what happened. I blamed myself for losing her. I blamed myself for surviving. And all this time, someone else might have known the truth.”I rose and followed him.“Roman.”“What if that woman knows who ordered the attack? What if she knows why the stranger could sever my bond? What if she knows what happened after Marisol fell?”He turned toward me, his eyes bright with a fury I understood too well.“Someone has been keeping pieces of my life from me, Ivy. First the memory disappears, then the truth comes back in fragments, and now we discover a stranger carried me to safety and vanished. How many more things don’t I know?”I reached for his hand.“I don’t know. But we won’t ignore any of it.”“You’ve already done more for me than you realize.”“I should have told you the truth sooner.”“You were trying to protect me.”“And I was wr

Ivy’s POVThe memory held us both suspended in that final, fragile moment, Roman’s younger self stumbling toward a voice neither of us fully recognized. I felt my hands shaking harder against his temples, exhaustion, grief, and the strain of the working itself converging until I could barely distinguish my own heartbeat from the frantic rhythm of his.“Roman.” My voice came out weaker than I intended.He turned toward me, though his eyes remained clouded by the memory.“Ivy,” he said, concern cutting through the haze. “You’re trembling. We should stop.”“Not yet.”“No, you’re not fine.” His voice sharpened. “Your hands are shaking, and you’re barely breathing properly. How long can you keep this up?”“Long enough.”“That isn’t an answer.”“Neither is stopping now when we’re this close to the truth.”He stared at me, frustration and worry warring across his face.“I’m not asking you to sacrifice yourself for this.”“And I’m not asking you to let me.” I swallowed, forcing my fingers to

Roman’s POVThe memory surged forward with a violence that stole whatever breath I had left, Marisol’s scream splitting the cold air as the stranger, the one who had demanded I kneel, crossed the clearing toward her with a deliberate, terrible purpose.“No!” My younger self’s voice, raw and desperate, fought through three separate attackers as I struggled to reach her. “Leave her out of this!”The stranger didn’t even look at me. “You made your choice, Alpha. Now you watch the cost of it.”“Whatever you want, take it from me!” I snarled, driving my elbow into one attacker’s throat. “You want my territory? My title? Fine! Just let her go!” At this point i didn’t care anymore, I just wanted her safe.For the first time, the stranger turned his head. His expression held something worse than anger. Amusement.“You still think this is about what you own.”“Then tell me what the hell you want!”“I want you to understand what it means to lose something you were never worthy of keeping.”He t

Roman's POV The forest resolved around me slowly, fragments sharpening into something I could almost, impossibly, stand inside, snow falling thick between black trees, Marisol's voice sharp with fear somewhere just ahead of me, my own heartbeat hammering with an urgency five years of distance had never managed to fully dull, I could feel myself struggling to catch a breath, even if it’s a memory from five years ago, it still surreal and like I amcurrently living it for some odd reason."We should not have come this way." Marisol's voice, younger, frightened in a way I had rarely heard from her. "Roman, something is wrong. I can feel it." She had said that night, but the arrogant version of me then wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t give in to fear."I know." My own voice, distant and strange to my own ears, carried an authority I recognized as my younger self, less weathered, less certain of the weight an Alpha actually carried. "Stay close to me." I had instructed her, and she had listened

Ivy's POV "You want me to help you remember." I said it slowly, turning the small, worn stone over in my own palm, Roman's explanation still settling strange and enormous in the quiet of my kitchen. "The actual memory, not simply hearing about it from me." I stressed out"I understand if that frightens you." In truth it must’ve, but I really needed to know what happened that night if we need to stop the threats circling her family and we need to find the truth as to why she’s constantly being targeted by Marisol’s ghost."Of course it frightens me." I set the stone down carefully, needing both hands free to press against my own suddenly racing heart. "Roman, that memory is not just the ambush, or Marisol, or whatever happened to you in those woods. It is also the two of us, together, for the first and only time before now. I do not know how to walk you back into that without walking back into it myself." The selfish side of me took over instantly, out of fear he’ll discover who Hazel

Roman's POV "Memory recovery is not something modern healers practice much anymore," Theresa's own healer, an older woman named Fenwick who had served Darkwood since before I was born, told me, studying the request with obvious reluctance. "It is old magic, Alpha. Bond magic, specifically, which means it is dangerous for anyone not directly connected to the memory itself." She pointed out"I am directly connected. It is my own memory.""Yes, but you did not take it from yourself." She set down the ancient, leather bound text she had pulled from Darkwood's private archive, pages brittle enough that she handled them with visible care. "A memory removed through a healer's gift leaves a kind of residue, a thread, still attached to whoever took it. To recover it properly, safely, you would need that same person's active participation. I do not simply mean her presence. Her willing, deliberate help.""Ivy." I called out her name "If she was the one who performed the removal, yes." Fenwick

POV: Kira"You look like you saw a ghost." Priya dropped onto my couch without waiting for an invitation, the way she always did, balancing two coffees like she owned the place. "Actually, worse. You look like you saw a ghost who owes you money." She jested"It is nothing." I did not look up from the card in my hand, his name engraved in plain black letters, no logo, nothing flashy, just Luciano Rodriguez and a phone number."It is very clear it’s not nothing." She set the coffee down and snatched the card before I could stop her. Her eyebrows went up somewhere near her hairline. "Rodriguez. As in the Rodriguez. As in the man who owns the entire building we clean." She exclaimed "Give it back." I demanded "Why do you have his personal card, Mara." She said my fake name easy as breathing, the way everyone in my current life did, and for a second I almost hated how easily I had let her believe it. "Did something happen. Did he do something to you. Because I swear, rich man or not, I w

POV: Kira"Mara Soto." His voice came through my door before I even got the chance to look through the peephole, low, certain, nothing like a knock from a neighbor or a delivery. "Or should I use Kira."My whole body went cold.I stood frozen for one full second, hand hovering over the lock, running through three years of contingency plans in my head, the go bag under my bed, the second phone taped behind the bathroom mirror, the route out the fire escape I had memorized my first week in this apartment and never once used.I opened the door instead. Running would only confirm what he already seemed to know."I do not know who that is," I said, keeping my voice as flat as I could manage, though my pulse was slamming hard enough that I was sure he could hear it from where he stood.Luciano Rodriguez leaned one shoulder against my doorframe like he had all the time in the world, jacket gone, sleeves rolled up, looking nothing like the exhausted man on the stairwell that morning and every

POV: Luciano"You should sit down for this." Elena set a folder on my desk that evening, thin, but she looked at it like it weighed a hundred pounds."I do not sit for paperwork." I opened it anyway, because Elena did not say things like that without reason, and I trusted her more than I trusted anyone left in my life.The first photo stopped me cold.It was her. The woman from the stairwell, younger, maybe nineteen, standing beside a man I recognized instantly because his face had been in the news for two decades. Her father. Except the caption under the photo did not say Mara Soto."Kira Quezada," Elena said, watching my face carefully. "Only daughter of Rafael Quezada, Quezada Shipping and Freight. Officially deceased three years ago. Car accident, no body recovered, closed casket funeral with a photo instead of a coffin, according to the report.""Except she is very much alive and mopping my stairwell." I laughed"Except that, yes." She said eyeing meI sat down after and smiled

POV: Luciano"Six months." Doctor Whitfield said it plainly, like he was reading a weather report, and I hated him for it even though none of this was his fault. "Perhaps less, if the treatment does not respond well. I am very sorry, Mr Rodriguez."I did not look at him. I looked at my grandmother instead, propped up in the hospital bed with a spine straighter than mine had ever managed to be, and she was not looking at either of us. She was looking out the window like the news did not concern her at all."Say something," I said. My voice came out rougher than I meant it to."What is there to say, Luciano." She finally turned her head. Her eyes were the same eyes that had raised me since I was seven years old, sharp and clear even now, even with a tube in her arm and a death sentence hanging over the room. "I have run this family for forty years. I think I am allowed to die on my own terms.""You are not dying." The words came out before I could stop them, stupid and useless, because

POV: Kira"You're late again, Mara."Priya's voice bounced off the tile, teasing on the surface, but I heard the warning folded inside it too. I checked my watch. Six minutes. Six minutes was nothing on any other floor of this building, but the fortieth floor belonged to Rodriguez Maritime, and up here, six minutes could get a person fired."I got stuck behind a delivery truck," I said, tying my hair back as I grabbed my cart. "Relax. Nobody's even in yet.""Somebody's always in." She lowered her voice like the walls had ears, which, in this building, they probably did. "You know how they are about the executive floors."I did know. I had learned every rule of this place in the six months since I started, which staircase the cameras missed, which supply closet the night guard never checked, which days the family actually came in and which days it was just lawyers pretending to be busy. I knew how to be invisible. Invisible had kept me alive for six years.I told Priya I would take the