Chapter 3

[Sera]

His grip tightens.

Not enough to cut off my air completely, but enough to make every breath a conscious fight. My hands fly to his wrist—not to pull him off, because I couldn't even if I tried—but to anchor myself to something real. Something that proves this isn't a nightmare I'll wake from.

"Answer me." His voice is a blade wrapped in silk. "What. Did. You. Do."

"I didn't—" The words scrape out of my throat, thin and pathetic. "You came to me. You were collapsed in the hallway—"

"Bullshit." He releases me so suddenly I choke on the rush of air. He's off the couch in one fluid motion, putting distance between us like I'm contaminated. "I don't care how drunk I was. I would never touch a server."

Server. The word lands like a slap. Not woman. Not person. Server. Like I'm a particularly disappointing appetizer that ended up on the wrong plate.

I sit up slowly, clutching the velvet throw to my chest because somewhere in the chaos, my clothes disappeared and my dignity apparently went with them. My body aches in ways I've never ached before. Between my thighs, there's a soreness that reminds me with every shift that last night actually happened.

That I gave my virginity to a man who's now looking at me like I'm something he scraped off his shoe.

"Your eyes were gold," I say, and I hate how my voice shakes. "Your wolf—he recognized me. He called me his mate."

Killian laughs. It's the ugliest sound I've ever heard.

"Mate?" He spits the word like poison. "You think I would mate with someone like you?"

Someone like me. Wolfless. Poor. Forgettable.

"It's instinct for an Alpha to recognize his mate," he continues, pacing now, running a hand through his hair with barely contained violence. "If you were my mate, I would feel it. I would know." He stops, turns, pins me with those cold gray eyes. "I feel nothing. I look at you and I see nothing."

The words land exactly where they're meant to. In the soft, unprotected center of my chest where three years of stupid, hopeless longing have made their home.

Instead of crying, I pull down the throw.

His eyes track the movement against his will, and I watch his expression shift as the bite mark comes into view. It's vivid against my skin—red and angry and unmistakable. The claiming mark of an Alpha. His claiming mark.

Something flickers in those gray eyes. Something that looks almost like fear.

Then I feel it.

A pulse. Deep in my chest. Like a second heartbeat that doesn't belong to me.

Killian staggers. His hand flies to his chest, fingers clawing at his shirt like he's trying to rip out whatever's stirring beneath his ribs.

"No." The word comes out strangled. "No, no, no—"

His wolf. I can feel it now, through the bond I didn't ask for. Feel it thrashing against the walls of his control, desperate to reach me, to protect me, to claim me all over again.

Killian's wolf loves me.

But Killian—the human, the Alpha King, the man I've drawn six hundred times in my pathetic notebooks—is looking at me like I've just destroyed his entire existence.

The fear in his eyes crystallizes into something harder. Something crueler. He straightens, yanking his control back with visible effort, and when he looks at me again, there's nothing but ice.

"This was an accident," he says, voice flat. "A mistake caused by circumstances beyond my control. I will not acknowledge this bond. I will not acknowledge you."

"But your wolf—"

"My wolf is an animal." He cuts me off with surgical precision. "I am not."

He reaches into his discarded jacket and pulls out a wallet. I watch, numb, as he counts out bills. Hundreds. Thousands. More money than I've ever seen in one place, and he's handling it like it's nothing. Like I'm nothing.

He throws the stack on the couch next to me.

"My lawyer will contact you," he says. "You will cooperate."

The bills fan out across the velvet, some sliding to the floor. I stare at them. At him. At the chasm between who I thought he was and who he's showing me he is.

"Are you paying me?" I finally manage. "Like I'm a—"

"Take it or leave it." He's already buttoning his shirt, already erasing the evidence of last night. "It won't change anything."

He walks out without looking back.

The door clicks shut with a soft finality that sounds like the end of everything.

---

I don't take the money.

I leave it scattered on that velvet couch like the insult it is, gather my torn clothes, and walk out of the hotel through the service entrance.

Then I go to work.

Because that's what people like me do. We don't get the luxury of falling apart. We show up. We smile. We make lattes for people who will never know that our entire world collapsed between their morning cappuccino and their afternoon espresso.

Riley takes one look at my face and hands me an apron without questions. Maybe she thinks I'm hungover. Maybe she thinks I got dumped.

She's not entirely wrong.

The day passes in a blur of coffee grounds and forced smiles. I burn my hand on the steamer and barely feel it. The mark on my neck throbs beneath my collar with every heartbeat—a permanent reminder of my stupidity.

I keep thinking about the way his wolf held me. Gentle. Reverent. Like I was something precious.

And then I think about his human eyes. Cold. Disgusted.

I feel nothing. I look at you and I see nothing.

The shame is worse than the heartbreak. Because I let myself believe. For one night, I let myself believe that fate had finally given me something good.

I should have known better. Girls like me don't get fairytales. We get cautionary tales. We get to be the backstory of someone else's tragedy, the mistake they learn from, the nobody they step over on their way to someone better.

I'm wiping down the counter after the lunch rush, running on caffeine and spite, when the door chimes.

A man walks in. Tall. Well-dressed. The kind of polished appearance that screams corporate money. He scans the café with the air of someone who's never ordered his own coffee in his life.

His eyes land on me.

Something cold slithers down my spine.

He approaches the counter with measured steps and sets a business card between us. Gold lettering on cream stock.

"Miss Winters?" His voice is smooth, professional. "I'm Mr. Voss's attorney."

Of course he is.

"If he's trying to buy my silence—"

"This isn't about compensation." He glances around at the curious baristas. "Perhaps somewhere more private?"

I should tell him to leave. Should tell him that whatever Killian Voss wants, he can choke on it.

But the mark on my neck pulses. The bond hums like a warning.

"Break room," I hear myself say. "Five minutes."

The back office smells like stale pastries and broken dreams. He pulls out a folder—thick, official, stamped with the Voss Group logo—and I already know I'm not going to like whatever comes next.

"Mr. Voss has a proposal," he begins.

"I don't want his money."

"It's not about money, Miss Winters." He pauses, and something in his expression shifts. Something almost like pity. "Mr. Voss wishes to formally sever the bond that was established last night."

The words don't register at first.

"Sever...?"

"Through an official rejection ceremony." He says it like he's discussing a contract termination. "Witnessed by a pack Elder. Legally binding. Permanent."

Rejection ceremony.

I know what that means. Every wolf knows. It's the most humiliating ritual in our society—a public declaration that one mate has found the other unworthy. Unacceptable. Unwanted.

Most wolves would rather die than endure one.

And Killian Voss wants to drag me through it like I'm a clerical error he needs to correct.

The lawyer is still talking. Something about compensation. Cooperation. Discretion. The words wash over me like static.

All I can think about is last night. The way Killian's wolf pressed his forehead to mine, breathing mate, mine, finally against my skin. The way he licked the bite mark like it was sacred. The way he held me like I was the answer to a question he'd been asking his whole life.

And now his human self wants to stand before an Elder and declare to the world that I am nothing. That I was never anything. That the bond his wolf forged in desperation and devotion was just a mistake to be erased.

Not just rejection.

Ritual humiliation.

The lawyer slides a document across the desk. "Mr. Voss requests your response within forty-eight hours."

I stare at the paper. At the neat legal language that reduces the worst night of my life to clauses and subclauses.

Somewhere deep in my chest, the bond pulses—faint and fragile and already mourning something that never got the chance to live.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was a nobody with a harmless crush, dreaming about a man I'd never meet.

Now I'm his dirty secret. His regret. His mistake to be legally disposed of.

And in forty-eight hours, I'll be nothing at all.