Chapter 1

Kael and I had been together for six years.

Back then I was the heir of Northcrest, the only daughter of the Alpha King. My father said Kael, a small-pack Alpha, was nothing close to good enough for me. He almost cut me off. I gave up everything for love. I hid who I was and ran with Kael. The day I left, my father said only one thing.

“The day you regret it, I’ll come for you.”

I didn’t think it would take less than six years.

The message had already reached me. The Marking ceremony with Vivienne was set.

I sat on the bed and remembered my father’s face seven years ago, somewhere between furious and afraid. I closed my eyes. I was about to wake the wolf I had kept asleep for six years and reach back to my family in Northcrest.

The door opened behind me.

Kael was back from Vivienne’s wing. His suit jacket was over his arm, tie loose, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. He tossed the jacket on the chair. A folded slip of paper slid out of the inside pocket.

I picked it up.

It was Vivienne’s ultrasound photo. On the back, in his handwriting: “Everything’s fine.”

He saw me looking. He moved a little too fast to take it back. His voice softened. “Just a routine check. Vivienne’s side is almost wrapped up. I’ll spend more time with you and Asher these next few days.”

He paused. “Vivienne thinks I should spend more time with you two.”

When did it come to this. That woman has to nod before he comes home to me and his son.

He told me he’d missed me. He reached for me. I didn’t pull away. I just saw what was on his shirt collar. A faint print, half a shade darker than the lipstick I wear. And under it the cloying woody perfume he was now carrying home with him. I would never wear that scent.

I went still. Kael didn’t notice.

If a stranger walked in right now, they’d think I was the one breaking into someone else’s marriage.

He was leaning in to kiss me when Asher came running over and climbed up onto the couch.

He held out a drawing from preschool.

“Daddy, look. It’s all three of us.”

Three figures holding hands. The one in the middle had a little tuft of hair sticking up at the crown. That was Kael.

Kael lowered his head, looked at the picture once, pulled Asher in, and rested his chin on top of his son’s head. He didn’t say anything.

He just sat there.

I stood in the kitchen doorway watching them. He knew how to be good to Asher. He had always known. He just never thought it was something he had to keep doing.

For a second the room blurred and I was seven years back.

Back when I was still on a small training field at the Northcrest border. I’d been bored, slipped past the perimeter alone, and a pack of enemy Rogues caught my scent and surrounded me. They were about to traffic me out. Kael was passing through and stepped in. He took two blades to the shoulder doing it. I crouched in the dirt with my hands pressed to the wound. He wiped the blood off his face, took my hand, and pressed it flat against his chest.

“That one was for you. From today on, you’re mine.”

Kael came out of the shower and sat across from me on the couch. He looked at me.

“What’s been going on with Asher. He’s barely talking.”

Something shifted in my chest.

He had finally asked first.

For three months he hadn’t asked one thing about me or Asher. Now he was asking, and I had so much to say. There was the training match last month, and the birthday before that. Asher had stopped calling out for daddy at bedtime, and now he only called for me. The grey wolf plush he used to keep by his pillow had been moved to the door.

I opened my mouth. “He—”

His phone lit up.

“Vivienne needs me. Let me take this.”

He stepped out onto the balcony and shut the door.

Asher came down the hallway. He looked once at Kael through the glass, where Kael was hunched over with his voice low, and then went back into his room and shut the door behind him.

I sat where I was. None of what I had wanted to say came out.

The Kael who took two blades for me seven years ago, and the Kael with another woman’s lipstick on his collar tonight, were not the same person.

I smiled in the direction he’d gone.

He was sure this was another small fight Vivienne had interrupted, and that two soft words later it would smooth over. He didn’t know I had already received the message about him and Vivienne and the Marking ceremony.

The more he played at normal, the easier it was for Asher and me to leave with nothing in our hands.

I closed my eyes again, and I started pulling up the mind-link I had buried for six years.