Chapter Three

Alpha Dante’s POV

“Luna Taylor didn’t die of the accident, Alpha Dante. She was shot.”

“That’s not possible,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes at him.

The healer shook his head, lips pressed together, refusing to budge.

His hand hovered over the chart as he quickly avoided my eyes. “She—she had multiple entry wounds with foreign material on them that couldn’t have possibly come from the crash site you found her in. She had been dead for at least four hours before you found her.”

A thin ringing filled my ears. A rough breath tore out of me. My hands curled into fists, nails biting into my palms, holding me against the crushing weight in my chest. Guilt crept in next, and the room tilted. The lights drew thin lines across the ceiling I glared at.

“So she was already dead before the car that killed her even left her pack?”

The healer looked at me like I was asking something stupid. “Exactly.”

The laughter that escaped my lips sounded like someone else’s. “You must be mistaken—”

“I am very sure, Alpha. The bullet wounds are very precise and calculated. The killer meant to kill her,” he said, his voice steady now.

A full-sleeved, tattooed hand closed around his mouth. I watched his words fall away with sick satisfaction in my throat.

“Did I say something wrong, Alpha…?” he choked.

“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly, letting my hands fall back to my sides. My chest felt tight. Thick heat poured down the back of my throat. I kept blinking away the suspicious blurring of my eyes. It was just allergies. Not emotion. Never that.

She was gone.

The ridiculous part was that I had known the exact place she was. Since the first time I met her and her ridiculously sharp mouth, I had been able to locate her.

My lycan wouldn’t have it any other way.

I knew she was alive that morning. I smelled her fear in the afternoon, and I dismissed it. At three o’clock, I couldn’t take it anymore. I found an excuse to get to Brandon’s pack to see her with my own eyes.

And then that kiss. A tremor ran through my body.

She was fine. I fucking saw her.

The healer stepped back. “Are you alright, Alpha?”

My throat tightened at the sudden chilling of my insides.

I remembered all I’d done to her, and my chest hurt. I could never hate her. No matter what Brandon told me she had done. No matter how much I tried.

And now she was gone.

“I need to see her.”

The healer led me down a purple corridor that smelled like bleach. The pack around us buzzed with life.

I let my feet do what they’d always been trained to do. My face kept the same cold mask I’d always had. The people in the hospital parted like water.

I didn’t remember stepping into the room.

She lay on the white, nylon-covered bed, motionless and unmoving. Her shiny black hair stuck to her cheek in a dark halo. Her face was pale and small. The sterile, rubbing alcohol scent that rose off her was wrong. My body tightened with a sudden sharpness. A painful growl built low in my chest.

There were sores along her neck down to her feet that I hadn’t noticed before. They looked suspiciously like something I’d seen before.

No, that wasn’t possible.

The healer must have seen the question in my eyes because he answered. “She was a really strong wolf,” he said.

“What type of pox did she have?”

He gave me a surprised look. “The sores are not from a pox, Alpha,” he said slowly. “Her mate has been unfaithful. Repeatedly. The sores indicate severe emotional stress.”

“No.” I shook my head. “That’s not possible. She was the cheater.”

Brandon’s words came back to me like sharp knives. She’d been a liar, a manipulator, and a bane on his life.

But even that didn’t stop my lycan from wanting her. Or craving the peace that came from being around her.

My mind ran full of moments I never told anyone. The way she’d stood when Brandon first introduced her—small, bold, and unflinching. The way her powder blue eyes had met mine once and took my heart with her. I had wanted—no, needed—then, to crush her lips to mine. But she wasn’t mine. She was Brandon’s.

If Brandon had lied to me. Blood roared through me, pounding away in my ears.

What had I done?

“She wouldn’t have these sores if she was the one cheating, Alpha.”

My chest caved into my stomach.

“He lied to me,” I growled at the wall in front of me. “That little shit lied to me.” My voice came out low and shaking. The healer flinched.

I ran my fingers across her pasty, cold skin in a soft trail.

I remembered the day he told me he was in love with Taylor and all the times I watched him drink himself to sleep because of the pain she was causing him. Had it all been a lie?

“This wasn’t your fault, Alpha Dante.”

The ancient voice of the goddess slipped into my head.

“You didn’t know,” her voice said. “You could not have known.”

I barked out a bitter laugh. “I should have done something. It’s not fair that she had to die like this.”

She hummed, like a bell in a deep well. “Hmmn. You’ve always been irrational when it comes to your little… obsession.”

My fingers curled into fists by my side. My jaw tightened.

“I’m not obsessed,” I said out loud. My lycan growled at me. So we’d been watching Taylor for five years now; that didn’t make us obsessed.

“Yes, it does,” the goddess chuckled.

“Sometimes I wondered if you being able to slip into my mind anytime you pleased was a gift or a curse.”

Her voice turned sharp immediately. “Don’t make me upset so early in the morning, Dante. You and I both know how many wolves would kill to be able to be a lycan and access me directly.”

“Then you should consider letting them have it, then. I never asked for any of this.”

She sighed and answered in a softer tone.

“I do not deserve this from you, Dante. Anyways, she is going to come to you for help soon.”

My lycan started to thrash around in my mind. “I’m not in the mood to help anyone,” I muttered in a low rumble.

She answered with a faint kindness that made my chest ache.

“The lives of the entire werewolf kingdom are dependent on you helping her.”

My ears perked up immediately. “What do you mean, her?”

“There’s a war coming. And only you two can stop it.”

I looked at Taylor again. She had tried to talk to me many times. She did all she could to try to make me pleased with her. But it was never enough. The only thing that would ever be enough was if she belonged to me. If she was under me, panting and moa...

“So will you?”

“Yes, goddess. I’ll be happy to help.”

For now, I needed to go let my son know his mate was dead. And box his ears while I was at it.

“Thank you, Alpha.”

My heart clenched in my chest as my lycan let out a roar inside me. Every atom of my being seemed to snap together and roar with him.

“And Dante,” she said in a low, vibrating voice, “I hope you finally do something about that obsession now.”

I turned at a sudden sound behind me.

My eyes refused to believe the sight in front of me. Taylor was standing upright and glaring straight at me.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“What am I doing here?” she asked, voice rough. “Did you kidnap me?”

Alarm bells went off in my head. “What are you talking about? Be careful.”

She pushed herself up and swayed. I moved without thinking and caught her under the ribs. Her body leaned into mine.

“Have you and your son not done enough?” she glared.

I wasn’t listening to her anymore. My hand tightened where it held her. Her lethal pineapple-and-honeysuckle scent hit me like a train crash. My lycan awoke with a long, hungry tug in my veins.

She blinked, and everything around me stopped. My pulse slowed into ticks of power coiling tight under my skin.

Mate.

“What the—” I started.

She laughed. “Oh hell… no.”

In one swift motion, she stood and leapt through the open window in a streak of white fur.

My feet stayed rooted as if the floor had swallowed them whole.

She was mine.