Chapter Three Amelia

I couldn’t breathe.

One second, the market was just noise and strangers. The next, I was drowning in them.

Three men. All different, but each staring at me like I was the answer to a question they’d been asking for years.

The first one — tall, broad, eyes like molten gold — looked like he could shatter the world if I asked him to. The second, leaner with silver eyes, studied me like he was memorizing every move I made. And the third… the third’s gaze was so dark it was almost dangerous, like he could drag me under just by looking too long.

My chest tightened. Something inside me — something I didn’t understand — reached for them. The same way a starving person reached for food. The same way a drowning person reached for air.

I yanked my hood back up and bolted.

The crowd blurred around me as I shoved past people, heart hammering, lungs burning. But it wasn’t enough. I could feelthem behind me — not chasing, exactly, but pulling at me. A thread wrapped around my ribs, dragging me closer no matter how fast I ran.

“Amelia.”

I froze mid-step.

No one had said my name. Not out loud. But I heard it — low, deep, curling through my mind like smoke.

“No,” I whispered, shoving harder through the crowd. I needed to get away. I didn’t know who they were, or what they wanted, but I knew nothing good came from people who looked at me like that.

The pressure built in my chest until it hurt. My hands shook. The air felt too thick, too heavy. And then —

BOOM.

The ground trembled beneath my feet. Stalls clattered over. The wind whipped so hard that fabric canopies tore loose and fruit rolled into the street. Gasps and shouts filled the air.

I stood in the middle of it, panting, my palms burning like they were on fire.

And across the chaos, I saw them again. Still watching. Still coming closer.

I turned and ran.

Jason pov:

I’d never seen Mateo lose focus in public before.

But the second her scent hit us, he was locked in, muscles tense like he was one step away from shifting in the middle of a crowd.

I smelled it too — sweet, dangerous, layered with so much power it made my teeth ache.

And then she turned, and I saw her.

Our mate.

The one we’d been searching for so long I’d almost convinced myself she didn’t exist.

The market erupted before we could get close — a shockwave rippling out from her small frame, sending stalls and people scattering. It was pure, uncontained magic, and it hit me like adrenaline in my veins.

She ran.

Of course she did.

Mateo took a step forward, but Dimitri’s voice cut through the noise. Calm. Firm. Absolute.

“Wait.”

We all stopped. That’s the thing about Dimitri — when he speaks like that, you listen. Oldest of us, strongest of us, the one who always thinks three moves ahead. Even when the bond was screaming in my blood, I knew better than to ignore him.

“She’s scared,” he said, eyes tracking her through the crowd like a wolf sighting prey. “If we push too hard, she’ll disappear. And I don’t intend to lose her again.”

Again. The word sat heavy in my chest. Dimitri believed in the mate bond — but he’d never said it out loud, not until now.

Still, I couldn’t stand there and let her slip further away. “We follow her,” I said. “Not too close, not too fast. Just enough so she can’t vanish.”

Dimitri’s eyes flicked to mine, unreadable. Then he nodded once. Permission.

We moved.

Not as hunters.

Not yet.

But as something worse — men who’d found the one person in the world they couldn’t afford to lose… and were willing to burn the whole city to keep her.