Chapter 2: Echoes in the Dark

(Sienna’s POV)

The phone felt like a live wire in my palm.

'Come home, little mate. We have unfinished business.'

I stared at the glowing words until they blurred. The unknown number stared back, New York area code, same as Vanessa’s call. My wolf slammed against my ribs, a low, desperate whine vibrating through my chest. Kade. It had to be him. No one else would dare call me that. No one else would know how the word still made my skin burn.

I deleted the message with shaking fingers, then blocked the number for good measure. But the damage was done. The bond I had buried for seven years stirred, thick and hungry, like smoke curling under a closed door. I pressed the phone to my chest and slid down the hallway wall until I sat on the cold floor outside Milo’s room.

'He doesn’t know,' I told myself. 'He can’t know.' Yet the text felt like fingers sliding along my throat, exactly where his hand used to rest when he pinned me against that studio wall all those years ago...

Sleep never came. I spent the next two hours pacing between the kitchen and my desk, the cream envelope now open beside my laptop. Harlan Blackwood’s final request stared up at me in elegant lawyer script: Your presence is requested at the private funeral. The family estate. Three days.

By the time the sky outside the loft windows turned the softest gray, I had booked a red-eye flight to New York and a small Airbnb ten minutes from the Blackwood estate. Not too close. Not close enough for the bond to roar awake the second I stepped onto their property. I hoped.

Milo found me at the kitchen counter at six-thirty, still in yesterday’s clothes, coffee going cold beside my phone. He climbed onto the stool without a word and rested his chin on his folded arms.

“You’re leaving,” he said quietly. Not a question.

I froze mid-sip. “Just for a few days, baby. Mommy has to go to a funeral in New York. An old... friend passed away.”

His gray eyes... Kade’s eyes... searched mine. “Is it the man from the magazine? The one with the same eyes as me?”

My stomach dropped. “No, sweetie. Different man. But I have to go say goodbye. Mrs. Alvarez is going to stay with you while I’m gone. You like her, right? She makes those chocolate chip pancakes you love.”

He nodded, but his small fingers traced a pattern on the counter. “Will you bring me back something? A dinosaur from the airport maybe?”

“Two dinosaurs,” I promised, forcing brightness into my voice. I pulled him into my arms and breathed in his baby-shampoo scent like it could armor me against what waited three thousand miles away.

The day blurred by in a rush of client emails, rushed packing, and one last video call with Mrs. Alvarez where she promised to guard Milo with her life. “You walk in there like the woman you are now,” she told me again. “Not the girl they broke.”

I wanted to believe her.

By midnight I was on the plane, window seat, hoodie pulled low over my face. The hum of the engines should have lulled me to sleep. Instead my mind replayed every second of that last night in New York seven years ago... Kade’s mouth on mine in the rain outside the estate, the way he had growled “Mine” against my neck while the bond snapped into place like lightning. Then the next morning: Vanessa’s cold smile, Brielle’s engagement ring flashing under the chandelier, and Kade’s silence when they told me to leave.

I pressed my forehead to the cool airplane window and watched the city lights shrink below us. My wolf paced restlessly, tail lashing. 'He’s going to feel it the second you step off this plane. The bond doesn’t die. It only waits.'

The plane touched down at JFK just after dawn. I rented a nondescript black SUV and drove through streets that felt both familiar and foreign. New York smelled of rain and money and old secrets. Every block closer to the Blackwood estate made my pulse louder.

I parked two streets away from the wrought-iron gates I used to walk through like they belonged to me. The estate loomed at the end of the long driveway... stone and glass and centuries of power. Black mourning banners already fluttered from the balconies. A sleek silver Mercedes I didn’t recognize sat in the circular drive.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number again. I almost didn’t look.

But I did.

'I know you’re here, little mate. I can feel you.'

The screen went dark in my hand.

My wolf howled.

I looked up just as the tall front doors of the estate swung open. A man stepped out onto the wide stone steps... broad shoulders filling a perfectly tailored black suit, dark hair tousled by the morning wind, storm-gray eyes scanning the street like a predator who had already caught the scent.

Kade Blackwood.

He stilled the moment his gaze locked on my car. Even from this distance I felt the bond snap taut between us, electric and vicious and alive.

His lips curved into the smallest, most dangerous smile I had ever seen.

And then he started walking straight toward me.