Chapter One: Mira

The blood never really washed off. Three years working in this underground clinic had taught me that lesson the hard way, the copper scent clinging to everything, my clothes, my hair, my skin, no matter how raw I scrubbed my hands or how long I let the water run pink down the drain of a sink that had seen more blood than most hospitals ever would.

"Hold still," I said, and Marcus grunted on the table in front of me, a gash splitting his forearm deep enough to show bone, the kind of wound that would have sent anyone else straight to an ER with a story about a car accident or a dog attack. He'd lost a lot of blood, and his eyes kept flickering gold, his wolf clawing to take over, fighting the pain the same way every wolf did when the damage got bad enough.

"If you shift, you'll tear the stitches. Don't do it."

He growled, but he held still, and I worked fast, the needle going in and pulling through and tying off, my hands moving on autopilot while my mind drifted somewhere else. I'd been doing this since I was nineteen, back when it was just a way to make rent. Now it was all I knew.

"There," I said, tying off the last stitch. "Don't shift for twelve hours, keep it clean, and don't come back tomorrow."

Marcus sat up, testing his arm. "You're not a doctor?"

"I'm what you've got."

He laughed and thanked me on his way out, and I started cleaning up in the small metal room I called an office, cabinets of supplies and a sink that barely worked, patching up wolves in a basement while the fights raged upstairs. It paid the bills, and some nights that was the only thing keeping me from walking out for good, that and the fact that my uncle Dorian's medical bills weren't going to pay themselves.

I was still wiping down my instruments when the door slammed open, the sound cracking against the walls like a gunshot, and my hand found the scalpel on instinct before I even saw him.

He was massive, ducking to fit through the doorframe, dark hair shot through with silver at the temples, a jaw like granite, his shirt soaked red at the ribs where someone had done real damage. But it was his eyes that stopped me cold, pale and locked on me like I was the only thing in the room.

The head of security appeared behind him. "Sir, I really must insist"

"Leave." One word, quiet, and the guard vanished like he'd never existed.

"What the hell is" I started, but he was already moving toward me, and I backed into the counter before I even registered stepping back.

"I said don't come any closer."

He didn't stop. He kept coming closer, until he was close enough that I could feel the heat off his body, could smell pine and something wild underneath it I couldn't name.

"Who are you?" I managed.

He ignored the question. "Your name."

"Mira."

Something shifted behind his eyes, darker now, hungrier, and he leaned down until his mouth brushed my ear, his breath warm against my skin.

"Mine."

"What?" I shoved at his chest, hard. "Get off me!"

He didn't move, just stared down at me like I was something he'd spent his whole life looking for, and I was still shoving at him when two of his enforcers burst through the door, confusion written across their faces.

"Alpha? What happened?"

*Alpha.*

I froze, staring at the man before me, and my stomach dropped. Kael Lyon. The Alpha of the Emberclaw Pack, the man who ran Chicago's underground, the one everyone whispered about in the same breath as danger and death.

I had just been screaming at Kael Lyon to get off me.

He straightened but didn't step back, one hand drifting to his ribs where blood soaked through his shirt.

"You're injured," I said, stating the obvious.

"I know."

"Let me see it."

His mouth twitched like he found that amusing, but he lifted his shirt anyway, and the wound underneath made Marcus's gash look like a papercut, deep slashes meant to send a message. Looking at Kael's calm face, I doubted the message had landed.

"Who did this to you?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It matters if I'm going to fix it."

That made him pause, studying me with something unreadable moving behind those pale eyes. "You want to fix me?"

"I want you to stop bleeding on my floor."

He almost smiled at that. "Clean it. Then you're coming with me."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not safe here anymore."

"I'm not going anywhere with you."

"You don't have a choice." His voice dropped low. "You're mine now, Mira, and I don't let what's mine stay where I can't protect it."

"You're insane."

"Probably."

I cleaned the wound anyway, my hands steady even though my heart wasn't, and when I finished the stitches in record time, he was still watching me like he hadn't looked away once.

"Done."

"Good." He reached for my wrist, and before I could pull back his fingers closed around my arm, gentle but unbreakable. "Let's go."

"You're not taking me anywhere."

"You have no idea what I'll do to keep you safe," he said, and pulled me into the hallway before I could argue further.

We hadn't reached the exit when the front doors burst open and a man walked in flanked by six wolves, smiling the second he saw Kael. Then his eyes found me, and the smile sharpened into something worse.

"So," he said, "you found her first."

Kael stepped in front of me. "Leave."

"I didn't come for a fight." The man's gaze slid past Kael, locking on mine. "I came for her."

Kael's grip on my wrist tightened until it almost hurt.

"No."

The man only smiled wider, and behind him, all six wolves shifted their weight at once, like they'd been waiting for exactly this moment.

"We'll see about that," he said, and something in his voice told me this wasn't a threat.

It was a promise.