Chapter 1

DANIELLA POV

The lights on the city streets twinkled like promises I had once believed in. Now, they only mocked me. Christmas Eve, and my boyfriend was exactly where he shouldn’t be, laughing in someone else’s arms.

I pulled my coat tighter around myself, the bitter wind biting through the fabric. My heels clicked against the wet pavement as I tried to ignore the warmth I had once felt for him, the plans I had made, the hope that had been crushed in a single moment.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I ignored it. I didn’t want anyone to hear my voice tonight. I didn’t want to answer the texts of friends who thought a broken heart could be mended with wine and forced smiles. No one could fix this.

I turned to the road leading to the forest, leaving the cheerful shopfronts behind. The streets grew quieter, emptier. A thin mist curled around the forest, suspended between light and shadow. Then it hit me. A prickling sensation at the back of my neck. Someone was watching.

I froze. Shadows shifted across a nearby tree. My instincts screamed at me to move faster, but my legs felt heavy, stubborn. “It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Just your imagination.”

It wasn’t.

Then I heard a howl. Before I could react, two big wolves came out from behind a tree.

Fear gripped me as I locked eyes on one of them. They started running toward me. I ran too, but before I could get anywhere, I was hurled against a tree, my head smashing into it. I screamed, trying to push aside the pain and focus on escaping, but the wolves were closing in fast.

Then suddenly a man stepped out of the darkness. Tall, broad-shouldered, calm in a way that made the mist around him seem still. His eyes locked on mine, sharp and unreadable, and for the first time that night, I felt exposed, not just afraid. Two others flanked him, silent, their presence an unspoken warning.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said. His voice was low, deliberate, commanding without yelling. The shadow in the alley seemed to shrink, the danger dissipating, as if the night itself obeyed him.

My heart raced, caught between fear and something unexplainable in his gaze. “Who… who are you?” I asked, voice trembling.

The wolves growled at him, showing how displeased they were to see him. He looked at them with an expression I couldn’t place, and the wolves shuddered, not even daring to take a step closer. It was like they were scared of him. I couldn’t have been more grateful; I wasn’t about to become their dinner.

The man in front of me glanced at the two men beside him with an expression I still couldn’t understand, then nodded. Like he had just given them an order, and suddenly he carried me away from the wolves, leaving the others behind.

Just like that, the danger was gone.

I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to jump from his hands and run. I wanted to do everything and nothing at once. But I stayed frozen in the comfort of his hands, caught in the gravity of his presence and the unsettling certainty that my life had just shifted.

He carried me in silence and didn’t set me down until we were already out of the forest. Then he finally spoke.

“You’ll need to be more careful,” he said. “This city… it’s not safe for someone like you.”

“Someone like me?” I echoed, frowning.

“You’ll understand soon enough.”

Before I could ask anything further, he dropped me at a safe distance from the forest and disappeared into the mist, leaving me alone in the empty street. I swallowed hard, pulse still racing. Questions spun through my mind, but the answers were out of reach. The only thing I knew was that the night had changed everything, and somehow, I wasn’t the same.

The walk home was long and quiet. Snowflakes began to fall, soft and fragile, coating the city in white. I wrapped my scarf tighter, shivering, not from the cold, but from the lingering memory of his eyes.

By the time I reached my small apartment, my thoughts had begun to shift from heartbreak to practicality. Bills didn’t care about cheating boyfriends, and rent certainly wouldn’t wait. I needed a new start. Something to occupy my mind. Something to prove to myself that I could move forward.

My laptop hummed as I searched for jobs, scrolling past dozens of listings until one caught my eye. Sterling Wealth Enterprises. A company downtown, sleek and professional. I had heard about it a lot from Lilian and some stories about the CEO. Without thinking, I clicked “Apply” and sent my resume, my hands trembling slightly from adrenaline.

Two hours went by as I stared at my screen, waiting for a confirmation email. I was about to give up and go to bed when it finally arrived. I stared at the message, a small spark of determination rising within me. Tomorrow, I would walk into that building, face whatever came, and take control of my life again.

I had no idea that the man I had met tonight, the mysterious protector, was closer to my world than I could imagine.