Prologue:

༺ ELARA ༻

"Can you walk?" he asks.

His voice is rough and impatient, nothing like the one that had grunted dirty praises into my ears just minutes ago.

My mind is still struggling to catch up with what just happened.

“I—I think I’m fine,” I whisper.

The lie trembles between us, and the ache between my legs tells me otherwise. But I don’t think he cares.

My hands are shaking terribly as I fumble with the laces of my dress, trying to tuck myself back into my clothes.

I can’t see properly. Everything is a useless blur of shadows and shapes.

My glasses.

“Where... where are my—” My voice sounds pathetically small and raspy after all the wanton sounds I’d been making in the dark.

I drop to my knees on the frozen ground, scrambling my hands uselessly through dirt and fallen leaves.

A broad shadow steps into my blurred field of vision. Warm, calloused fingers brush mine for a brief, electric second.

“Here. Put them on,” he mutters, pressing the thin wire frames into my hand.

I slide my glasses onto my face. The world snaps back into focus. And so does he.

Darren.

My cheeks burn as I look up at him.

The sting between my thighs flares again, dragging every memory of the last hour screaming back into my mind.

His hands. His mouth. His body against mine. The way he’d said my name. The way I’d—

I swallow hard.

Cheeks flaming, I smile up tentatively at him. But his expression is as cold as ice. The smile dies on my lips, and I flinch.

Something flickers across his face as he stares down at me. It looks like guilt and regret. I don’t know which one hurts more.

Of course, he regrets it. What were you expecting, Elara?

Shame washes over me in hot waves. My eyes burn, and I quickly look away before he can see the tears gathering there.

Think, Elara. Focus on something else.

But I can’t. I’m a mess—shaky, teary. My heart is beating too fast.

So my brain does what it always does in moments of extreme crisis: it cooks up useless facts to keep me grounded.

Fact One: Pressing a human female against a stone pillar in sub-zero Northern weather should induce hypothermia. It does not when the full-grown male wolf crushing her possesses the body heat of a furnace.

Fact Two: Sandalwood and cedar are a devastatingly unfair scent combination for a male who’d given me the cold shoulder for months—and is giving me that same shoulder right now.

Fact Three: My body is still thrumming like a plucked bowstring, aching for a pleasure it has only just discovered.

How in the world had I let this happen?

I know the answer: I am hopelessly infatuated with Darren Iversen, the stoic royal Beta of the North.

The man who barely looks at me twice. The man I have spent far too many nights secretly imagining touching me.

And somehow, tonight, he finally did. But he’s looking at me like I don’t matter.

And as I watch him walk away, I realize a devastating truth: he would never choose a woman like me.