Chapter 1

FREYA

"You're seriously not going to show up, are you?" I muttered, staring at the empty seat across from me.

The chair had been empty for over an hour. The candle between us had burned down by at least half, and the waiter, bless his heart, had stopped asking if I wanted to order.

I picked up my phone. There was nothing. No call, no text, not even one of those lazy voice notes Brian liked to send when he couldn't be bothered to type. I set the phone face-down on the table and looked around the restaurant.

It was a nice place. Too nice, honestly. It had white tablecloths, soft music, and real candles. This was the kind of restaurant you booked two weeks in advance and wore heels for. I'd picked it on purpose because Brian hated anything that felt "too much," and some dumb, hopeful part of me had thought that maybe if I made tonight feel like an occasion, he'd actually show up for it.

My birthday. That's what tonight was. Twenty-three years old, sitting alone at a table for two, watching the candle melt.

The waiter came by again. He was a young guy, maybe twenty, and he had that polite, careful look people got when they felt sorry for someone but didn't want to say it.

"Still waiting?" he asked.

"Still waiting," I confirmed, smiling like everything was fine.

He nodded and walked away without pushing it. He'd probably seen this before.

An hour and forty minutes. That's how long I sat there before I finally folded my napkin, set it on the table, and got up. I didn't slam my chair. I didn't make a scene. I just left, quietly, the way I'd been doing everything for the past few months.

I didn't call him. I didn't text. There was nothing left to say that I hadn't already said in some form, and he hadn't listened then either.

Three days ago, he'd smiled that easy, wide smile of his and said, "Birthday dinner, Freya. I've got it. Stop worrying." Just like that. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing.

The night air outside was cold and sharp, smelling like pine and damp earth the way it always did on the edge of the pack territory. I'd grown up in a place like this, right on the border of the woods, where the trees were so close you could hear them at night. I used to love that smell.

I was halfway to my car, my heels clicking on the gravel, when something snapped in the dark behind me.

I stopped.

I could hear footsteps. Multiple sets, moving fast and far too coordinated to be random. My wolf stirred immediately, ears up, every instinct going sharp.

I spun around, but I wasn't fast enough.

Something hit the back of my knees and I went down hard, palms scraping against the gravel, the air knocked out of me. I tried to shift, clinging onto that deep familiar pull in my chest, but something cold and heavy was clamped against the back of my neck before I could even start.

It was a silver collar, cold as ice and just as vicious.

The shift ended before it could even begin. Then I went very, very still.

There were three of them, all werewolves, all unfamiliar, their scents wrong in a way that made my stomach clench. It was feral, sour, and too sharp around the edges. They weren’t from any pack I knew. They'd come prepared, which meant this wasn't random.

I pulled my phone from my dress pocket with shaking fingers and dialed Brian. It rang twice.

"Freya." His voice was calm. Too calm.

"Brian." I kept my voice steady, or tried to. "I've been grabbed outside the restaurant by three wolves. I don't know who they are or which pack they're from, and I've got a silver collar on me, so I can't shift. I need—"

"Are you serious right now?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Is this because I missed dinner?" There was a rustling sound on his end. Movement. Like he was barely paying attention. "Because I told you I'd make it up to you. I said I was held up."

"Brian." I said his name slowly, clearly, the way you talked to someone who wasn't listening. "I’m on the ground. There’s a silver collar on the back of my neck. Three wolves are standing over me right now. This is not about dinner."

He paused.

"Freya, I'm not doing this tonight." His voice had that distinct edge it got when he'd already made up his mind and wasn't interested in changing it. "Call me when you're done being dramatic."

Then the call ended.

I stared at my phone screen for a second, watching it go dark.

He'd hung up on me. I was on the ground, a silver collar around my neck, with three feral wolves standing close enough that I could hear them breathing, and my husband had called me dramatic and hung up.

Something cracked open in my chest, and it felt quiet and ugly, like a fracture that had been building for a long time and had finally run out of space to hold itself together.

I thought about Lena then. I don't know why I thought about her in that exact moment, kneeling in the gravel in the cold, but I did.

Lena had shown up two years ago, a lone wolf with no pack, no sponsor, and no place to stay. She'd come to Brian with this sad story about wanting to belong somewhere, and Brian had nodded along and said the Norwood Pack would look into it.

But it was me who'd actually done something about it. I'd been the one to sit with her, introduce her around, and give her a job when she needed income and connections when she needed a foot in the door. I'd done all of it because she'd seemed lost, and I knew what being lost felt like.

In return, she'd thanked me by sleeping with my husband. I didn’t have proof, not hard proof, not the kind you could hold up and say “Look at this, look at what you did.” But I'd felt it.

I could see the way she looked at him in rooms where she thought I wasn't watching. The way he laughed differently around her, lighter and looser, the way he used to laugh around me back then. I'd told myself I was imagining it. I'd told myself I was being paranoid, jealous, too sensitive, all the things Brian said I was whenever I brought anything up.

But I hadn't been imagining it. I'd just been too tired and too sad to want to know for sure.

Just then, the wolves started pulling me to my feet. They weren’t rough, just efficient, like this was a job and they were doing it properly.

And then the trees exploded.

That was the only way I could describe it. One second the forest was dark and still, and the next there was movement, so violent and fast, a blur of impact that my brain couldn't fully catch up with. One wolf went down, then another, and by the time I registered what was happening, the third was already on the ground, not moving.

It had taken maybe thirty seconds.

He straightened up slowly and rolled his shoulders, breathing like he'd taken a light jog. The moonlight hit him square on, and I took him in piece by piece without really meaning to. Bronze skin. Dark medium-length curls, the kind that looked like they did what they wanted. A jaw that could cut glass. And eyes, even from here, a shade of blue that was too sharp and too bright to be anything close to ordinary.

I knew him.

I hadn't seen him in years, but I knew him.

Behind him, a figure in a mask slipped back into the trees without a word, moving smoothly and silently, like smoke. I caught the edge of their outline for half a second and then they were just gone.

When he turned to look at me, I could see something in his expression. It wasn't quite amusement and not quite concern, but something that was right between the two.

He smiled, a slow and easy one.

"Freya Morgan," he said. His voice sounded low and unhurried, like we'd bumped into each other at a coffee shop. "Been a while."

I stared at him for a long moment, the gravel still biting into my knees, my palms scraped raw, Brian's voice still ringing in the back of my head.