CHAPTER 3: One Kiss

Maya's POV

Every step across that ballroom felt like it took an hour and no time at all.

The laughter behind me hadn't stopped — if anything, it climbed louder the farther I walked, like the entire room had decided this was the best entertainment they'd get all night. I heard Priya's voice cut through it, delighted, calling after me.

"Maya, where are you going? Is he hiding on the terrace?"

I didn't turn around. I couldn't. If I looked back now, I'd lose whatever was left of my nerve, and I'd already come too far to stop.

The stranger watched me approach without moving, without any change in his expression at all, like he'd been expecting this the entire time and simply hadn't bothered to react yet. Up close, he was even more unsettling — tall in a way that made the space around him feel smaller, dark eyes that missed nothing, a stillness that had nothing to do with calm and everything to do with control.

"You seem lost," he said, one eyebrow lifting slightly as I stopped in front of him. His voice was low, unhurried, completely unbothered by the fact that half the ballroom had gone quiet to watch whatever I was about to do.

I didn't answer.

I grabbed the lapel of his jacket and kissed him.

For one suspended second, the entire world narrowed down to that single point of contact — his mouth against mine, his body going rigid with shock beneath my hands, the ballroom's laughter cutting off so abruptly it was like someone had hit mute on the whole building.

Then something happened that I had no name for.

A jolt ran through him, through both of us, something that felt less like a kiss and more like a live wire snapping taut between two points that had been waiting years to connect. His hand came up to my waist — not pulling away, not pushing me back, but pulling me closer, like his body had made a decision his mind hadn't caught up to yet.

I heard him make a low sound against my mouth, something between a growl and a groan, something entirely involuntary.

I pulled back first.

His eyes had changed. Where a moment ago they'd been a deep, unreadable brown, they now burned gold at the edges, bright and startled, fixed on me like he'd never actually seen anything before this exact moment.

I didn't wait to figure out what that meant. I turned, faced Xavier and Priya and the entire frozen ballroom, and let my voice carry with every ounce of composure I had left.

"I told you," I said. "I've already moved on."

Xavier's face had gone pale in a way I'd never seen before, his eyes darting between me and the stranger like he was doing frantic math he didn't want the answer to.

I didn't stay to watch him solve it.

I turned and walked straight out through the ballroom doors, past the stunned crowd, past the valet line, past every single person who'd laughed at me twenty minutes ago and now stood in complete, bewildered silence.

I didn't look back once.

***

Damon's POV

I hadn't planned on being kissed tonight.

I certainly hadn't planned on my wolf detonating the moment it happened, roaring a single word through every nerve in my body with a force I hadn't felt in over a decade of waiting for exactly this.

Mate.

I stood frozen on the terrace long after she'd disappeared through the ballroom doors, my hand still raised slightly where it had rested against her waist, my pulse doing something it hadn't done in years.

My Beta, Elias, appeared at my shoulder a moment later, his expression caught somewhere between confusion and alarm.

"Supreme Alpha," he said carefully. "Are you—"

"Find her."

He blinked. "Find who? The Cross Alpha's fiancée? The one who just—"

"Ex-fiancée," I corrected, my voice rougher than I intended. "And I don't care what you call her. Find out everything about her. Name, address, pack lineage. Tonight."

Elias studied my face for a long moment, and whatever he saw there made the color drain slightly from his own.

"You felt it," he said quietly. It wasn't a question. "The bond."

"Every second of it."

Behind us, the ballroom had erupted into frantic whispers, the celebration entirely forgotten in favor of a much better story. I could hear Xavier Cross's voice rising above the noise, demanding answers from someone, though it hardly mattered what he said now.

I'd spent thirty-four years being told my wolf would never recognize anyone. Every arranged introduction, every hopeful pack elder parading their daughters in front of me, every single one met with nothing but silence from the part of me that was supposed to know.

Until a stranger in a green dress walked across a ballroom I'd only attended out of obligation and kissed me like she had nothing left to lose.

"Elias."

"Yes, Supreme Alpha?"

I finally turned from the terrace doors, my wolf still humming beneath my skin with something I hadn't let myself feel in years.

"Bring her to me. Tonight, if possible. Tomorrow, at the very latest."