PROLOGUE: THE NIGHT INSTINCT DIED

My life had a soundtrack: a low, constant static.

It hummed in the back of my teeth on the subway, spiked into a shriek at crowded bars, and settled into a menacing drone in every office I’d ever worked. Doctors called it anxiety. Therapists suggested mindfulness. I called it the proof that I was wired wrong, a radio forever tuned between stations in a world that broadcasted in perfect, clear signal.

Tonight, it was a flatline. The silent kind, right before the crash.

I was closing up the florist shop my third failed attempt at a “peaceful” job and the usual urban symphony was gone. No distant sirens, no psychic bleed-over from arguing couples in apartments above, not even the usual pull of awareness from passersby. Just the profound, ringing silence of an empty auditorium. It was more unsettling than the noise.

I fumbled with the heavy deadbolt, arms full of lilies that were destined for the compost. Their funeral-sweet scent usually bothered me. Tonight, it was just a scent.

That’s when I felt it. The pressure change.

Not in the air, but in the silence itself. It became a held breath. A focusing.

I turned.

Three figures stood at the mouth of the alley across the street. Not men. The one in front was taller, his posture a study in lethal control. Even from here, I could see his eyes a pale, reflected gold in the dark. They were fixed on me.

Predator’s eyes.

Every human instinct I possessed screamed to run, to lock the door, to be small. But a deeper, weirder instinct the one that lived in the static told me it was pointless. He’d already seen me. The hunt was over.

I didn’t run. I was so tired of running from a feeling I couldn’t name. So I stood there, holding my dead flowers, and stared back.

He moved. One moment he was a silhouette, the next he was crossing the street with a predator’s grace that had nothing to do with human anatomy. He stopped three feet away, and my silent world went utterly, completely void. The static didn’t just stop; it was erased, as if it had never existed.

For the first time in my twenty-seven years, my head was quiet.

I should have been terrified. Instead, I felt a shocking, pristine clarity. I saw the alley grime on his flawless suit, the strange, wild scent of ozone and pine that clung to him, the sheer physical power he contained. He was the most dangerous thing I had ever seen.

And he looked… confused.

He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. A flicker of something like panic crossed his harsh, perfect features. It was there and gone, replaced by a chilling intensity.

“What are you?” he breathed. His voice was low, a rough sound that scraped against the newfound quiet in my head.

The question. The one I’d been asking myself forever. Irritation, my oldest shield, flared.

“Tired,” I said, my own voice surprisingly steady in the vacuum between us. “And about to call the cops if you don’t step back.” A pathetic threat. We both knew it.

From behind him, two massive wolves no, creatures slunk into the streetlight. They were the size of bears, muscles coiling under damp fur. But they didn’t snarl. They whined, high and pitiful, crouching low as if the light itself hurt them. They were looking at me.

The man the Alpha, my mind supplied, though I didn’t know why didn’t even glance at them. His gold eyes were drilling into mine, searching for something he couldn’t find.

“You should keep your dogs on a leash,” I heard myself say, the absurdity of the statement almost making me laugh. “City ordinance.”

One of the wolves yelped and scrambled backward.

The Alpha’s gaze didn’t waver. I saw the calculations happening in his eyes, the cold, strategic assessment. I was a problem to be solved. An equation that didn’t balance. Then, something shifted. The confusion hardened into a decision, a possession so absolute it felt like a physical touch.

He smiled. It wasn’t friendly. It was the baring of teeth. “My apologies for the disturbance.” The words were polished, corporate, and utterly at odds with the primal scene. “This is a dangerous neighborhood. A woman alone… you should be careful.”

The warning in his tone was unmistakable. It wasn’t concern. It was a claim.

“I’ve managed,” I whispered, the last of my bravado seeping away.

He inclined his head, a lord acknowledging a subject. “We’ll be seeing each other again, I’m sure.”

He turned and walked away, the monstrous wolves falling in behind him with their tails tucked. The further he got, the more the world rushed back in. Not the static that was still blessedly, terrifyingly gone but the normal sounds of the city. They felt cheap and loud.

I locked the shop with numb fingers.

I had just been looked at by a monster, and in his eyes, I hadn’t seen prey. I’d seen a curiosity. A puzzle. And the scary part wasn’t his teeth, or his wolves, or the way he moved like a storm given shape.

The scary part was that in the absolute quiet he left behind, for the first time, I hadn’t felt wrong.

I had felt seen.

And I had no idea that being seen by something like him was the most dangerous thing in the world.