Chapter Two: Twenty-Two Years of Silence

POV: Zayden

The whiskey glass wasn't the only thing I broke.

I locked the study door, pressed my back against it, and listened to my own heartbeat like it belonged to a stranger.

Twenty-two years.

Twenty-two years of silence inside my skull. No voice. No pull. No fire. My wolf had gone dormant so long I'd stopped expecting anything from him.

Then a girl in a gray tank top walked through my front door, and he woke up roaring.

Mate.

"No," I said out loud.

MATE.

"She's twenty-one. She's Santana's best friend. She eats cereal at my kitchen island."

Ours.

I crossed to the bar and poured a fresh drink. My hand shook so badly the bottle rattled against the glass. I set it down and gripped the edge of my desk until the wood cracked under my fingers.

Her scent was still in my lungs. Warm vanilla. Sweat. Something wild and sweet I had never smelled on anyone. When she'd crossed her arms over her chest, when I'd seen her nipples tighten through that thin cotton because of me, my wolf had nearly torn through my skin in front of my daughter.

And now that I was alone, he wouldn't stop showing me things.

Naya on my desk. Wrists bound above her head with my black silk tie. Back arched, hair spilling across the leather blotter, lips parted on a breath she couldn't hold.

My hand closing over her breast. Her skin hot under my palm. My thumb circling her nipple, slow, until it went tight and dark and she whimpered, then pinching until the whimper cracked into a cry.

Say it, my wolf whispered. Make her say it.

I saw myself lean down. Saw her eyes, wide and wet and begging. Heard her voice, not soft, not careful, breaking loud enough to rattle the windows.

Zayden. Please. Zayden.

The vision didn't stop there. It never stopped where it should. I saw the tie pulled tighter, the knot biting into her wrists. I saw her thighs shake as my mouth traveled down her throat, over her collarbone, lower, until I took her nipple between my teeth and she screamed my name like it was the only word she'd ever learned. Again and again. Louder every time. Until she was sobbing it. Until she couldn't stand. Until she was mine.

"Enough."

I slammed my fist into the desk. A crack ran across the mahogany.

My whole body was on fire. I was hard, aching, furious at myself and at the thing living inside me. I was forty-three years old. I ran the most feared pack in New York. I did not lose control.

I'd lost it in four seconds flat.

The worst part was the word I'd felt leave me, the way a shout leaves your chest before you can catch it. My wolf had pushed it out of me and straight up the stairs. I'd felt it land.

She heard me.

Someone knocked twice. Sharp. Familiar.

"Zayden. Open the door."

Vespera.

I dragged both hands down my face, forced my breathing slow, and unlocked it.

My Beta stepped in like she owned the room, tall and immaculate in a charcoal suit, dark hair pinned back, her heels clicking across the wood. She'd been at my side for twenty years. She had never once looked at me the way she did now.

"Your eyes are gold," she said.

"It's nothing."

"Your eyes are gold, there's whiskey on the floor, and you cracked your desk." She shut the door behind her. "The guards say you dropped a glass in front of the Lopez girl's guest and walked out like the house was on fire. Tell me what happened."

"A long week."

"Don't lie to me." Her nostrils flared. She went still.

I watched the color drain from her face.

"That scent," she whispered. "It's all over you. Who was in your foyer?"

"Santana's friend. Naya Veyra. She's staying for the summer."

Vespera's lips moved around the last name like it burned.

She knew that name. I saw it in the flicker of recognition, the tremor in her fingers. She knew something I didn't. She took a step back, and my Beta, the woman who'd stared down Alphas twice her size without blinking, actually reached for the wall.

"Veyra," she said.

"Vespera."

"Zayden, what is she to you?"

"Nothing."

The lie came out too fast. We both heard it.

"You said her name," she said quietly. "In the hall. Everyone heard it. Not like an Alpha talking to a guest. Like a man who's been starving."

"Get out."

"If it's what I think it is"

"Get out. Now."

She didn't move. Her eyes searched my face, and what I saw in them wasn't judgment. It was fear. Real fear.

"Tell me she isn't wearing a necklace," she said.

"What?"

"A silver pendant. A wolf circled by a crescent."

"She wears no jewelry." I frowned. "Why?"

Vespera let out a breath that shook. "No reason. Forget I asked."

She was lying. I knew it, and she knew I knew.

But I had bigger problems.

"Double the perimeter," I said, in the voice that made Alphas go quiet. "Nobody enters the east wing after dark except family and Naya. No cars in or out without my approval. And keep her out of my sight."

"For how long?"

"Until I say otherwise."

"Zayden"

"That's an order."

Vespera held my stare a moment longer. Then she bowed her head, the way she always did, and left without another word.

The door clicked shut.

Silence.

I stood there, listening to the house. Fifty guards on the grounds. Santana laughing somewhere above me. And underneath it all, one heartbeat I could pick out from a thousand others. Quick. Frightened. Alive.

Naya's.

I could hear it through two floors of stone. Every beat pulled at something behind my ribs.

Her scent drifted down through the vents, warm and sweet, and my body answered before my mind could stop it. I imagined her at the window, skin flushed, thighs pressed together. Wet. Thinking about me. I cursed under my breath.

Stay away from her, I told myself. You have a daughter. You have a pack. You have twenty-two years of walls that kept everyone alive.

Stay. Away.

I'd said those words to myself for twenty-two years. They had never sounded so much like a lie.

My phone buzzed on the desk. Santana. "Dad, don't be weird at dinner!! Naya's nervous enough. Be nice pls."

I stared at the screen until the words blurred. My daughter, trusting me with her best friend. And I was aching for that friend's mouth.

I poured the drink. Lifted it. Set it down untouched.

Because that was when the pain hit.

Not a sting. Not a cramp. A brand. It tore across my chest, left side, right over the place where I'd carried a faded scar since the night my life ended. I stumbled into the desk and ripped my shirt open, buttons scattering across the floor.

The scar was glowing.

Silver-white light spilled through my skin, tracing lines I hadn't seen in twenty-two years.

A crescent, cracked down the middle. A mate mark, dead for two decades, splitting open and burning like it had been waiting for this exact moment. The light flared brighter, hot enough to blister, and I bit back a groan through clenched teeth.

My knees hit the floor.

Somewhere above me, through the ceiling, through the stone, I felt a second heartbeat skip in answer.

She was burning too.

I clawed at the floor, breathing through pain, my wolf howling her name over and over until it was all that was left of me.

And the mark was pulling me toward the east wing.