Chapter one: The Summer I Shouldn't Have Come

POV: Naya

I told myself the heat crawling up my spine was just the New York summer.

It wasn't.

It was the iron gates of the Lopez estate sliding open in front of my Uber, and the knowledge that somewhere behind them was the one man I had no business wanting.

"You good, miss?" the driver asked.

"Yeah. Just tired."

Tired was easier than terrified. Easier than the truth: that three weeks ago I'd found my mother's name erased from every record I owned, that I had nowhere else to go, and that when Santana texted, "Come stay all summer, Daddy already said yes," I'd stared at the word Daddy for a full minute before typing back, "ok."

Because I knew exactly what I was doing.

I was walking straight into the fire.

The car crunched up a gravel drive lined with black oaks, forty minutes north of Manhattan, where the Hudson glittered through the trees like something expensive. The Obsidian Crest Pack didn't do subtle. Stone, glass, a fountain out front. Men in dark suits stood at the corners of the property with earpieces and the posture of wolves pretending to be bodyguards.

I climbed out, shoved my shaking hands into my jacket pockets, and tried to look normal.

"NAYA!"

Santana hit me like a wrecking ball. Gold hoops, dark curls, vanilla perfume that smelled like money. She squeezed until my ribs creaked.

"You're here. You're actually here. I've been counting down for a week."

"Can't breathe."

"Good." She pulled back, grinning. "You look like you haven't slept since April."

"Wonderful to see you too."

"Kidding. Mostly." Her smile softened. "Hey. Whatever happened with your family, you're safe here. This is your house too."

Guilt landed in my chest like a stone.

If she knew what I thought about at night, she'd throw me out the gate herself.

"Come on, Daddy wants to say hi."

"San, I've met your dad like a hundred times."

"He's weird about guests." She looped her arm through mine and towed me up the steps.

The foyer swallowed all sound. White marble. A staircase curving up like a ribbon. And underneath the polish, a smell that made my stomach flip before my brain caught up. Cedar. Cold rain. Something darker.

Him.

I'd known Alpha Zayden Lopez since I was sixteen. Every summer, same ritual: I visited Santana, swore I was only there for her, then caught myself tracking his footsteps down the hall like prey. At sixteen it was a flutter I refused to name. At eighteen, I named it. At twenty-one, I'd stopped pretending it would go away.

He was forty-three. He was my best friend's father. He was an Alpha who could silence a room by breathing.

And for three years I'd lain awake imagining him pinning my wrists above my head, his voice against my ear, telling me to be good.

I'd never said the word out loud. Not once. But in the dark, in my own head, I'd whispered it until it stopped feeling like a sin and started feeling like a prayer.

Daddy. Please.

"Naya's here!" Santana sang.

A door opened at the end of the hall.

The air changed.

I felt it before I saw him. Pressure at the base of my neck. Heat unspooling low in my belly, like my body knew something my mind refused to admit. My pulse hammered so loud I heard it.

Zayden stepped out of his study.

Sleeves rolled to the elbow, forearms corded with veins. Black shirt open at the collar. Dark hair threaded with silver at the temples, jaw shadowed like he hadn't shaved in two days. A crystal glass in one hand, a phone in the other, mid-command, the way he always was.

"Tell Vespera I want the eastern perimeter doubled by"

He looked up.

He stopped talking.

I forgot how to stand.

My lungs stalled. My brain dropped every excuse I'd rehearsed on the whole drive north. All that was left was want.

His eyes were storm-dark steel, the kind that had always looked through me like I was glass. Not today. Today they landed. They dragged over my face, my throat, the hollow where my collarbone met my neck, and everywhere they touched felt like a hand.

My nipples tightened beneath my thin tank top, and I crossed my arms over my chest like that could hide it.

I clenched my thighs. Right there. In front of his daughter.

Stop it, Naya.

"Daddy," Santana said. "She's here. Say something nice."

Zayden didn't move.

The glass slipped from his fingers.

It hit the marble and shattered, whiskey spraying across the floor. Two guards stiffened. Santana blinked.

"Dad?"

He wasn't looking at her.

He was looking at me like I'd walked out of a dream he'd buried decades ago. His cold Alpha mask, the one I'd seen a thousand times, was wiped clean off. What was underneath was raw. Stunned. Almost angry.

Almost hungry.

"Alpha Lopez," I managed. My voice came out breathless and ridiculous. "Thank you for having me."

His jaw flexed. His free hand curled into a fist, knuckles white, and something flashed across his eyes. Gold. Sharp. Inhuman. Gone in half a second.

"Naya," he said.

Just my name.

But God, the way he said it. Low. Rough. Like it cost him something. Like he'd been holding that word in his mouth for years.

Heat flooded my face. My knees went weak. I wanted him to say it again, slower, closer, right against my skin, while his hands did whatever they wanted to me.

I wanted to be the reason his control snapped.

"Wow, Daddy," Santana said, laughing nervously. "You're being so weird."

"Clean this up," Zayden told a guard. His voice turned to ice. Command. Nothing like how he'd said my name. "Santana, show her to the east wing."

"Aren't you going to"

"Now."

He turned and stalked back into his study, too fast, too stiff, like a man running from a burning building. The door slammed. The sound rang through the marble.

Santana exhaled. "Ignore him. He's been in a mood all week. Council stuff."

"Yeah," I said faintly. "Council stuff."

But my hands were shaking for a completely different reason.

Because I'd seen his face in the second before he turned. It wasn't cold or annoyed or bored.

It was the face of a man who'd just been dropped into the deepest water of his life.

Santana dragged me upstairs, chattering about the pool and the gym and the balcony over the river. I nodded in the right places. I said "wow" and "no way." I heard none of it.

My skin was on fire.

I peeled off my jacket. My tank clung to me, damp with sweat, and every inch of me ached to be touched. By him. Only him.

She pushed open a door at the end of the east hall. Cream walls, white sheets, a window over the courtyard.

"Dinner's at eight sharp. Please be normal. I've waited all year for this summer."

"I'll be normal," I lied.

She squeezed my hand and left.

The second the door clicked shut, I collapsed against it and pressed my palms to my burning cheeks.

He dropped a glass. That's all. You're spiraling.

But my body didn't believe me.

I crossed to the window, needing air, needing distance from the way my skin still hummed. Below, the courtyard was empty and golden in the late light.

Then a voice slid through my head.

Not out loud. Not in my ears. Inside my skull, dark and rough, like a hand sliding under my ribs.

It wasn't mine. My wolf had never spoken a single word in twenty-one years.

And it said only one thing.

MATE.