Chapter 2: The Man in Black

The glowing eyes did not blink. They multiplied, one pair becoming five, five becoming ten, until the forest was ringed with silent shapes hidden between the pines.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. Her wolf, still raw from the rejection, refused to answer her call. She had never felt so utterly alone.

Rain fell harder, soaking her blue dress until it clung to her skin and plastered her hair to her face. She backed away slowly, searching for a gap in the trees that did not exist.

"Who's there?" she called, forcing steel into her voice.

Only the wind answered.

Then came the growl, low and close. A massive gray wolf stepped from the trees, amber eyes glowing unnaturally in the dark. Another emerged beside it, then another, moving with a discipline no rogue pack could manage. They circled her, closing in from every side until no path remained.

One bared its teeth. Scarlett stumbled back until her shoulders met the rough bark of an old oak.

"So this is how it ends," she whispered. Rejected, then dead before sunrise.

The lead wolf lowered its head, muscles coiling to strike. Scarlett shut her eyes, refusing to beg.

A sharp whistle sliced through the storm. The wolves froze, heads snapping toward the road, as headlights broke the darkness and a line of black SUVs rolled into the clearing. Doors opened in unison. Men in dark suits stepped out with military precision, forming a wall between Scarlett and the pack, none looking remotely afraid.

A silver haired man with an umbrella hurried to open the rear door, and every guard bowed their head. The man who stepped out looked as though he had walked off a magazine cover, tall and immaculate in a charcoal suit, not a drop of rain touching him. His expression was calm, almost cold, but the instant his gray eyes found her, something in them softened.

He waved off the umbrella and walked forward alone, ignoring his guards' protests and the growls at his back, stopping only a few feet from Scarlett.

She stared at him, bewildered. She had never seen him before, yet he looked at her like they were old friends reunited after years apart.

"Miss Scarlett De Luca," he said, his voice low and even.

"Do I know you?"

"No."

"Then how do you know my name?"

He studied her face instead of answering. "You've been crying."

She stiffened as he shrugged off his coat and settled it over her soaked shoulders, its warmth catching her off guard.

"I asked you a question," she said.

"My name is Damian D'Angelo."

The name meant nothing to her, but judging by how the wolves suddenly behaved, it meant everything to them. The lead wolf sank low, not to strike, but in submission.

She pulled his coat tighter around her, the scent of cedarwood settling strangely over her. Nothing about tonight made sense. First Logan had rejected her before the whole pack. Now a stranger knew her name, arrived with a private army, and had wolves backing down without a fight.

"They're afraid of you," she said.

"They're cautious," he replied.

"That's not the same thing."

"No," he admitted quietly. "It isn't."

The lead wolf growled, pacing in a slow circle. One of Damian's guards stepped forward. "Mr. D'Angelo, give the order."

"No."

"They attacked first."

"They haven't attacked yet."

Scarlett blinked. He was shielding her, and holding his own men back from killing the wolves at the same time. A strange kind of restraint for a stranger to show.

He stepped closer, his voice steady. "Miss De Luca, I need you to trust me."

She almost laughed. "Trust you? I don't even know you."

"You will."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he said. "It's a promise."

Before she could respond, the lead wolf lunged. Everything blurred, a deafening crack splitting the clearing, and one of Damian's guards moved with impossible speed, intercepting the wolf before it could reach her, both bodies slamming into the mud.

Scarlett gasped. That had not been human speed. The guard's eyes flashed an unnatural silver for one instant before fading back to normal, and the wolf hesitated, as though it had seen the same thing. One by one, the pack melted back into the trees until only the rain remained.

Scarlett looked at the empty forest, then back at Damian. "They weren't trying to rob me."

"No."

"They came for me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

He did not answer at once. Instead he bent and picked up a small silver dart from the mud, its tip coated in something dark, his jaw tightening as he studied it. "So they've grown impatient."

"What is that?"

"A warning."

"From who?"

"People who have been looking for you for a very long time."

Her pulse quickened. "I don't understand."

"I know." He pocketed the dart. "And that's exactly how they want you to feel."

Lightning split the sky, and for one white hot instant she caught sight of a faded scar on his wrist, startlingly like the birthmark she had carried on her shoulder since childhood. Before she could look closer, he lowered his sleeve.

"Come with me," he said.

"I can't."

"They'll return."

"I have nowhere to go."

"Then let me change that."

She studied him, every instinct warning her not to get into a stranger's car. But every instinct had also told her Logan loved her.

"Why are you helping me?" she asked softly.

He looked at her a long moment, and when he finally spoke, something in his voice raised the hair on her neck. "Twenty three years ago, I made a promise to a woman who gave her life to protect you."

The ground seemed to tilt beneath her. "My mother?"

He did not answer. He simply opened the SUV's rear door. "Get in, Scarlett. For the first time tonight, you're exactly where they expected you to be."

She hesitated, and another howl rolled through the mountains, longer and louder, answered by dozens more in the distance.

Damian's face hardened. "They're calling reinforcements."

Scarlett took one last look at the pack she had once called home. No one was coming for her. No one even knew she was here.

She stepped into the SUV.

As the door shut behind her, Damian turned toward the darkness and spoke low enough for only his nearest guard to hear. "They've found her."

The guard swallowed. "Should we inform the Council?"

"No."

"If they learn she's alive—"

"They'll come for her." He shut the car door. "And this time, they won't stop until she's dead."