Chapter Four

Damien’s POV 

I stared at the folder for a long time.

Marcus didn't speak. He sat back in his chair and let me read, which told me he already knew how bad it was going to be.

The first page was a photograph. A woman, elegant and severe, standing at the head of a conference table with the kind of authority that didn't need a title beneath it. The caption read: Elena Silvermoon, Luna and CEO, Silvermoon Pack — North America's largest wolf dynasty.

I turned the page.

A birth record. Partial, damaged at the edges, but legible enough. A daughter born twenty-five years ago to Elena Silvermoon and her mate, Thomas. The child's name had been redacted, but a handwritten note in Marcus's careful script sat beside it.

Aria. Kidnapped at four months. Never recovered.

I set the page down.

"She's the Silvermoon heir," I said.

"Yes."

"The missing one. The one Elena has been searching for."

"For twenty-five years." Marcus folded his hands on the desk. "Whoever took her hid her well. No pack, no bloodline knowledge, no wolf training. Raised in complete isolation from her identity. The Silvermoon bloodline carries the rarest wolf strain in recorded history, Damien. A white wolf. Once every thousand years."

I thought about Aria standing in my boardroom. Plain clothes. Quiet voice. The way she hadn't flinched when I tore apart her work in front of everyone, just gathered her things with a stillness that I had mistaken for resignation.

It hadn't been resignation.

"She doesn't know," I said.

"She didn't. Not then." He paused. "I've been trying to find the right moment to reach Elena with what I know. But things have moved faster than I anticipated."

He gestured toward the back of the folder. I turned to the final page.

A business profile. Silvermoon Enterprises. Founded two years ago in Portland. Architecture, real estate development, acquisitions. Forty-seven employees at founding, now over three hundred. Revenue figures that made my jaw tighten because they were real and growing and pointed directly at my market.

The CEO was listed as anonymous.

But the company name wasn't.

"She built this," I said.

"In two years. From nothing." Something moved across Marcus's face that wasn't quite a smile. "The woman you called too ordinary to stand beside you has been systematically outperforming your company for eight months. Three of your major contracts in the last quarter went to Silvermoon Enterprises."

I closed the folder.

The pressure in my chest that had lived there for three years sharpened into something different. Not pain this time. Something closer to dread.

"The gala is Friday," Marcus said. "The Pacific Northwest Business Leaders event. Cross Industries is a headline sponsor." He looked at me steadily. "She will be there."

"You know that for certain?"

"I know she was invited. And I know she's not the kind of woman who hides anymore." He stood slowly, bracing one hand on the desk. "Whatever you're planning to say to her, Damien — prepare yourself. Because the woman walking into that room is not the one who walked out of your building three years ago."

I didn't sleep that night.

The gala was held in the Grand Pacific ballroom, three hundred people, open bar, the kind of event where handshakes were worth millions and everyone was performing for someone. I arrived with Vanessa on my arm, smiled at the right people, accepted congratulations on contracts I barely remembered signing.

My wolf was restless the entire time.

By nine o'clock I had made the rounds twice and was standing near the far end of the room with a drink I wasn't touching when the energy in the ballroom shifted. It was subtle — a slight change in the direction of attention, the way heads turned toward the entrance without quite meaning to.

I turned.

She walked in like she had always owned the room and was simply returning to collect what was hers.

Three years had not changed Aria Blackwood's face. But everything surrounding it had transformed. She wore deep green that made the people near her look underdressed by comparison. Her posture was straight and unhurried. The man beside her — tall, broad, scanning the room with the alert focus of a trained Beta — leaned down and said something near her ear, and she smiled without looking away from the crowd.

Confident. Settled. Completely unbothered.

My wolf surged forward so violently that I took a half step and had to stop myself.

The broken bond screamed. It had been a dull ache for three years, manageable if I kept moving, kept working, kept refusing to think about it directly. Standing twenty feet away from her, it became something else entirely. A fire in my sternum. My hands tightened around my glass.

"She's here."

Vanessa's voice was quiet beside me. I hadn't heard her approach.

I said nothing.

"Interesting." Vanessa tilted her head, watching Aria move through the room. "She cleaned up well."

Something about the way she said it made me look at her. Vanessa's expression was perfectly composed, but her eyes were fixed on Aria with a focus that had nothing casual about it. It lasted only a second. Then she smiled and touched my arm.

"Don't stare, darling. It's unbecoming."

I looked back across the room. Aria had stopped near the center and was speaking to another guest, relaxed, laughing at something.

Then she glanced up.

Our eyes met.

The bond that I had severed three years ago lurched in my chest like something trying to resurrect itself. I saw the exact moment she felt it too — a stillness that crossed her face, there and gone in under a second.

Then she looked away and went back to her conversation like I wasn't there.

Like I was nothing.

My grandfather materialized at my left shoulder.

"Close your mouth," he said quietly. "And brace yourself. Because the boy beside her just walked this way, and he is not here to make small talk."

I straightened.

Lucas Storm stopped in front of me with the calm of someone who had rehearsed being unbothered and then decided to mean it.

"Mr. Cross," he said. "My employer would like a word. Privately." He paused. "She said to tell you she'll give you five minutes."