CHAPTER THREE

|| Sebastian ||

I woke to silence, but my body knew something was wrong before my mind caught up. The bed felt emptier than it should. Colder.

The mate bond stretched thin across the room, telling me exactly where she was even with my eyes closed. 

She was moving quietly around the room, maybe carefgul so she would not wake me up.

I kept my breathing even and listened.

Her footsteps were soft, and I heard the rustle of fabric - her dress…and a muffled curse when somethning hit the floor.

"Stupid," she muttered. "So fucking stupid, Evelyn. What were you thinking? What are you supposed to do now? Leave a tip? Say thank you like this is…God, this is humiliating."

More rustling. Then there was the click of her heels being picked up. Her breathing was unsteady, hitching like she was about to cry.

"He's a call boy," she whispered. "He does this for a living. Just leave the money and go. Don't make it weird."

Something landed on the bed near my hip. Then the door opened and closed with a quiet click.

She was gone.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling, processing what had just happened. Then I sat up and looked at what she'd left.

Cash. Crisp hundreds bound with a paper band. I counted it and laughed despite myself when I saw that it was ten thousand dollars.

She really thought I was an escort. Actually believed I was some high-end prostitute she'd hired for the night.

Like I hadn't known exactly who she was the second she'd stumbled through that door.

Like I hadn't felt the mate bond snap into place the moment our eyes met, a hook lodging behind my ribs and yanking hard, demanding I claim her, mark her, keep her. Like my wolf hadn't surged forward so violently I'd barely kept control, barely stopped myself from shifting right there and proving to her exactly what she was to me.

Mine.

The word had thundered through every cell in my body. Still was, even now with her gone. Mine, mine, mine.

I'd searched for her for ten years. Ten years of wondering where she was, if she was safe, if she was happy. I'd imagined finding her a thousand different ways—at a coffee shop, on a street corner, through one of my contacts. Never like this. Never with her walking into my hotel room by accident, mistaking me for someone she could pay and forget.

And I'd never imagined she'd be my mate.

My fated mate.

The one person in the entire world my wolf had chosen, the one woman I was biologically designed to protect and possess and worship. 

She'd felt it too. I'd seen it in her eyes—that confusion, that desperate need that made no sense to her human mind. She'd wanted me with an intensity that terrified her, craved closeness that went beyond normal desire.

Because the bond was pulling her just as hard as it pulled me.

She just didn't know what it meant.

I picked up the money and held it to the morning light. 

I was keeping it. Framing it, probably. A reminder of the night my mate walked back into my life and had no idea who I was.

Because I'd recognized her immediately. Those eyes—stormy grey-blue-green that changed with the light. The face that had haunted my dreams for eighteen years.

My little storm.

She'd been fourteen when I pulled her from her father's burning car. Tiny, terrified, covered in blood—some hers, most his. I was seventeen, bleeding from a knife wound in my side from a fight gone wrong. But I'd seen the car wrapped around the tree, seen flames licking up from the engine, and I'd run.

Got her out seconds before the whole thing exploded.

I'd whispered that stupid nickname against her hair while I carried her away from the fire, set her down in the grass, and disappeared before the ambulances arrived. Couldn't afford to be around when cops showed up—not with blood on my hands and a body in an alley three blocks away.

For ten years I'd looked for her. 

And then she'd shown up last night, calling herself Evelyn Hart now, married to some bastard who'd clearly broken her in ways that made my hands itch to break him back.

I'd known the second I saw her face that I wasn't letting her walk away. Not again. N

But she'd left anyway. Snuck out like I was someone to be ashamed of and left money on the pillow.

We'd see about that.

My phone alarm went off. I grabbed it and silenced it, chest tightening when I saw the date.

Fuck. I'd almost forgotten.

I dressed quickly—jeans, black shirt. Left the suit draped over a chair. Grabbed my keys and headed to the private garage where my Bugatti waited.

Twenty minutes later I was pulling up to the cemetery.

The gates were open. They always were—I'd bought the entire cemetery five years ago and paid the groundskeeper enough to keep it pristine. The kind of place Luna would have loved.

I parked near the back and walked through rows of headstones until I reached the one I'd had custom-made. White marble with gold lettering.

Luna Grace Creed

Beloved Sister

2000 - 2010

The stars were too bright for this world

I knelt on the grass and traced the letters of her name.

"Hey, baby girl," I said quietly. "Sorry I'm late. Got a little distracted last night."

The wind rustled through the trees. Birds sang somewhere in the distance.

Fifteen years. Fifteen years since I'd lost her to leukemia despite every desperate, violent, illegal thing I'd done to try to save her.

I was thirteen years old. What could a thirteen-year-old do? Fight in underground rings for a couple hundred a night. Steal from corner stores. Run errands for men who didn't ask questions and paid in cash.

I'd done it all. Every degrading, dangerous thing I could think of to scrape together money for her medications, her treatments, the endless parade of doctors who all said the same thing: she needs things you can't afford, kid.

And I'd failed her anyway. Watched her die in a hospital bed that smelled like antiseptic and death, holding my hand and telling me it was okay, she wasn't scared, she'd see Mom soon.

Our mother had died when Luna was five. Overdose. Left us alone in an apartment with unpaid rent and no food. That's when I'd learned what the streets could teach you.

She'd never talked about our father. Not once. I'd asked when I was young, and she'd just shaken her head, eyes distant. He doesn't matter. It's just us, baby. We're enough.

We weren't enough. Not without money, without help, without a father who might have saved us if he'd bothered to exist.

I'd spent years hating a man I'd never met. A ghost who'd abandoned my mother, abandoned us, left us to rot in poverty while he—what? Lived his life somewhere else? Started a new family? Pretended we didn't exist?

Now I had everything. More money than I could spend in ten lifetimes. Power that made grown men fear me. Control over half the city's underground and a decent chunk of its legitimate business.

And none of it could bring back the one person who'd actually mattered.

Luna would have been twenty-five this year. Would have graduated college, maybe. Met someone. Been happy.

Instead she was here, ten years old forever, and I was building empires on the foundation of her death.

"I met someone," I said, voice rough. "Last night. Someone I've been looking for. The girl from the car accident—remember I told you about her? Little storm. She's all grown up now. Beautiful, but she looked so broken. I am guessing that some bastard she was married to hurt her.”

The wind picked up, scattering leaves across Luna's grave. I brushed them away.

"And she's my mate. My fated mate. Can you believe that? Ten years I searched for her, and she was meant to be mine all along." I laughed. "The universe has a twisted sense of humor."

My phone buzzed. I ignored it. It buzzed again.

Finally I pulled it out. Damien. My head of security, the closest thing I had to a friend, and the only person allowed to interrupt me today.

I answered. "This better be important."

"We've got a problem. That reporter, Jackson Mills? He's gotten too close. Found the connection between the agency and the offshore accounts. He's planning to publish tomorrow."

I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. "Handle it."

"How thoroughly?"

"Completely. Make him disappear. Scrub every trace. I want his files, his backups, his fucking handwritten notes. Everything. Make it look like he ran. Can you do that?"

"Consider it done."

"Good." I paused, then made a decision that was probably insane, but I'd stopped caring about sanity the moment Evelyn left cash on my pillow. "And Damien? I need you to find someone for me. Everything about her. Every detail, every secret, every skeleton."

"Name?"

"Evelyn Hart. Formerly Evelyn Song. Twenty-four. I want to know everything. Her finances, her friends, her family, and her medical history. Where she lives, where she shops, and what she eats for breakfast. Everything."

"When do you need it?"

"Yesterday. But I'll settle for the end of the day."

"I'll have a preliminary report in six hours."

"Perfect." I ended the call and looked back at Luna's grave. "I'm going to fix her. And if indeed I find out that some bastard actually hurt her, I will ruin him completely… destroy them for crossing my mate.”