CHAPTER 1

LILLIAN’S POV

The automated voice chimed, “Welcome to Luxembourg” as if the city had been waiting. The city’s name alone tasted like rusted metal in my mouth, a reminder of everything I had fled.

I clenched my jaw. Ten years. It’s been ten years since I had fled this place, with my heart shattered and my cheeks still wet from all my crying, embarrassed out of my mind due to one silly love confession—one moment of foolish hope where I had thought Drake Blackwood might see me as more than the scholarship kid….the maids daughter.

Which was a blundering mistake!

My phone buzzed. Josh.

“At arrivals. Look for the idiot in green….PS: She made me wear it.”

I shoved through the sliding doors. The humid air clung to me like an outer skin, thick with the scent of jet fuel and something unnervingly familiar…wild bergamot from the pack gardens. They still grew it then. But every other thing was different, the gleaming floors, towering glass walls and standardized equipments that weren’t in operation before, unlike the cramped terminal I had left behind.

The terminal stretched like a steel and glass cathedral, so polished I could see my reflection on the floors—a woman in dark sunglasses with lips pressed into a bloodless line. Not the trembling girl who had left.

A hand grabbed my wrist.

“Lily?”

His voice had not changed. Rough as gravel, warm as a summer breeze.

I turned. Josh. My best friend. Except the chubby kid I remembered was gone. This man was all tanned skin, muscle and sharp edges with his lips bent sideways in a crooked smile.

“Josh!” I lunched into his arms and he lifted me like I weighed nothing, laughing and spinning me until my bag smacked his ribs. For one dizzying second, I was sixteen again….carefree, untouched by Drake’s cruelty.

“Fuck! You are really here” he breathed, holding me at arm’s length, his pine and cedar scent wrapping around me. His eyes flickered with joy, then pain. “Ten years, Lily. Ten fucking years.”

I swallowed as guilt welled up my throat. “I missed you too, bud.”

A cough. Deliberate.

I turned. A she-wolf stood beside him, very beautiful with platinum white hair and emerald eyes. Her smile was bright, but her gaze…..calculating and her nostrils flared subtly. Scenting me.

“Lydia,” Josh said, rubbing his neck. “Hey Lily…meet my mate, Lydia.”

Mate. The word punched a hole through me. Ofcourse he had moved on. Everyone had, while I had been stuck in the past, picking shards of myself out of the refectory hall tiles.

“Lillian,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. “But you can call me Lily.”

She seized my hand and gushed excitedly, “Josh talks about you non stop.” Her accent, a musical tone, Eastern European, maybe Russian. Unexpected for a Luxembourg pack wolf. “Though he failed to mention how stunning you are. You are even prettier than your photos.”

Josh flushed, with his cheeks flaming red and said with admiration in his eyes, “She has always been stunning.”

Lydia winked and said breathlessly, “Even hotter now.”

I forced a smile and thought ‘Liar.’ Back then, I had been the freckled bespectacled girl with a funny haircut. The one Drake and the whole school had laughed at.

The car ride was a blur of tall, shiny skyscrapers and palm trees. Luxembourg wasn’t just transformed, it was unrecognizable. Sleek buildings and towers pierced the skyline where ramshackle shops once stood. It wasn’t a forgotten pack anymore, it was a kingdom.

“Alpha Drake transformed everything,” Lydia said softly, when she saw me looking. “One can easily say he is best Alpha, Luxembourg ever had.”

Drake.

My nails dug into my palms. Breathe.

Josh’s grip tightened on the wheel. “Speaking of…..He is giving the opening speech at your conference.”

I became numb instantly. No. The conference brochure had said “special guest.” Not him. Never him.

“We are dropping you at your mum’s,” Josh said as the car turned onto a gated road, with iron fences and manicured edges. “She is still at the Alpha’s estate.”

My stomach dropped. The Alpha’s estate, Drake’s home. Where I was raised. Where he still lived.

The iron gates loomed ahead, towering over us as we drove through. The Blackwood crest gleaming—a wolf mid-snarl, just like it’s master. Beyond them, the main house glittered with its many lights, like eyes watching my return.

The cottage came into view, smaller than I remembered, weathered, tucked behind the manor like a shadow. Mom’s rose bushes still framed the door, their petals like drops of blood against the white wood.

“Just stay low,” Josh muttered. His knuckles were white. “You will be gone by weekend.”

I stepped out and inhaled deeply. The air smelled of roses, wet grass and a whiff of something darker—wolfsbane from the Alpha’s private gardens. Drake’s favorite.

Somewhere beyond the trees and fresh mowed lawn, a door slammed and I froze, then frantically looked around in case if he or someone decide to take a stroll.

“No one’s there” I said softly and clenched my fist tightly, “just ghosts.” But my wolf, Nyla, stirred uneasily in my chest.

But as I rolled my suitcase towards the cottage, the hair at the back of my neck prickled.

Like I was being watched.