Chapter 2

Lila's POV

The bruises on my face had turned yellow, but they still ached when I pressed my fingers to them.

I was still in the old t-shirt and shorts I'd slept in. Bare feet on cold tile.

One month. One month since Maya drugged me, since Derek sent those photos, since my Gamma father dragged me home and beat me until I stopped screaming.

I sat on the bathroom floor with the pregnancy test in my hand and tried to breathe.

Two lines. Clear and pink and impossible to deny.

My period was two weeks late. I'd told myself it was the stress. The whispers that followed me through every corridor of the packhouse. "Whore." "Slut." "The Gamma's shameful daughter." I'd become a ghost in my own home.

No one sat next to me at meals. No one met my eyes. I had betrayed an Alpha's son, and the pack had decided my punishment long before my father finished with his fists.

I pressed my back against the cold tile wall and pulled my knees to my chest. Nothing showed yet. But the test didn't lie.

The man from that night. The one whose face I couldn't remember, whose scent had somehow cut through the drugs and the panic and made my wolf surge forward like she'd recognized something I didn't. He'd left a child inside me.

I still remembered his arms around me. The warmth of his chest, the way my wolf had reached for him.

I pushed the thought away.

I thought of the watch hidden under my mattress.

Maybe there something on it that could tell me who he was.

I washed my face, walked to my bedroom, and knelt beside the bed. My fingers found the cool metal beneath the mattress. I pulled it out and held it up to the light, turning it over --

"What's that?"

Maya stood in the doorframe. Her eyes moved from the watch in my hand to my face, and a slow smile spread across her lips.

"Nothing." I shoved the watch under my pillow. "Get out of my room."

She tilted her head. "You look pale, Lila. Paler than usual." Her gaze drifted past me to the bathroom door, still open, the pregnancy test balanced on the edge of the sink.

Her smile widened.

"Maya. Don't."

"Daddy!" She was already turning toward the hallway. "Daddy, come here!"

I grabbed her arm. "Please. I'm begging you. You already have Derek."

She yanked free. "Why would I stop? Derek is just where I want to start. He is not reliable anyways." She smoothed her sleeve where I'd grabbed it.

"With this, maybe dad will kick you out of this pack. Then there would be more comparisons between you and me." Maya gave me the scariest smile I've ever seen. "I would finally be the one and only. Never again the lesser one."

My father's footsteps were already in the hallway.

He filled the doorframe. His eyes found the test on the sink before I could speak.

"Please—" I started.

He crossed the room in two strides and slapped me hard across the face. My vision blurred. Copper flooded my mouth.

"A baby." His voice was low and controlled. The kind of quiet that was worse than shouting. "You let some stranger put a bastard in you."

"I didn't—"

"Shut your mouth." He pointed at Maya without looking at her. "Lock the door behind me."

He turned back. His face was stone.

"I'm calling a doctor tonight. Someone discreet." He adjusted his collar. "This gets taken care of before anyone finds out."

All the blood left my face. "You can't do that."

"Can't?" He almost laughed.

My hand pressed harder against my stomach. Through the blood, through every cell, I could feel it. Something warm and alive and tethered to me. "You can't force me to give up my child. Not this way. Not when-"

He stepped back toward the door. "You have no choice, Lila."

The door closed. The lock clicked.

I slid down the side of the bed and sat on the floor. Both hands over my stomach. The bond hummed beneath my skin — faint, fragile, but real. The only thing in this house that was truly mine.

My mother would have fought for me. She would have planted herself between me and that door and refused to move.

But she was gone. And I was alone.

Kael's POV

In the central tower of the Capital Pack, the Alpha King Kael's inner wolf had not stopped pacing in his mind.

Kael sat at the head of a long conference table, flanked by advisors and their stacks of reports. He had not heard a word they said.

The night of the masquerade, a scent had reached him through three corridors. Not the controlled pheromones of wolves who paraded their heat for attention. The Capital's party district was full of those, and Kael never went near it.

This was different. Raw. Involuntary. So powerful that even his wolf tore free and dragged him toward the source.

He found her surrounded by unmated males. She was stumbling, shoving against them, her dress torn at the shoulder. He scattered them without a word and lifted her off the ground.

His wolf went still the moment she pressed her face into his chest.

She must be the fated mate Kael had been waiting for.

The hotel room was small and rough-walled. The night that followed was heat and instinct and her fingers gripping his back like he was the only solid thing in the world.

When gray light crept through the window, Kael had a summit with three northern Alphas that could not wait. He dressed in the half-dark, watched the rise and fall of her breathing, and placed his watch on the nightstand.

The royal crest engraved on the back was unmistakable. If she looked and searched, she would very likely know where to find him.

She never came.

He returned that afternoon. The room was stripped clean. Sheets changed, key left on the dresser. No trace of her scent.

"Find her." He gave the order to his Beta, Eli, before the door swung shut. "Start with the packs nearest the Capital. She can't have gone far."

The search took a month. One by one, surrounding territories were cleared. Kael's patience thinned with every empty report.

Today, Eli had flagged the last unchecked pack. A small territory run by Derek's father, Kael's own cousin.

The moment Kael's car crossed the pack boundary, his wolf felt a similar pull from that night. Too faint that he wasn't sure if it was really there.

But it was the closest thing to what he was looking for in the last full month.

He gripped the armrest hard enough to crack the leather.

"Search every house. Every building. Now," he said.