Chapter 4

Lila's POV

It couldn't be him.

I stared at the screen while Wendy waited on the other end of the line. King Kael's face filled the frame, and yes, the jawline was sharp and the hair was dark and the eyes were cold in a way that reminded me of Luca when he shut the world out.

But half the wolves in this country had dark hair and sharp jaws. It didn't mean anything.

From what I know, Alpha King Kael may have a reputation for being ruthless, but anyone who's actually paid attention knows he's one of the most disciplined and duty-bound rulers this country has ever seen.

A one-night stand who had his fun and vanished by morning? That's not Kael. That could never have been Kael.

"Lila?" Wendy said.

"It's a coincidence." I picked up the remote and turned the volume up. "Lots of kids look like lots of people."

The anchor was talking about the King's personal life now. A still photo appeared in the corner of the screen. Kael standing beside a woman at some formal event, his hand on her lower back.

The woman's face was angled away from the camera, but I recognized the curve of her cheek. The fall of her hair. The way she tilted her chin up when she smiled.

My stomach dropped.

"His secret fiancee is rumored to be from a Gamma family," the anchor said. "They share a young daughter, though neither the engagement nor the child has been officially confirmed by the palace."

I knew that woman. I'd grown up beside it.

My twin sister Maya.

The screen cut to a paparazzi shot of a little girl, maybe four or five, holding Maya's hand outside a preschool. She had Maya's smile and somebody else's nose.

The timing didn't make sense. If Maya's daughter was around Luca's age, that meant Maya had gotten pregnant almost the same time I did. Right around when I fled.

Had Maya gone after Kael the moment I was gone? But she'd been with Derek. I'd seen them together with my own eyes, his arm around her waist, her fingers curled into his jacket.

Unless she'd been playing both of them.

Did King Kael and Derek know that?

I shook my head.

I didn't have time to untangle it. What mattered was the interview. What mattered was getting close enough to the Capital's social circles to find Luca's father. If the job fell through, I'd find another way in.

I packed the last of Luca's books into the box and sealed it with tape. Luca was still standing by the TV, one hand on the screen, tracing the outline of Kael's jaw with his finger.

"Come on, bug," I said. "Time to go."

The bus to the Capital took four hours. Luca slept with his head against my arm, his stuffed wolf tucked under his chin. I watched the fields flatten into suburbs and the suburbs thicken into city blocks.

I found the apartment Wendy's contact had arranged. Third floor, no elevator, a window that faced a brick wall. The hallway smelled like floor cleaner and someone else's cooking.

I unpacked Luca's things first. Lined his shoes by the door, hung his jacket on the low hook, taped one of his drawings to the fridge. A wolf with a big head and tiny legs. He'd drawn it in purple crayon, because purple was the only color that wasn't broken.

He stood in the middle of the room and looked around. His eyes were careful, measuring whether this place would hurt him.

"It's just for a while, bug." I crouched down and pressed my lips to his forehead. "Wish me luck."

He nodded. One small nod.

I locked the door behind me. In the hallway mirror, I straightened my blazer and checked my teeth and told myself I looked like someone who deserved a chance.

Then I headed for the King's tower.

Kael's POV

Five years earlier, in the great hall of a Gamma packhouse, Keal had arrived looking for his mate.

Kael remembered the scene clearly. The pack's leadership had lined up to greet him, all smiles and bowed heads. The Alpha Baron and his son Derek had been at the front, rattling off connections between his bloodline and Kael's late father, as if shared ancestry could excuse the thirty-minute delay.

Kael hadn't cared. He was there for one reason.

"I'm looking for a woman," he said. "She was at the masquerade. I left a watch with her. Black obsidian face, royal crest on the back."

A pause rippled through the hall. Then, from the back of the group, a young woman stepped forward.

"Is this what you mean?" She held up the watch. Her hand trembled, but her eyes were steady.

Kael studied her. The face was close to what he remembered through the blur of that night. The scent was similar. But his wolf was not as stirred and restless as he remembered.

He took the watch from her hand.

"What's your name?"

"Maya," she said.

Though the whole pack seemed surprised at Maya's words at first, Maya's father Leonard, Alpha Baron and his son Derek somehow all confirmed what Maya told them about that later.

In the months that followed, Kael tried to make it work.

Maya's scent was familiar enough. Her face close enough to what the haze had left in his memory.

But his wolf never confirmed the bond. No pull. No fire. Just a quiet, persistent wrongness that he couldn't name.

He told himself the masquerade had been the drugs, the heat, the chaos. The connection he'd felt was amplified by circumstance. Maya was the most logical answer.

Then Maya announced she was pregnant.

Kael could smell the child's blood and recognize the kinship.

It was real, the way family blood always registered. He assumed the child was his.

They became engaged. He gave Maya a wing of the palace, staff, security. But when she pressed for a wedding date, something in him locked shut.

He couldn't say yes. He didn't know why.

Years passed. His wolf grew worse. The feral episodes came more often, the restlessness sharpening into something that frightened even his Beta.

A chosen mate like Maya could quiet that too, but he was not sure about marking Maya.

Then, one morning, my beta Eli dropped a stack of resumes on his desk for the new administrative position. Kael flipped through them without interest until a photograph stopped him cold.

Dark hair. Clean features. A face that looked like Maya's but wasn't Maya's.

Something old stirred behind his ribs. Not memory. Deeper.

Kael ignored that and read through her resume. A rogue.

He held it out to Eli. "Put this one last."

"The special last, huh?" Eli raised an eyebrow. “Hope she's lucky then."