Chapter 1— Don't Open the Door

The last thing Damien said before he left was don't open the door.

Sera Vale stood in the middle of her small kitchen and replayed those four words for the hundredth time that hour. The coffee she'd made sat cold on the counter. The clock above the stove read 2:14 a.m. Outside, the city made its usual noises. Traffic. A distant siren. The low hum of the building settling into itself.

Normal sounds. Safe sounds.

She crossed her arms and stared at the door anyway.

Damien had looked bad. Worse than the last time he'd shown up unannounced, which was saying something because that time he'd had a split lip and three cracked ribs and still managed to grin at her like everything was fine. Tonight there was no grin. Tonight his eyes had that hollow, hunted look she recognized from years ago, from the bad years, when he was running from things she never fully understood.

He'd grabbed both her arms the second she opened the door. Gripped them tight enough to bruise.

"Sera. Listen to me. Whatever happens tonight, don't open the door for anyone but me. Don't talk to anyone. Don't go outside." His eyes had moved to the hallway behind him, then back to her face. "Promise me."

"Damien, what did you do?"

"Promise me first."

She'd promised. She always promised. That was the problem with loving someone who kept breaking themselves against the world. You kept making promises just to keep them in the room long enough to breathe.

He'd left without telling her anything else.

That was three hours ago.

Sera uncrossed her arms and pushed her dark hair back from her face. She needed to sleep. She needed to stop standing in her kitchen watching a door like it was going to confess something. She needed to stop letting Damien drag her into his chaos every time he came back from wherever he disappeared for months at a time.

She turned toward the hallway.

The knock came.

Three sharp raps. Too hard. Too deliberate.

Sera went still.

It wasn't Damien's knock. Damien knocked like an apology, soft and a little hesitant, like he already knew he was interrupting something. This knock had no apology in it at all.

She didn't move.

The knock came again. Same rhythm. Same force.

"Ms. Vale." A man's voice. Deep and flat and utterly without warmth. "Open the door."

Her heart rate spiked. She pressed her back against the hallway wall and said nothing.

"We know you're inside." A pause. "This goes easier if you open the door yourself."

Easier. The word sat wrong in her stomach.

She looked at her phone on the kitchen counter. Thought about calling the police. Thought about what Damien had looked like tonight, that hollow terrified look, and wondered if the police were even the right call here. Something about the voice on the other side of that door made her think that normal rules didn't apply to whatever this was.

She reached for her phone anyway.

The door came off its hinges.

Not kicked. Not broken. Just gone, wrenched clean from the frame in one movement like it was nothing, like wood and metal meant nothing at all, and three men walked into her apartment with the casual certainty of people who had never been told no in their lives.

Sera ran.

She made it four steps before one of them was simply there, in front of her, without having crossed the space between them in any way she could track. She slammed into a chest that felt like stone and bounced back and the wall caught her.

"Don't." The man who'd spoken through the door looked down at her. He was tall, blond, jaw like a ledge. His eyes were the wrong color. Some shade between gold and amber that no human eye had any business being. "It will go easier."

There was that word again.

"Who are you?" Her voice came out steadier than she felt. She was proud of that. "What do you want?"

"Your brother took something that belongs to our Alpha." He said it like he was reading from a list. Like this was routine. "He's gone missing before he could return it. You'll be coming with us until he does."

"I don't know where Damien is."

"We know."

"Then taking me makes no sense."

Something moved in those amber eyes. Not quite amusing. Something colder than that. "It makes perfect sense. You're what he'll come back for."

Sera looked at the door hanging off its frame. Looked at the three of them. Calculated the distance to the window, the fire escape, the odds.

The blond man read her face. "Don't."

She ran for the window.

She didn't make it.

The blindfold went on. Her wrists were bound. She was lifted like she weighed nothing and carried out of her own apartment and the city sounds got further and further away and she kept her breathing deliberate and her mind sharp because panic was a luxury she couldn't afford right now.

A voice near her ear. The blond man. Low and indifferent.

"The Alpha will decide what happens to you."

Sera said nothing.

But her hands, bound together in her lap, were trembling.

And somewhere in the city behind her, her neighbor's dog had started to howl.