2…

•Faye•

‘Fuck, she’s beautiful. How can someone be this perfect?’

The thought looped in my head on repeat, over and over, like a broken record stuck on the most annoying love song ever written. I hate hearing people’s thoughts. I hate it so much. It is genuinely the worst superpower a girl could get stuck with, way below flight, way below invisibility, somewhere near the bottom of the list next to permanently smelling like wet dog.

Who the hell is this dude complimenting like this anyways, I thought to myself, keeping my eyes shut, because pretending to still be unconscious felt like the smartest move I had available right now.

‘She really is our mate. What do you think her name is?’

Another voice from the same head. Different tone completely, rougher somehow, like it was coming from somewhere deeper in him.

Okay. That’s new. That’s actually never happened before. I’ve been hearing people’s inside voices since I was twelve and it has always, always been one voice per person, one messy little narrator per skull. Never two. Never a whole roommate situation happening in there.

‘She said don’t let them find her.’

The first voice again.

‘Who are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

Okay. So he heard me.

Fantastic.

“And why do you think she ran into our car?” he asked out loud this time, and his actual voice matched the first thought exactly, deep and a little rough around the edges, the kind of voice that made you want to just believe whatever he said next.

“Alpha, I don’t know,” another man answered from somewhere nearby.

Okay, wait. Wait wait wait. Rewind.

He’s the owner of the car I ran into. Fine, noted, filed away, moving on. But he was called an Alpha and he said mate, not baby, not shorty.

Mate.

Where does that leave me?

Werewolf.

Actual werewolf.

And apparently I’m his mate.

As in a wolf mate. As in the actual furry, howling, moon-worshipping kind of wolf.

My brain did the math so fast it should have won an award.

If he thinks I’m his werewolf mate, then I don’t have to be Faye who watched her stepfather come at her with his belt one too many times and did what she had to do to walk out of that house alive. I don’t have to be the girl every cop in three counties is probably looking for by now.

I can just be confused. Concussed. Freshly hit by a car, apparently a werewolf missing her memory and brand new to this whole human world thing.

Best save of my entire life. Genuinely. If I had a resume for surviving trauma, this would go at the very top in bold font.

Except there was one problem.

He was suspicious.

‘Something about her story doesn’t make sense.’

My stomach dropped.

So much for handsome and stupid.

‘She could be dangerous.’

I almost opened my eyes right there.

‘She’s injured,’ the other voice argued.

‘That doesn’t make her harmless.’

Well, damn.

These werewolves came with functioning brains.

All I had to do was open my eyes, look lost, and hope my new supernatural situation bought me enough time to figure out what the hell was happening.

“Hey, are you alright, darling?”

I peeled my eyes open slowly, doing my best confused damsel blink, and then immediately forgot my entire plan for a solid two seconds because oh my god.

He was tall, broad, and unfairly handsome, with a face that looked like it had been carved by someone who really, really loved their job. I had spent my whole life being the chubby girl who got looked past in every room, the one dudes were nice to right before they asked if I had a skinnier friend. And this absolute snack of a man was looking at me like I personally hung the moon he probably howled at.

‘I think mate finds us attractive.’

I nearly choked.

Two voices. Same body.

I’m not just hearing his thoughts anymore. I’m hearing double, like his head has an upstairs and a downstairs and both of them pay rent.

He leaned closer.

“Can you tell me your name?”

My heart kicked.

There it was.

The question that could ruin everything.

“Where am I?” I whispered, going full soft and shaky, blinking up at him like the world was one giant question mark. “I don’t. I don’t remember anything. Who are you? Who am I?”

The lie slid out of me easier than it probably should have, smooth as butter, and if there is a special hell for girls who fake amnesia to dodge a murder charge, I guess I’ll be getting a reservation.

But self defense doesn’t always look like self defense on paper, and I was not about to bet my whole future on twelve strangers believing that a chubby girl on the run really did what she had to do to survive her own house.

He stared at me for a long moment.

‘She’s terrified.’

‘She’s hiding something.’

I swallowed.

Great.

He was not buying it completely.

“What do you remember?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Too fast.

His eyes narrowed.

I quickly added, “I remember being scared. Then the car. Then nothing.”

That seemed to stop him.

His expression softened, but I caught the thought underneath it.

‘Someone was chasing her.’

So he remembered what I’d said before losing consciousness.

I had to be careful.

“I don’t know who I was running from,” I whispered. “I just know I didn’t want them to find me.”

His whole face changed when I said it, and for the first time, I saw something beneath the suspicion.

Concern.

Not just because I was his mate.

Because he genuinely wanted to know what had frightened me badly enough to run onto a dark road.

That was dangerous.

Not him.

His kindness.

Because kindness made people harder to lie to.

And somehow, despite everything, watching a man that hot look at me like I was worth protecting did something strange to my chest.

‘We need to get her somewhere safe.’

‘Our home.’

I almost smiled.

Bingo, I thought, and let my eyes flutter closed again, just for effect.