Chapter 3

Vane

I walked toward him. The heels made every step deliberate, the dress pulling tight against my thighs.

A coffee cup sat on the edge of his desk, still steaming. Black, no cream. A stack of papers underneath.

Cain was reading. Sleeves rolled, jaw set, a muscle ticking near his ear. He hadn't looked up since I'd entered.

Without the coat, his face was harder to dismiss. I dismissed it anyway.

He'd told me to come to him. Hadn't said what for. But the dress, the heels, the housekeeper's smug little instructions. I could read the script. Tribute arrives, tribute behaves, tribute does what she's told.

I had no intention of playing my part. I’d held a defensive line against thirty wolves this morning. I wasn’t about to perform for one man in a locked room.

The coffee was right there. One quick move — knock it across his papers, ruin whatever he was reading, and show him exactly what kind of tribute he'd bought himself.

I reached for the cup.

The hem of the dress caught under my heel. My balance broke. I pitched forward and my hand grabbed the first solid thing it found.

Cain's belt.

His weight shifted. The desk caught his hip and the coffee went airborne, and then we were both going down, him forward, me backward, and the cup emptied itself directly onto the top of his head.

I hit the floor. He landed on top of me.

Coffee dripped from his hair onto my face. His forearm braced beside my head, his chest against mine, his jaw close enough that I could count the muscles in it.

Nothing romantic about it.

His eyes locked on mine. Gray and lethal. Coffee ran down his cheekbone and pooled on the marble. The room smelled like burnt roast and fury.

Three seconds. Neither of us breathed.

Then he pushed off. Stood. Wiped the coffee from his face with the back of his hand.

"Get out."

His voice was level. Controlled. But his knuckles had gone white against the desk.

I scrambled to my feet. The dress was soaked, the heels useless. But the barely leashed rage in his face told me I'd gotten exactly what I came for.

I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me. My hands were shaking. I hadn't noticed until the adrenaline had nowhere left to go.

The corridor was empty. Silent. I leaned against the wall and let out a breath I didn't know I'd been holding.

Then I smiled.

I could still feel where his chest had pressed against mine. Could still smell the coffee and the cedar underneath.

I stopped smiling. I stopped thinking about it. I pushed off the wall and figured out which direction led away from his door.

Whatever happened next, at least I wouldn't be spending tonight in his bed.

Cain

The coffee scalded my skin and stained everything it touched, and all I could think about were her eyes.

"I told you," Razor said.

I stripped the ruined shirt and threw it in the basin. My reflection stared back. Wet hair. Coffee darkening my jaw. A red mark across my collarbone where the liquid had burned through.

"Told me what."

"She's the one."

I braced my hands on the counter. Razor had been talking since the moment I walked into that clearing and saw their Alpha's guard.

"Not the daughter," he'd said. "Her. The girl with alpha blood. The one who showed her teeth."

I'd made the demand because Razor wouldn't shut up until I did. Alpha's daughter. That was the political cover. A tribute to bind the conquered pack. Standard practice.

What Razor wanted had nothing to do with politics.

I didn't understand my wolf. She was clumsy. Disrespectful. Had just dumped coffee on my head and walked out looking proud of herself.

But every time I tried to dismiss her, I saw those eyes. Steady and unyielding, even flat on her back with coffee soaking into her hair and my weight pressing her into the floor. Most wolves looked away when I held their gaze. She hadn't. Not once. Not in the clearing, not in the car, not on my floor with my mouth inches from hers.

She'd looked at me like she was deciding whether to fight now or wait for a better opening.

"She could be our fatedmate," Razor said. "She could end this."

This.

The curse.

Ten years ago, a witch caught me alone and whispered three words that ruined everything. Every night since, when the sun dropped, I went feral. Razor took full control. Mindless. Feral. Whatever he did in those hours left blood on my hands and holes in my memory.

I’d built my rule on the fear Razor left behind. Men surrendered faster when they believed the thing coming for them could not be reasoned with. Alphas handed over their territories without a fight once they'd seen what Razor left behind. But the reputation wasn't strategy. It was damage I couldn't control.

Only a fatedmate could break the curse. The witch told me that much. I'd spent a decade searching. Every she-wolf who crossed my territory, every ally's daughter presented at every summit, every border crossing and every treaty negotiation. I'd watched their faces and waited for something in my chest to move.

Nothing. Not once.

But tonight was the full moon.

The one night when a wolf's senses burn past anything else. If Vane was our mate, tonight we'd know.

"And if she's not?" I said.

Razor went quiet. That was answer enough.

The sun was dropping. I could feel it in my bones. The pull in my muscles, the loosening in my joints, the hum at the base of my skull that meant I was running out of time.

I had minutes. Maybe less.

Night fell.

The pain split my skull and poured down my spine. My hands hit the floor. My fingers twisted, shortened, thickened into something that no longer fit the word "hand." Bones cracked and reformed. My jaw lengthened. My vision went white, then flooded back sharper than any human eye could manage.

When it was over, I was on all fours. Massive. Black. A wolf in a room that felt like a cage.

Razor's senses flooded in. Sounds I couldn't hear as a man. Heartbeats through walls. Footsteps two floors down. Wind scraping the windowpane. And scent. Layers upon layers of it, the whole building mapped in smell.

He lifted his head. His nostrils flared.

"I smell her."