Chapter 2

Elara's POV

His reached out and gripped my chin "What the hell are you talking about?"

I let the scent still clinging faintly to his skin settle over me one more time—sharp, floral, humiliating. It had been there the whole night, long before he'd ever touched me.

I was done.

However, his hand came up along my jaw again, the same way it had earlier, before I'd stopped him—like the argument itself had rebooted some old habit of his, the one where every disagreement between us ended the exact same way. He leaned in.

I turned my face away.

"Orion. No."

"Elara." His voice dropped low, certain."You are my wife, my partner, and you have no right to refuse your Alpha."

I put my hand against his chest again, firmer this time. "I'm not doing this. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again."

He went angry.

Then he raised his hand and gripped my wrist tightly, about to tear off my thin nightgown.

Then his phone rang.

The sound of a little girl crying pierced the quiet of the room, followed by Celeste's panicked voice over the speaker. I couldn't make out the words, but I watched Orion's face transform. Real, immediate terror flashed in his eyes—the kind of concern that moved his entire body. It was more emotion than he'd shown during the entire conversation about our dying daughter.

An icy weight settled in my chest.

He hung up. Before I could say a word, he was already pulling his shirt back on, grabbing his jacket, heading for the door.

"Something came up. You don't need to wait for me tonight."

His footsteps hammered down the stairs. Urgent. Certain. The front door clicked shut, and he was gone.

I sat in the silence of our bedroom. That kind of urgency. That kind of care. I had never once seen it aimed at me. Or at Mia.

It was over.

I was done waiting on him.

His reached out and gripped my chin "What the hell are you talking about?"

I let the scent still clinging faintly to his skin settle over me one more time—sharp, floral, humiliating. It had been there the whole night, long before he'd ever touched me.

I was done.

However, his hand came up along my jaw again, the same way it had earlier, before I'd stopped him—like the argument itself had rebooted some old habit of his, the one where every disagreement between us ended the exact same way. He leaned in.

I turned my face away.

"Orion. No."

"Elara." His voice dropped low, certain."You are my wife, my mater, and you have no right to refuse your Alpha."

I put my hand against his chest again, firmer this time. "I'm not doing this. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again."

He went angry.

Then he raised his hand and gripped my wrist tightly, about to tear off my thin nightgown.

Then his phone rang.

The sound of a little girl crying pierced the quiet of the room, followed by Celeste's panicked voice over the speaker. I couldn't make out the words, but I watched Orion's face transform. Real, immediate terror flashed in his eyes—the kind of concern that moved his entire body. It was more emotion than he'd shown during the entire conversation about our dying daughter.

An icy weight settled in my chest.

He hung up. Before I could say a word, he was already pulling his shirt back on, grabbing his jacket, heading for the door.

"Something came up. You don't need to wait for me tonight."

His footsteps hammered down the stairs. Urgent. Certain. The front door clicked shut, and he was gone.

I sat in the silence of our bedroom. That kind of urgency. That kind of care. I had never once seen it aimed at me. Or at Mia.

I sat there a long time after the front door clicked shut behind him, staring into the dark, and my mind went back—unbidden—to the first time I ever saw him.

I was seventeen, working a summer job at the same supermarket where my mother had worked before she passed. He walked through the door and stopped at my register.

He wore a black suit, tailored to a standard I'd never seen in person. The fabric moved like dark water, making the sharp, handsome angles of his face look like something out of another world entirely. Powerful. Untouchable.

I had never seen eyes that shade of blue—like sapphires dipped in moonlight. One look, and my heart just… lurched.

"Can I… help you with something?" My voice came out embarrassingly unsteady.

He didn't answer right away. He just stared. Slowly, his eyes shifted to silver. Something moved inside them, hot and restless.

But his voice, when it finally came, was perfectly composed. "I've imagined this a thousand different ways." A short, humorless pause. "I never pictured my mate being… someone like you. An ordinary human."

Mate? Human?

So he was one of them. A werewolf. The mysterious, obscenely wealthy elite people whispered about in Newland City. My fingers froze on the cash.

Growing up in a world where werewolves and humans lived side by side, I'd heard the stories my whole life: they were built like athletes, smart as whips, and moving in circles so far above mine they might as well have been a different species. But I'd never actually met one.

I was seventeen—a high school junior whose dad drove long-haul freight and whose brother had dropped out to work at a local auto shop.

And yet, standing right in front of me was a handsome werewolf who looked like he'd been carved for a magazine cover: at least six-foot-three, wearing a tailored suit with a Patek Philippe on his wrist, telling me I was his fated mate.

There was no way this was real.

"Sir, I think you've got the wrong person." I looked down, trying to count change, but my hands were shaking. What the hell was wrong with me?

I could feel his gaze like pressure—sharp and ancient and heavy, like a warning from something older than either of us. I couldn't breathe right.

There was a scent coming off him. Cedar and whiskey. My palms went damp. My face went red. My breath got short in a way I had no good explanation for.

I didn't know what to call what I was feeling. The closest thing I had was the stolen, guilty rush from the one time I'd accidentally stumbled across something I shouldn't have on my brother's laptop—hot and unwanted and impossible to put back.

Fear tangled up with want. Insecurity twisted up with the desperate urge to close the distance between us.

The contradiction was dizzying. And when I finally worked up the nerve to look at him again—those pale silver eyes pulling something out of me I hadn't known was in there—a voice I didn't recognize rose up from somewhere deep in my chest:

We want him.

But… who said that?

I'm human. I don't —

His fingers closed around my jaw. Gentle enough not to hurt, tight enough that I couldn't look away. His teeth were clenched. Whatever was happening inside him, he was barely keeping a lid on it.

And then he said the words that broke something open in me.

"Having a human for a mate is the greatest failure of my entire life."