Chapter 3

Dominic POV

The mark behind her ear.

That single crescent of pale skin tore through seven years of silence.

Everything around me lost its edges. The temporary fencing, the security detail, the signed folder still warm in my hand—all flattened into distant static while my pulse hammered in my throat. My wolf raked the inside of my ribs, a snarl trapped behind my teeth, recognition slamming through every nerve like a live wire.

Mate. Mine.

Impossible.

They told me she was dead. I had believed them for seven years. I had mourned her, buried her in every way a man could bury someone without a body.

But that mark.

I had traced that exact crescent a hundred times with my mouth in the dark. I had kissed it while she slept, pregnant and soft against me, her scent wrapping around us both like a second skin.

No other woman on earth carried that mark.

Not by coincidence. Not by chance.

She met my eyes, one brow lifted. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

I didn’t look away. “The crescent behind your left ear.”

Her fingers twitched once at her side—the only sign that my question had gotten through.

“I don’t have a mark,” she said. “Perhaps the light is playing tricks on you.”

She started to step back again, already angling toward the black sedan waiting a few yards away.

My voice dropped lower. “I’ve seen it before.”

Something flickered behind her eyes, gone before I could catch it. Her shoulders tightened. For one dangerous second I thought she might actually answer.

Then her phone rang.

She flinched and reached into her bag with controlled urgency.

“I really do have to take this,” she said, already moving. “Excuse me.”

She didn’t wait for a reply.

I stood rooted to the asphalt and watched her walk the short distance to the car, phone pressed to her ear. The black sedan pulled away, taillights glowing briefly before the vehicle rounded the bend and disappeared.

The faint trace of her perfume still hung in the air. It hooked under my ribs as if it had every right to be there.

I kept standing in the middle of the road long after the sound of the engine faded, because moving felt dangerous. If I moved, the lie I had lived with for seven years would crack open right here on the asphalt.

They had lowered a casket into the ground while I watched.

My parents never allowed me near it. They said seeing her like that would destroy what little control I had left. At the time, I believed them. I barely remember the funeral beyond flashes of black umbrellas, wet earth, and the relentless pounding in my skull.

In the days surrounding it, everything had felt hazy and dulled. My senses, usually sharp even in human form, felt muted and unreliable. I told myself it was nothing more than crushing exhaustion and grief. What else could it have been?

The bond had gone silent, and I had believed it—because believing anything else meant I had failed her in ways that had no forgiveness.

And now a woman with her mark—Jane Campbell, the woman my father had fought harder than anyone else to put on the board—had looked me in the eye and driven away as if we had never shared a single breath.”

I forced air into my lungs.

Elliot was already moving toward me, tablet in hand. As my personal assistant, he had been handling the traffic diversion while I spoke with her. He knew me well enough to recognize the dangerous stillness that settled over me when something cracked the surface.

“Sir?”

“Open a file on Jane Campbell,” I said, voice low enough that the nearest security men would not catch it. “Be discreet. No paper trail can be traced back to me or the Blackwoods. I want every address she has ever used, every corporate shell, every passport, every medical record, every photograph that exists. Start with the years before she surfaced as Campbell. Dig until you hit bone.”

Elliot’s eyes flickered once. “Why the sudden investigation?”

I met his gaze. “It’s personal.”

He nodded, already typing.

I glanced toward the line of cars still stacked behind the temporary barrier. “I’m going to the site. I’ll take a cab. Bring the car once this clears and meet me there.”

Elliot looked up. “Yes, sir.”

He stepped away without another word.

I turned and walked the short distance to the edge of the road where a local cab was waiting for clearance. The driver recognized me the moment I opened the back door. He didn’t ask questions. Ten minutes later the temporary command trailer came into view on the edge of the old eastern grove—exactly where the half-collapsed stone bench still leaned under the oaks.

I knew that bench.

She had leaned into me there once, years ago. Back then, I had believed nothing could take her from me.

I pushed the memory aside and walked forward.

The site team was already waiting inside the trailer. Surveyors, two environmental consultants, a local liaison whose job was to smile and keep the remaining residents cooperative. They straightened the moment I stepped through the door.

“Mr. Blackwood,” the lead surveyor began, voice carefully neutral. “We’ve finalized the adjusted soil readings for the lower river section. The revised numbers clear the federal thresholds by a comfortable margin. Access-road permits for the eastern approach are ready for signature. Once those are filed, the remaining holdouts along the lower road will have sixty days to accept the relocation packages or face escalated terms.”

I took the folder he held out.

The numbers were clean on paper. I had seen the original contamination reports months ago. Whoever changed them had known exactly what to hide.

I had questioned my parents about it then. They shut me down quickly. The decision was already made, they said. The families would be relocated and the old territory cleared. I stopped pushing.

I still hated the idea.

And yet here we were—authorizing the audit Jane Campbell had forced onto the table while racing to lock in every advantage before that same audit could slow us down.

I signed where the tabs indicated. The pen felt heavier than it should have.

One of the consultants cleared his throat. “There’s still minor pushback from three families near the old hospital grounds. They’re refusing the current offer. The liaison has scheduled another meeting for next week—”

“Raise the offer by fifteen percent,” I said. “If they refuse again, begin the formal process. I want the eastern approach cleared before the audit window closes.”

The liaison nodded quickly and made a note. Then he hesitated. “Speaking of the audit—has Ms. Campbell already signed the preliminary authorization? The timeline is tight.”

“She signed it this morning,” I said.

The words came out even. Flat. No one in the trailer reacted. They had no reason to.

I barely heard the rest. Timelines. Staging areas. The quiet confirmation that the old hospital wing would be the first structure demolished once the final clearances landed. Every word slid past me while my mind kept looping the same three seconds: the wind catching her hair, the crescent mark, the way her entire body had locked when I asked the question.

She had known.

And if she was who I was beginning to fear she was, then she had just watched me sit in a boardroom and now in this trailer while my family prepared to erase every place that had ever belonged to her. The hospital her parents built. The house she grew up in. The grove where I once promised her the world could burn before I let anyone touch her.

How would she ever forgive that?

The question landed harder than the recognition itself.

I signed the last page, closed the folder, and handed it back.

“That’s all for today,” I said. “Email the revised schedule to my office. No further delays.”

They filed out quickly. The trailer door shut behind the last of them, leaving only the low hum of the generator and the faint scent of her perfume that still clung to the inside of my lungs.

I dismissed the remaining security detail with a single look and stepped outside.

The old eastern grove began only a short walk from the trailer. The stone bench was still there under the oaks, green with moss, one leg broken. I walked to it alone and stood over it, letting the first memory surface because fighting it any longer was useless.

Ruby at nineteen.

We had been married less than a year. She was already carrying our children, the slight swell of her stomach just beginning to show beneath the soft sweater she liked. The suite we shared in the old family wing smelled of rain and her skin. She had curled against my chest on the balcony, her head tucked under my chin, my hand resting over the place where our future slept. The city lights glittered far below. Her voice had been quiet, almost shy.

“I never believed in the mate bond,” she had whispered. “Not until you. It always sounded like something packs told themselves so the politics would hurt less. But this…” Her fingers had traced the line of my jaw. “This feels like the only true thing I’ve ever known.”

I had turned her face up to mine and kissed her, promising that I would protect her. That no one—not my parents, not the rival packs, not the old blood feuds that had poisoned both our families for generations—would touch her or the lives growing inside her. I had meant every word. I had believed I was strong enough to keep them.

But I could still see the hospital corridor.

My mother’s hand on my arm. My father’s face carved from stone as they told me she had hemorrhaged. That the surgery had gone wrong. That both babies were gone and Ruby with them. They had already arranged the private burial. They had already handled the press. They had already decided that the heir needed to grieve in private and then return to duty.

I had stood at the edge of a fresh grave three days later and felt the bond go completely, utterly silent. No flicker. No echo. Nothing. The part of me that had been tied to her since the night we first met simply… stopped. I had believed them. I had believed the silence meant death. I had spent the next seven years learning how to function with a missing piece of my own soul.

If the woman who called herself Jane Campbell carried Ruby’s mark, then the grave had been empty. The silence had been manufactured. Everything I’d been told was a lie carefully constructed to keep me compliant while they erased her.

I stared at the broken bench for a long time.

Somewhere behind me a car door shut. Gravel shifted under tires. I didn’t turn until the sound of footsteps crossed the short stretch of open ground between the access road and the grove.

Elliot was walking toward me. The black SUV sat behind him on the edge of the road, engine still idling, driver’s door left open. He looked slightly out of breath, as if he’d taken the last stretch faster than he should have.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he said as he reached me. “Traffic took longer to clear than expected. I came as soon as the barrier lifted.”

I gave a short nod and started walking toward the vehicle.

Elliot fell into step beside me. “Your father has been trying to reach you for hours. He’s called the office three times. I told him you were on site, but he said it’s urgent. Something regarding the redevelopment. He wants to see you as soon as you return.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. The screen lit up with a long list of missed calls—most of them from Donovan Blackwood. The phone had been on silent since before the meeting with Jane Campbell.

I locked the screen again without answering any of them.

Elliot hesitated, then lowered his voice. “There’s one more thing. I started the search on Jane Campbell like you asked. One of my contacts got back to me a few minutes ago. He said her early records are heavily scrubbed—almost nothing usable before she appeared as Campbell. He’s still digging, but he flagged one name that keeps turning up in the background of the redacted files from seven years ago. A doctor. Robert Varga.”

The name landed like a stone in still water.

I stopped walking.

Elliot watched my face carefully. “I don’t have anything solid yet. Just the name. I thought you should know.”

I stared past him at the trees.

Dr. Robert Varga.

The same name that had signed the death certificate I was never allowed to see.