Chapter 1

Faye's POV

I was the daughter of the wealthiest Alpha in the country. But my husband didn't know that—he'd always believed I was just an orphaned omega. That night was our third anniversary, and I planned to tell him the truth.

But before I could get the words out, my husband, Alpha Aiden, took a call and coldly told me: "I need to go. Julia checked into the hotel alone. She just got divorced. She's in a bad place."

Julia. His first love. The woman whose photo and love letters I'd found in his study before we got married. He had sworn she was nothing, thrown the box in the trash right in front of me, and told me I was the only one.

"But it's our anniversary." My heart fell, and I held back the words I'd been about to say — the truth I'd meant to tell him.

"Faye." He said my name like I was being difficult. "She's fragile right now. She needs someone."

"She needs you," I said. "On our anniversary."

"You're not the kind of woman who falls apart over a dinner." He grabbed his jacket off the chair. "Julia is."

I stared at him. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're strong." He said it like a compliment. Like strong was a gift he was giving me, and not the excuse he used every time he walked out the door.

"You threw away her letters," I said. "You looked me in the eye and told me she was the past."

"She was the past." He didn't even pause. "Now she's in pain. What do you want me to do, ignore her?"

"If you leave," I said, "it means our marriage means nothing to you."

He looked at me, and for a second I thought he might stay. Then he picked up his keys.

"Don't wait up," he said. "We'll do the anniversary tomorrow."

The door closed. The candles kept burning. I sat in the red dress he had never noticed and watched the wax drip onto the tablecloth.

Three years ago, I had run from an arranged marriage to a man I'd never met. I fled my southern home all the way to the distant North, only to be ambushed by rogues. Aiden pulled me from the mud, half-dead, and we looked at each other and knew — fated mates.

I hid my wolf and called myself an orphan, because if my family found me, they'd drag me back and hand me to a stranger.

Aiden gave me a home. I gave him everything else — his pack's finances, the trade routes, the deals I wrote and let him take credit for. In three years I had built his pack from mid-tier to the top of the northern circle, standing behind him, invisible.

All of it — every quiet year, every negotiation, every speech I'd written in his name — weighed less than one phone call from the woman he'd sworn was nothing.

I wished I had never run. A stranger could not break my heart.

I took a cab to a hotel bar in the city center. Low amber lighting, velvet booths, jazz drifting from hidden speakers. I ordered whiskey and drank it fast.

The bond in my chest caught fire. It felt like something tearing open inside me.

No question. Aiden was in her bed. Right now. The bond never lied, even when he did.

I couldn't breathe. I just held on to the bar and waited for it to pass.

How dare he do this to me?

I drank glass after glass. A low, furious growl started to build in my chest. My eyes pricked. Regret hit me hard and fast.

No more. No more giving and getting nothing back.

The pain cleared my head instead of clouding it.

He was the one who should hurt. I pulled off my ring and left it on the counter. I told the bartender I wanted a host. One of the pretty ones.

He brought three. The first called me beautiful before I'd even looked up. The second flexed under his shirt like he was being paid by the muscle. The third smelled like cheap cologne and desperation.

I sent them all away.

I stood to leave, and the mate-bond pain hit me again, so hard my knees buckled. The room tilted. I grabbed for the bar and missed.

A hand caught my waist from behind. "Careful." The voice was low, warm, close enough that I felt his breath on my ear. "I've got you."

I fell back against a chest that was broad and solid and smelled like nothing I could name — not cologne, not soap, something underneath, something that made my pulse skip before my brain caught up.

He set me on my feet like I weighed nothing. I turned around.

Gold eyes. That was the first thing. Gold eyes that caught the bar light and held it, amused, like he'd been watching me longer than I realized.

Tall — tall enough that I had to tilt my head back. Dark hair pushed off his forehead. His shirt was open at the collar, sleeves rolled, and the forearm resting on the bar beside me was corded with lean muscle.

Something about him made my wolf lift its head. It had been asleep for three years. Now it stirred, stretched, and pressed against the inside of my ribs like it wanted out.

He tilted his head and studied the tear tracks on my face. "Let me guess," he said. His voice had a low, teasing edge to it, the kind of voice that knew exactly what it was doing. "Some man out there is ruining his own life right now and doesn't even know it."

I almost laughed, though the smile was a little bitter. "Something like that."

"Hmm." He leaned one elbow on the bar, close enough that I caught that scent again. My stomach tightened. "The hosts didn't do it for you?"

"You saw that?"

"Hard to miss." His mouth curved. "You looked at them the way I look at a wine list in a bad restaurant."

This time I did laugh — a short, broken sound that surprised us both.

He didn't back off. He shifted closer, angling his body toward mine, and I felt the warmth radiating off his chest. His eyes dropped to my mouth for exactly one second before they came back up.

"You know," he said, "if you're trying to make someone jealous, those three were never going to work."

"And you would?"

The words left my mouth before I could catch them. He smiled — slow, deliberate, the kind of smile that landed somewhere below my collarbone.

"Try me," he said.

He raked his eyes over me—hot, hungry, like he was already undressing me with nothing but a look.

The mate-bond pain was still there, dull and hot, a reminder of what Aiden was doing right now with the woman he'd chosen over me.

If he could do this to me, why couldn't I do the same?

I looked at the stranger with the gold eyes and that lazy, sultry smile. The cut of his jaw. The slight upturn of his lips. Deadly attraction.

I grabbed his collar and kissed him.