Chapter One: The Scent of Him

The city smelled like iron and rain.

Chicago's skyline stretched like jagged teeth into the gray sky, but Selene Vireaux barely glanced up at the towers. Her boots stepped through a shallow puddle, the leather soaked at the hem of her long black coat. She moved like a shadow, fluid and unnoticed, amber eyes flicking across the bustling crowd. She hadn’t been in the city more than a week.

She was supposed to be lying low.

Cities were noise. Concrete. Neon signs and anonymity. Perfect for a woman trying to disappear — especially one who had left large body count behind her. Selene had never liked a pack. She travelled with no purpose. Only the primal instincts that hummed beneath her skin — wild, ancient, and always hungry.

And then she saw him.

It happened on a Tuesday. She was walking back from a meaningless job interview, irritation simmering just under the surface, when a laugh pierced through the traffic and rain. It was light, soft, and completely out of place — like a string of bells in the middle of a battlefield.

She turned.

He was standing outside a café, half-soaked, dark curls plastered to his forehead. He was holding a paper cup and helping a little girl fix her umbrella. She was crying — had dropped her ice cream — but he knelt down and made her laugh with a stupid face.

Lucas Carter.

The moment their eyes met — even for a second — something inside her snapped tight like a trap springing closed. Her pupils narrowed. Her nostrils flared.

She’d smelled blood and prey before. She knew hunger. But this? This was need.

She followed him inside the café. She sat down and watched.

Selene came back the next day. And the next.

She tried to tell herself it was just boredom. Just... curiosity. But it wasn’t. Every part of her — wolf and woman — wanted him. Not to kill. Not to eat. Not even to fuck.

Not only to fuck.

To possess.

Lucas had no idea. He poured coffee with tired hands, laughed with regulars, wiped down tables with headphones tucked under his collar. He didn’t notice how she watched him with that silent, wolfish intensity. He didn’t know how she memorized the slope of his neck, the softness of his voice, the shy little smile he gave her when she ordered a cappuccino and actually said “please.”

He smelled like honey and citrus and something warm that made her dizzy.

She followed him home on the third day.

He lived alone. Small walk-up in a small rental apartment. Two locks on the door. Art supplies on the windowsill and some books on the table. A tiny, quiet life.

She waited outside every night.

She told herself she wouldn’t touch him. That watching was enough.

That lie didn’t last long.

It was Thursday night when everything changed.

Lucas had stayed late. She could tell by the pattern of his scent — the faint note of exhaustion, the bitter coffee residue clinging to his hoodie. He was walking home, his usual route past the train tracks and down a cracked alleyway he shouldn’t be using.

Selene followed from the rooftops. The moon was only a sliver, but it was enough. Her eyes adjusted fast. Her ears twitched. And then she heard them.

Footsteps and Metal.

Three men emerged from behind a dumpster, moving too fast for Lucas to react. One had a knife. The other two carried that same rank scent — alcohol, desperation, and the kind of sweat that came just before violence.

“Phone and wallet. Now,” one of them growled, pressing Lucas against the wall.

He tried to comply, hands shaking, but one of them shoved him hard. His head cracked against the brick with a sickening thud.

Selene moved.

She dropped from the roof like a phantom — black coat flaring, eyes lit gold in the dark.

The man closest to Lucas didn’t even have time to scream. She was on him in seconds, nails extended into claws, her snarl more animal than human. She didn’t shift fully — not yet — but her teeth elongated. Her voice was a rasping growl.

“You picked the wrong night.”

One thug ran before he even registered her. The second one, she slammed him into the wall, his bones cracking. The third with the knife stabbed at her — a shallow cut, nothing serious — but it was enough to trigger the change in her pupils. Her claw caught him across the chest, shallow but painful.

Blood sprayed. She didn’t care. She was focused on him.

Lucas had collapsed to one knee, dizzy, hand against his bleeding head. He looked up at her — at this beautiful, terrifying thing with blood on her fingers and fury in her eyes.

“W-what the hell—” he slurred.

Selene’s breath caught.

He was hurt.

She was across the alley in seconds, crouching beside him. Her coat draped over him like a cloak.

“You’re bleeding,” she murmured, voice low. “Don’t move.”

He flinched when she touched him. But her fingers were gentle — not claws now. Cool, steady.

She didn’t ask his permission and lifted him.

He tried to protest, but her arms were iron beneath softness. He was too light. Too fragile. The wound on his temple had already begun to swell. She could hear his heartbeat fluttering like a trapped bird.

He needed help.

And he was hers now.

Selene’s hotel was upscale and anonymous. She paid in cash. No ID, no name. Just a keycard and blackout curtains and a faint scent of whiskey and fur lingering in the corners.

She laid Lucas on the bed. He groaned, blinking sluggishly.

She dampened a towel and pressed it to his temple.

“Where—” he whispered. “Who are you?”

She didn’t answer at first. She sat beside him, brushing a curl from his cheek. Her black hair fell around them both like a veil.

“You can call me Selene,” she said finally.

He blinked at her. “What... what are you?”

She smiled, slow and strange. Not human.

And in her chest, something ancient stirred.