Chapter 4

Soren’s POV

The girl bolted.

One second she was in my arms, the next she was gone — stumbling backward, hand over her mouth, shoving through the crowd until the bodies swallowed her. The left side of my jaw burned where her palm had connected. She hit harder than I expected for someone that small.

I hadn't been trying to undress her. I'd caught a mark on her neck when she fell into me — a small, dark shape peeking out from under her collar. It could have been a bruise. It could have been a tattoo. Or it could have been the crescent birthmark that every member of the royal bloodline carried.

I needed to see it. She screamed before I could.

"That," Ash said from somewhere behind me, "looked exactly like sexual harassment."

I didn't turn around. "It wasn't."

"To her it was." He appeared at my side, hands in his pockets, a lazy grin still plastered across his face. "You grabbed the back of her neck, Soren. What did you think she was going to do — hold still?"

I like her, Nox said.

If I had hands, he continued, I would slap you too. Just for fun.

Nox was my wolf. He spoke when it suited him and ignored me when it didn't. Most of the time, we understood each other without words. But lately, he'd developed opinions.

I shut them both out.

The girl didn't matter. Not yet. Not until I confirmed whether the mark on her neck was what I thought it was.

I had one objective, and everything else was noise.

But I could still see the way she'd clutched that tooth pendant against her chest when she'd snatched it back from me. Both hands over it, like I'd tried to take something she couldn't lose. For a necklace she claimed was worthless, she held it like it was the last thing she owned.

Stubborn girl.

I pushed the thought aside. Find the princess.

Eighteen years ago, Alpha King Magnus Wolfhart's only son was killed. An ambush, swift and planned. The prince had told his father only two things before he died: that he'd found his fated mate, and that she was pregnant.

He never said who the mate was. Never gave a name, never brought her to the palace, never introduced her to anyone. The king searched for years — sent wolves to every pack on the continent, offered rewards, called in favors. Nothing.

Then a seer arrived at the palace. She couldn't see the princess's face, but she saw the location: a human high school, in a human city, on the far side of the country. The king finally understood why his son had kept his mate hidden.

She was human.

In the wolf kingdom, that was almost unheard of. It explained the secrecy, explained why his son had never brought her home. It explained why eighteen years of searching among wolf packs had turned up nothing.

The seer saw something else: the ones who would find the princess were from the Solvane bloodline. My bloodline. So the king summoned my brother and me to the palace and gave us our orders.

Find his granddaughter. Bring her home.

For Ash, this was an adventure. For me, it was the only thing that mattered.

The party thumped around us. Ash had found a couch and draped himself across it like he owned the house. A girl was sitting on the armrest next to him, twirling her hair. Another was handing him a drink. He looked perfectly at ease.

The party had been his idea. "A good way to get close to the female students," he'd said. "See who has the right age, the right look." What he'd actually wanted was an excuse to surround himself with human girls and call it work.

I hated how little he cared. We had a mission. A real one, with real stakes, and he was treating it like a semester abroad. I'd already reviewed the student roster, cross-checked birthdates against the prince's year of death, and eliminated every candidate who couldn't be the right age. Ash had reviewed the drink menu.

If our mother could see him right now, she'd drag him off that couch by his ear.

I stood by the wall with my arms folded. The music was giving me a headache, and the party was a waste of time. Every scent in this house was human — perfume, alcohol, sweat, hormonal teenagers. Nothing useful.

You're grinding your teeth again, Nox observed.

I unclenched my jaw.

You should relax. You're at a party. Socialize. Smile. Try not to grab anyone else by the neck.

I ignored him. Then something changed.

Nox went quiet — truly quiet, the way he did when he was tracking prey. A low vibration moved through my chest, and his voice returned, sharp and alert.

Wolf.

I stopped mid-step.

I smell wolf, Nox repeated. Faint. But it's here. In this building.

That wasn't possible. There shouldn’t have been another wolf anywhere near this party. Ash and I were the only ones.

Where? I asked.

Moving. Toward the back of the house.

I walked. Through the kitchen, past the dancers, past a couple pressed against the wall who didn't notice me. The scent grew stronger — thin and unsteady, like a signal that kept cutting out.

If the princess had been raised human, she wouldn't know what she was. Her wolf might be dormant, unstable, surfacing for the first time. The scent would be exactly like this — weak, intermittent, impossible to pin down.

I followed it down the hallway, past the bedrooms, past the back stairwell, until the trail converged on a single door at the end of the corridor.

The women's restroom.

I stopped. The scent pooled here — strongest at this threshold, then scattered in every direction, as if whoever carried it had paused in this spot before the trail went cold.

She was in there. Or she had been.

Nox pressed forward inside my chest, alert and certain.

She's here.