Chapter 1

The crash happened faster than a breath.

Heavy metal tore through the rain, the windshield exploding into a shower of fragments. Then came that strange, scorched smell—mixed with a faint metallic tang.

Silver dust meeting flesh at high heat.

And Vanessa?

She lunged toward the smoking wreck like a peacock who'd been waiting all night to spread her feathers, screaming at the top of her lungs.

"Call an ambulance! Someone help this woman!"

She dropped to her knees in broken glass and blood, her perfect makeup untouched, her white coat soaking red in seconds. She wailed at passersby for help while pretending to pump the chest of the unconscious woman inside the car.

Any onlooker would've sworn she was some kind of human angel, throwing herself into danger without a second thought.

Within five minutes, sirens closed in—police cruisers, private medical response teams.

Vanessa's head snapped up at the reporters and cameras rushing toward her. Her eyes went red-rimmed, her voice trembling as she cried:

"Stop filming! She's losing so much blood... Doctor! Please, please save her!"

She grabbed the lead medic's arm, squeezing out a few tears.

The medic gripped her hand in return and asked, solemnly:

"We'll do everything we can. Are you family?"

Vanessa wiped her eyes, her frame frail, but her gaze stubborn.

"No—just a stranger who happened to be passing by. But please, take me with you. If she needs a transfusion, or if there are bills to cover—I'll handle it all."

The paramedics, clearly moved by her devotion, pulled open the door and let her climb in.

But the second she disappeared inside that ambulance—

I saw it.

Her fingers glided over the victim's wrist, slipping that ancient wolf-crested watch right into her own pocket.

I stood there at the cold street corner, watching the ambulance scream away. Rain streaked down my face. I didn't leave.

Twenty minutes later, a black armored SUV pulled up outside the cordon.

The door swung open. A young man in a charcoal suit stepped out.

Tall. Sharp-eyed as a hawk. And radiating a suffocating wildness that pressed down on the air like a physical weight—

Logan, Beta of the Firwood Pack.

He didn't spare a single glance at the tire tracks on the ground. His nostrils flared slightly, and his gaze locked instantly onto the spot where Vanessa had been kneeling. His jaw tightened.

I pulled out my phone and shot Vanessa a short message:

[Vanessa. I just saw you on the news feed. What the hell did you do?]

She replied almost immediately:

[Stay out of it, Eileen. Don't get in my way.]

Staring at those cold words, I curled my lips into a bitter, mocking smile.

Vanessa had read too many brainless cross-species romance novels.

She actually thought the men who ran billion-dollar empires and bloodthirsty packs were all idiots who could be swayed by a pretty face and a few tears.

Rex had saved her back then because she'd caught him off guard for one split second.

She thought she was Cinderella, chosen by fate.

She didn't know that a wolf's mate bond was sacred. Irreversible.

An Alpha who lost his fated mate didn't turn into some chivalrous knight. He turned into a beast that tore everything apart.

In my past life, I died trying to talk sense into her.

This time? I wasn't about to be the scapegoat again.

But I didn't turn and go home.

My gaze cut through the rain, landing on the bloodstains left behind in the wreckage.

My heart seized violently.

A shudder crawled up from the marrow of my bones—a tearing pain that wrenched at my soul.

That woman in the car. The one they called Luna.

Why did she make my chest ache with such suffocating grief?

I drew a deep breath and turned, walking toward the only private central hospital in the city.