Lahat ng Kabanata ng Mated To The Billionaire Wolf: Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 10

I was still thinking about that handshake three days later. Which was insane, because it was just a handshake. People shook hands all the time. It was literally the most normal thing in the world. You meet someone, you shake their hand, you move on with your life. You don't spend the entire weekend replaying the moment in your head like some kind of crazy person. "Earth to Maya." My best friend Jess waved a hand in front of my face. "You've been staring at that coffee cup for like five minutes. What's going on with you?" We were at our usual Sunday brunch spot, a little café in Capitol Hill that made amazing avocado toast and didn't judge you for ordering mimosas before noon. I'd been trying to tell Jess about the job offer for the past twenty minutes, but my brain kept getting stuck on stupid details. Like how Damien Sterling's hand had been warm. Really warm. And how his eyes had done that weird flash thing that I was ninety percent sure I'd imagined. And how he'd sa

The claws were what got me. Not the glowing eyes—I'd been seeing those for days. Not the fangs, which looked like they could tear through steel. It was the claws, wickedly sharp and utterly real, extending from fingers that had been perfectly human thirty seconds ago. My knees buckled. Damien was moving before I hit the ground, catching me with those same clawed hands that should have terrified me but were somehow gentle. He lowered me into a chair, his partially shifted form crouched in front of me at eye level. "Breathe," he said, and his voice was different—deeper, rougher, like gravel wrapped in silk. "Maya, you need to breathe." I sucked in air, my vision tunneling. "You have claws." "Yes." "And fangs." "Yes." "Because you're a werewolf." "Yes." He said it so calmly, like we were discussing the weather instead of the complete destruction of everything I thought I knew about reality. I pressed my hands to my face, trying to force my brain to work. "This is

VANESSA'S POV I made it to my car before the shaking started. My hands were trembling so badly I dropped my keys twice before I managed to unlock the door. Once inside, I gripped the steering wheel and forced myself to breathe. Forty-eight hours. Damien had given me forty-eight hours to prove I wasn't a traitor. To find out who was feeding information to Marcus Kane. To save my own skin. If only he knew the truth. My phone buzzed. I didn't need to look to know who it was, but I checked anyway. Dad: I saw the little show Damien put on. Very dramatic. I hope you're not getting any ideas about confessing. My stomach twisted. I typed back with shaking fingers. Me: He gave me 48 hours to find the leak. What am I supposed to do? The response came immediately. Dad: Find someone expendable and throw them to the wolves. Literally. You've always been good at self-preservation, Vanessa. Don't disappoint me now. I stared at the message until my vision blurred. This was my father. The

The first thing I learned about pack dinners was that nobody actually cared about the food.I stood in Damien's bedroom, staring at my reflection in a dress that cost more than my monthly rent, and tried to remember how to breathe. Sophie had left five minutes ago with final instructions that boiled down to "don't embarrass yourself or die." The dinner started in twenty minutes, and I was about to walk into a room full of werewolves who'd spend the entire evening deciding whether I deserved to exist.No pressure.The door opened behind me. I didn't need to turn around to know it was Damien—I could feel him now, that weird pull of the mate bond that had been getting stronger every day. Like my body had developed a Damien-specific radar."You're panicking," he said."I'm strategizing.""You're spiraling." His footsteps crossed the room, and then he was behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him through the thin silk. "I can hear your heartbeat from the hallway.""Stupid w

My wolf wanted blood.Not metaphorically. Not in some poetic sense. I meant it literally—my wolf was clawing at my skin from the inside, demanding I shift and hunt down every person who'd hurt my mate, starting with Victor Wolfe and ending with Marcus Kane's corpse."Damien." Sophie's voice cut through the red haze. "You need to breathe.""I'm breathing.""You're about thirty seconds from shifting in front of twenty visiting Alphas. That's not breathing. That's losing control."She wasn't wrong. My hands were clenched so tight on the edge of the bar that the wood was splintering under my fingers. Gold was bleeding into my vision. And every wolf in the room could smell the rage coming off me in waves.The dinner had devolved into uncomfortable small talk after Maya fled to the terrace. Visiting Alphas clustered in groups, drinking my whiskey and discussing what they'd witnessed like it was entertainment. Victor's brutal takedown of my mate. Her humiliation. My failure to protect her."