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I tensed my muscles. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t me.I had control over my instincts, over my wolf, and yet, I couldn’t look away from her.

Did she feel it too? Did she know?

I forced myself to take another step back, raking a hand through my hair. I needed space. Distance. Anything to break this hold she had on me, but I didn’t want anyone else near her either…

“Jax.”My voice was hoarse, rough. “Take her to my cabin. I’ll deal with her myself.”

The words left my mouth before I could stop them.

Jax hesitated, the look on his face incredulous. “You?Since when do you personally handle prisoners, boss?”

I shot him a look that shut him up real fucking quick.

“Since right fucking now,” I countered, narrowing my eyes in his direction.

He exhaled through his nose with as much frustration as he dared, but eventually nodded, hauling her forward with a firm grip. She didn’t resist, but just before Jax could lead her away, she spoke, her lips curling slightly.

“Careful, Alpha,” she murmured. “I might be more than you can handle.”

CHAPTER2

Lia

The fire crackled, the sound loud in the stillness of the night. The scent of burning wood mixed with the tense murmur of wolves surrounding me on all sides. Their low voices, the scrape of boots against packed snow, the weight of their stares—I felt it all. Even blindfolded, even bound, IknewI was being watched. Judged. Assessed like prey caught in a snare.

But I wasn’t afraid.

A normal person would be terrified, blindfolded and surrounded by predators, but I had learned a long time ago that fear was a weakness you couldn’t afford to show.

So I didn’t.

I had been running for days, slipping through the shadows, keeping ahead of the patrols that hunted the outskirts of their claimed land. I should have known they’d catch up eventually. Wolves were relentless when they had a scent, and I had been sloppy: too tired, too cold, pushing too hard and too fast with no real plan. I’d tried to cut through their territory, thinking I could disappear into the mountains before they noticed, but of course they had. Now, instead of freezing to death in the wilderness, I was here, blindfolded and bound and out of fucking options.

Panic wouldn’t do me any favors. Wolves could smell fear just as easily as they could blood, and I wouldn’t give them either.

I kept my breathing steady, my head tilted slightly, listening. I didn’t need my eyes to know exactly how many were watching me, how their muscles coiled, ready to strike if I so much as twitched.

“Jax. Take her to my cabin. I’ll deal with her myself.”

That voice. There it was again.

Something about it sent a jolt through me, too deep and visceral to push aside and ignore. It wasn’t just commanding. It was frustratingly familiar.Rough around the edges, low and controlled, but with an undercurrent of menace beneath the surface.

Iknewthat voice.

But why? Why couldn’t I connect the voice with its owner?

I turned the thought over in my mind, searching for the answer, but it stayed just out of reach, hovering at the edges of something almost remembered. It was like hearing a song you used to know but had long since forgotten the lyrics to. The shape of it was there, but the meaning slipped through my fingers like smoke on the wind.

The sound of his footsteps reached me next. They were controlled, like a predator circling prey, but I sensed hesitation and the flavor of uncertainty.

Then his scent hit me.

It cut through the wood smoke and snow, dark and rich, tinged with earth and something distinctly male. It was deep and unshakable, like the mountains themselves, and the longer I breathed it in, the more it worked its way into my head, stirring a restless feeling inside of me.

My stomach flipped.

I should have been colder. The mountain wind cut through my clothes, the fire offering little warmth against the deep chill of the night, but I wasn’t shivering.