Page 2

CHAPTER 2

L ia

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, I knew I 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.

I knew that 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.

No.

Something was wrong.

It had started the second he stepped in front of me, the moment his voice had rumbled through my chest like a slow-moving avalanche. That voice—familiar, rough-edged, full of quiet authority—sent heat spiraling low in my belly. I didn’t welcome it, but I couldn’t seem to fight it or push it away, or even just outright ignore it.

I swallowed hard, forcing my breath to even out. This was nothing. Just instinct. Just my body reacting to the proximity of wolves, their oppressive presence messing with my senses.

It had to be. That’s all it could be.

Except it wasn’t the wolves . I knew that, but it didn’t make things any easier. If anything, it just made the realization worse, but there was no denying it.

It was him. It was all him.

The way his voice wrapped around me, smooth and primal, with a dark edge that made me shiver. The way I could feel his attention on me, heavy against my skin, even though I couldn’t see him and he wasn’t touching me.

And the worst part? I knew— knew —he could scent it on me. The heat. The tension. The traitorous, aching want squeezing tight in my core. My unbidden arousal as it slowly unwound deep inside.

I clenched my jaw, nails biting into my palms.

Get it together, Lia.

Then he stepped closer, and his scent intensified, like a flame catching dry kindling. That was when I felt it. Not just my own rising arousal, but his.

Thick. Unmistakable.

My breath hitched before I could stop it.

Fuck.

There was a shift in the very air between us, invisible but undeniable, and I knew—just as surely as I knew how to set a snare or skin a rabbit—that whatever was happening wasn’t normal.

It wasn’t stopping .

I didn’t like it. Not the way my body reacted to it, the way my pulse kicked up, just slightly, beneath the surface. I didn’t like it one bit.

I’d spent my entire life learning wolves—tracking them, reading their movements, anticipating their kills. They were dangerous predators, every last one of them. Yet, something about this one—this Alpha—didn’t feel like all the others.

He wasn’t growling or snapping or trying to intimidate me. He was studying me. I could feel his attention, the weight of it against my skin, heavy and smothering. And the strangest part? Even though I was the one blindfolded, even though I was the prisoner here… It almost felt like he was the one on edge. Like something about me had rattled him .

The realization sent a dark thrill spiraling through me. When he told his lackey to take me to his cabin, before I could stop myself, my lips curved up in a smirk.

“Careful, Alpha,” I murmured, letting the words slip past my lips like silk. “I might be more than you can handle.”

The air went thick.

His scent flared, darkening, heating, and though I couldn’t see him, I could hear the way his breath caught, just for a fraction of a second.

A slow, satisfied warmth spread through my chest. Whoever he was, whatever power he held here… he wasn’t immune to me.

And that?

That was something I could use.