Danae’s POV
She lunged.
Clawed fingers reaching for my throat, and the world snapped into sharp, animal focus—the knocked-over side table, the sound of my own heartbeat so loud it blotted out everything else.
Before those claws landed, a blur cut between us.
“Enough.” Galen’s voice dropped to the register that made Pack members go still.
He stood between us, one hand locked around Drusilla’s wrist.
“Control yourself.
Now.”
Her transformed face twisted with fury.
“She struck me!
A human struck a wolf!
The law demands—”
“She’s still my mate.” Dangerous.
Quiet.
“Return to human form.
Immediately.”
For one taut moment, I thought she’d tear into both of us.
Then, visibly, she began to pull herself back.
Her features softened into the human beauty she wore like a costume.
But the hatred in her eyes stayed feral.
Undimmed.
“This isn’t over,” she hissed at me.
“I don’t care about your Pack rules.” My voice had returned.
Strange—calm was the wrong word, but it was something adjacent to calm, layered over the trembling in my limbs.
“You lied to me.
You cheated on me.
You used me.
All while making me believe I was something special.”
I whispered the next part.
“You disgust me.” Backing toward the door, my hand finding the knob behind me.
“Both of you.”
Galen’s expression darkened.
“If you walk out that door, you’re rejecting the mate bond.
There’s no coming back from that.”
“Good.” I wrenched the door open.
“Consider yourself rejected.”
I could hear him shouting behind me, hurling threats about the dire cost of refusing a mate bond, but the sound kept getting farther away.
All I felt was a flood of relief so enormous I could barely contain it—relief tangled with the ache of betrayal and the cold, heavy fear of a future I couldn’t see the shape of.
I ran until my heels scraped my skin raw.
Ended up downtown.
Far from the manicured streets around Galen’s apartment.
I’d run blind, no destination, and now I stood on a busy corner ringed by bars and restaurants still buzzing with late-night noise.
Furious.
Hollow.
I stumbled into a high-end place called the Moonlight Lounge.
Slid onto a barstool.
Ordered a double vodka tonic.
Told the bartender to keep them coming.
The alcohol rose slowly through my blood, and with it, the memories.
Galen in that coffee shop five years ago, his amber eyes finding mine across the room—what I’d taken for destiny.
Galen telling me what he was, describing the mate bond with such reverence: We wolves only have one true mate in a lifetime, and you’re mine.
Drusilla when we first met—warm, disarming, full of advice.
As Galen’s friend, I’ll help you understand everything about being a wolf’s mate.
I took another long swallow.
The bitter truth settled in my gut like lead.
No fiancé.
No home.
No job—I’d quit teaching at Galen’s insistence.
Stranded in a city half-controlled by a werewolf Pack whose future Delta I’d just publicly rejected.
And I had no idea how I’d help my sick father now.
The alcohol buzzed through me, sanding down the sharpest edges of the pain without ever quite blunting them.
It was well past midnight when the bar shifted.
Conversations dropped a register.
A path cleared through the crowd, people stepping back without looking at each other to coordinate it, the way you move for weather.
A tall figure walked toward the VIP section.
The bartender was already pouring a whiskey neat, no order taken.
I found myself studying the man who commanded that kind of silence.
High cheekbones.
A defined mouth.
A square jaw and a straight nose.
Deep brown hair falling in loose waves, and when his gaze swept in my direction, I caught a flash of the deepest blue eyes I’d ever seen—like the midnight sea over trenches no human had ever reached.
On his right pinky, a black onyx ring I recognized without thinking: the mark of the Jorah family.
Caspian Jorah.
Future Alpha of the Ashmoon Pack.
CEO of Jorah Enterprises.
In the flesh, I could believe every word of it.
There was something magnetic about him that flushed my skin with heat I hadn’t invited.
I checked my phone.
Past midnight.
Bank balance close to nothing.
No way back to Eirwen’s—my wallet and charger still there, abandoned when I thought I’d be gone ten minutes.
For a necklace.
For a ring I’d never need again.
I paid with my nearly-maxed card, left a modest tip, and stood up.
The room swayed—the alcohol hitting harder than I’d calculated.
I turned to leave and walked directly into a solid wall of muscle.
His scent hit me first.
Musk, cologne, and something under both—something primal and intoxicating that seized my lungs mid-breath and sent my pulse slamming.
Warmth spread outward from my core, making me acutely aware of every inch where our bodies touched.
I looked up into deep blue eyes that flashed gold at the edges.
Something electric arced between us.
A current between two live wires.
“I’m sorry,” I said—my voice husked out, my lips parting without permission as his gaze moved over me.
Something flickered in his expression.
Shock.
Recognition.
Something that made his pupils dilate and his breath catch audibly, and I felt an inexplicable tug—a pull toward him that had no name and no logic.
As though some part of me I’d never met had woken up, and it was already reaching for him.
Ridiculous.
The alcohol.
It had to be.
But my body wasn’t asking my permission about any of it.
I steadied myself, still caught in the magnetic field of those eyes.
His hand had settled on my waist automatically, fingers splayed, and where they pressed against me my skin burned with awareness.
A wicked thought surfaced.
Galen Bryneholm’s greatest fear.
The man my ex had warned me never to cross.
The name that made Ashmoon’s future Delta go tense at the shoulders.
Perfect.
“You okay?” His voice was low, commanding, somehow intimate—like he’d spoken it directly against my ear.
It sent a shiver cascading down my spine.
I straightened.
Met his gaze directly.
“How do you know I’m not, Mr.
Jorah?” I let my fingers brush deliberately against the onyx ring, lingering a moment too long against his warm skin.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
His nostrils flared.
“You recognize me.” A statement.
Not surprised—just registering.
I smiled, courage manufactured from heartbreak and vodka.
“Who in this city doesn’t know the future CEO of Jorah Group?” I leaned closer, dropping my voice to something low and deliberate, close enough that my breath would reach his throat.
“I also know you’re heir to the Ashmoon Pack.”
Caspian glanced around sharply, his body going alert in a way that somehow only emphasized how much room it occupied.
“Interesting knowledge for a human girl.
Who sent you?”
“Nobody.” I moved closer.
His cologne made my head swim.
“Tonight, I’m acting entirely for myself.” I let my lips almost graze his ear.
“I want to leave this place.
Preferably not alone.
What about you, Mr.
Jorah?”
His expression stayed guarded—but something moved in those blue depths.
Hunger.
Curiosity.
And something almost reverent, almost careful, that I didn’t know what to do with.
His breathing had deepened.
I could see the pulse at his throat.
“Come with me,” he said at last.
His hand found the small of my back, fingers splaying possessively, steering me forward.