My fingers closed around the knife.

I did not even realise I had picked it up until the handle pressed into my palm.

I kept looking at Damien.

He was still standing there, between me and the door, watching me with that same irritating expression he had been wearing all morning, like nothing in this room could possibly surprise him and I was just another problem he would deal with when he got bored.

His eyes dropped to my hand. Then back to my face.

That was it. There wasn't even any panic or sudden movement.

Nothing.

I looked down at the knife.

It was just a stupid little room-service knife, probably sitting there because rich people apparently needed knives beside their bars at all times, and here I was holding it like I had suddenly become some criminal mastermind.

I almost laughed. This was ridiculous.

I was not going to stab him. I only needed him to move.

That was all.

I shifted the knife in my hand.

Damien watched.

“You're really going to stand there?”

His gaze stayed on mine.

“You should put that down.”

The calmness in his voice irritated me so badly that my fingers tightened around the handle.

“Why?”

“Because you don't know what you're doing.”

There was no fear in his face which made me angry so I stepped closer.

He did not move.

The blade hung beside my thigh, almost hidden by my body.

“Move.”

“No.”

I stared at him.

He actually looked bored.

I had a knife in my hand and this man looked bored.

What the hell was wrong with him?

My heart was beating too hard, my legs were still aching from last night, my neck was burning beneath the mark he had left there, and I was standing barefoot in an expensive hotel room trying to figure out how to get away from a man who seemed to have forgotten that women were allowed to leave his bed.

I raised the knife slightly and his eyes followed it, but still nothing.

“You're not scared?”

His jaw tightened slightly.

“Of that?”

I looked at the blade.

Then at him.

Something about the way he said it made heat crawl up my neck.

I should have put it down. Instead, I stepped forward.

Damien stayed where he was. I really fucking hated that my hand was shaking.

Damien expression changed slightly. Something closer to impatience.

“Ava.”

My name in his mouth made me look up.

“What?”

“Don't.”

That was all he said, and somehow it annoyed me more than everything else.

I stepped closer. He reached for my wrist. I jerked away.

His hand missed, then he knife moved with me.

His eyes dropped to it again, and this time I saw the smallest flicker of irritation cross his face, as though I was being difficult rather than dangerous.

That was when I stopped thinking.

I moved.

I just shoved forward because I wanted him away from the door, because I wanted out, because I was angry and tired and scared and too damn stubborn to stand there begging a man I had slept with for permission to leave.

The blade slipped into his side.

Barely. Just a shallow thrust that I felt it catch, then stop.

My hand froze. So did his.

For a second, Damien looked down.

The knife was still in my hand.Still inside him.

His fingers were around my wrist. Neither of us moved. Then his eyes lifted.

Something was wrong.

I knew it before he said anything. His face had gone completely still.

“What…”

His voice broke as he looked down again.

Blood appeared around the blade.

Then more.

A lot more.

It soaked into his shirt almost immediately, spreading far beyond the tiny place where the knife had entered.

My mouth went dry.

I had barely stabbed him.

I knew I had barely stabbed him.

So why the hell was he bleeding like that?

Damien's fingers tightened around my wrist.

“Take it out.”

I stared at him.

“What?”

“The knife.”

His voice was rough now.

He tried to pull away from it himself, but the movement made his whole body jerk.

A sharp breath tore through his teeth.

His free hand flew to the wound. He pressed down. Blood pushed between his fingers.

His eyes widened. I had never seen that face on him.

He looked down at his hand as though it belonged to somebody else.

“Damien?”

He looked at me.

“Get it out.”

I tried.

My fingers tightened around the handle. The moment I moved the knife, his body buckled.

He made a sound that scared the shit out of me.

The knife stayed where it was refusing to pull out.

Damien caught my wrist before I could step away.

“Don't.”

His breathing had changed.

Every breath came harder than the one before it, his shoulders pulling sharply as he fought for air, and the calm bastard who had spent the last hour looking at me like I was a mildly irritating woman had disappeared.

“It’s not getting out.”

“No shit.”

The words came through clenched teeth.

I stared at him. He looked furious now.

“I barely touched you.”

His eyes snapped to mine.

“You call that barely touching me?”

“I didn't mean…”

Another violent cough cut me off.

Damien bent forward. Then blood hit the floor which made me stopped breathing.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at the blood smeared across his skin.

“What the fuck?”

He said it like he was asking himself.

Then he looked at me.

“What did you do?”

“I stabbed you.”

His grip on my wrist tightened until my fingers went numb.

“I mean what did you do to me?”

I stared at him.

“I don't know.”

His eyes searched my face.

“You don't know?”

“I didn't do anything except stab you.”

“You're lying.”

“I am not fucking lying.”

He tried to stand but his leg shook.

He caught himself against the edge of the table, but his hand slipped because it was wet with his own blood.

He dropped to one knee.

I gasped.

“Damien.”

He looked up at me immediately.

His face was pale now, his hair falling across his forehead, his hand still clamped over the wound.

The blood would not stop.

It should have.

It should have slowed down.

Instead, the edges of the wound moved beneath his fingers.

I saw the skin pull together.

My stomach twisted. For one second, I thought it was healing.

Then it tore open again.

Damien sucked in a sharp breath.

His eyes dropped to the wound.

“What the hell…”

He touched the skin carefully. His fingers came away red.

“No.”

I stared at him.

He pressed his palm against the injury again, harder this time, as though he could force his own body to behave.

Nothing happened.

His breathing became ragged.

“Why isn't it closing?”

I had no answer. He looked at me again.

And suddenly his grip changed.

He pulled me closer and I stumbled toward him.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“You're hurt, Damien, you need to let me get help.”

“No.”

“You're going to bleed to death!”

His eyes flashed.

“I am not dying.”

The certainty in his voice would have been comforting if he did not look like he was barely holding himself together.

Another cough hit him.

He turned his head, but not quickly enough.

Blood touched his lips again.

My stomach rolled.

He was staring at my hand. The hand that had held the knife.

His thumb moved slowly across my wrist, almost absent-mindedly, while his other hand remained pressed against the wound.

His breathing was still uneven. His body was still shaking.

Yet somehow his attention had become frighteningly fixed on me.

“Where did you get this?”

I frowned.

“The knife?”

He shook his head. His eyes moved to the mark on my neck.

That stupid bite. His face went completely still. Then he looked back at me.

His voice dropped.

“What did I do to you?”

I stared at him.

“What are you talking about?”

He did not answer. He pulled me closer again.

Not enough to hurt me, but enough to make it clear that even half-collapsed on the floor, bleeding through his clothes, he still had no intention of letting me walk out of that room.

His eyes stayed on the mark. Then something happened behind them.

His pupils widened. His entire body went rigid.

The hand holding my wrist suddenly tightened so hard that I cried out.

Damien looked at me like he had just seen a ghost.

“No.”

The word came out almost breathless.

I tried to pull away.

He held on.

“Damien, you're scaring me.”

His gaze snapped back to mine.

And this time, whatever he saw in my face seemed to frighten him even more.

He looked at the wound. Then at my neck. Then back at me.

His lips parted.

“That's impossible.”

I stared at him.

“What is?”

He did not answer. His fingers slowly moved toward the bite mark on my neck.

He stopped just before touching it.

His face had gone white.

And then, with blood still running down his side and his hand locked around mine, Damien whispered something that made my entire body go cold.

“You're the one who did this to me.”

DAMIEN

I could feel the handle pressed against my side, the cheap metal trembling slightly with every breath I dragged into my lungs, and beneath it, beneath the torn flesh and the blood soaking through my shirt, something inside my body was fighting a battle it had never once lost.

My healing had begun the moment the blade entered.

It had failed before the pain even reached its worst.

That was impossible.

I had been cut open in war, bitten by creatures that no longer existed, burned beneath silver fire, and left bleeding in places where ordinary men would have died before anyone found them. My body had always repaired itself. Sometimes slowly, sometimes painfully, but it had repaired itself.

Always.

Yet this wound remained open beneath my hand, pulsing with a vicious heat that spread through my ribs and into my chest.

Ava stood in front of me, staring at the blood.

She looked like she wanted to run.

Good. That was sensible. She should run. She should take her bag, find the nearest lift, leave the hotel, leave the city, and never come near me again.

The thought made my wolf bare its teeth.

I ignored it.

The wolf had been a nuisance since last night, a restless animal throwing itself against my control whenever Ava moved, breathed, touched me, or looked at me with those sharp, unimpressed eyes. I had blamed the sex. I had blamed the scent of her skin, the heat of her body, the fact that I had not wanted the night to end even after she had fallen asleep beside me.

I had blamed everything except the truth.

Now the truth stood in front of me with blood on her hand.

My mate.

No.

The word rose in my mind and I crushed it immediately.

No.

Ava Monroe was human.

I knew what humans were. Fragile bodies, short lives, soft throats, bones that broke too easily and hearts that stopped without warning. They were temporary things. They entered the world, made noise, desired foolishness, and disappeared before the people who loved them had finished mourning.

They were not mates.

Not mine.

Not after three hundred and forty-seven years of surviving every weakness the world had offered me.

My wolf slammed against my ribs.

Mine.

The wound tore wider.

A sharp breath escaped me before I could stop it.

Ava flinched.

“You're getting worse,” she said, and there was panic under the irritation she was trying to maintain. “You need to let me get someone in here before you bleed all over the damn floor.”

I looked at the knife.

Then at her.

“You did this.”

Her face tightened.

“I know I did, but I didn't expect you to start falling apart over a shallow stab wound.”

Shallow. The word lodged under my skin.

She had barely driven the blade into me. It had not reached anything vital. It had not gone deep enough to damage my organs, and yet my body was behaving as if she had torn me open from the inside.

I pressed harder against the wound. The flesh shifted beneath my palm.

My healing tried again. The edges pulled together. For one breath, I felt the familiar warmth of repair.

Then the wound split open with a fresh rush of blood.

I bent forward. Ava caught my shoulder before I could stop her.

Her touch burned through me.

My wolf surged so violently that my vision blurred.

I seized her wrist.

She gasped.

“Don't grab me like that.”

I should have released her.

Instead, I pulled her closer, because the moment her hand touched me, every instinct I possessed had turned toward her. Her scent filled my lungs. Her heartbeat struck against the air between us. The mark on her neck seemed to answer something beneath my skin.

The bite.

I remembered it now, When my control had slipped and the need to sink my teeth into her had become unbearable. I had thought it was hunger. I had thought it was lust sharpened by the night, by her mouth, by the way she had looked at me as though I were no different from every other man who had paid for her company.

I had bitten her. I had marked her.

And my wolf had known exactly what I had refused to see.

Ava tried to pull away.

My fingers closed more tightly around her wrist.

“Damien, you're hurting me.”

The words reached me through the pain.

I loosened my grip, but I did not let go.

She looked down at my hand, then up at my face, and I saw the calculation beginning behind her eyes. She was measuring the distance to the door again. Measuring me. Measuring how much strength I had left.

She believed I was weak.

She was right.

That thought was unacceptable.

I had spent centuries making men fear the sound of my name. I had built empires under identities that were eventually buried with the people who had known them. I had watched generations rise and vanish while my face remained unchanged.

A human woman had put a knife into my side, and now I was kneeling in front of her, bleeding through my clothes while my body refused to heal.

I would not accept it.

I forced myself upright.

Pain ripped through my side so fiercely that the room tilted, but I kept my hold on Ava and dragged myself higher. My knee remained on the floor. My other leg shook beneath me.

Ava's eyes widened.

“Stop trying to stand, you absolute idiot. You're going to make it worse.”

“I am not taking orders from you.”

“You are bleeding because of me, and you're still trying to act like some fucking king.”

I looked at her. The insult should have angered me.

Instead, I found myself watching her mouth.

That mouth had been against mine only hours ago. It had spoken filthy things against my skin, laughed when I tried to control the pace, and told me exactly what she wanted without once pretending she needed tenderness from me.

She had come to my bed for money.

She had taken it without shame.

A whore, the world would call her.

My wolf wanted her closer.

I wanted her closer.

I hated the distinction.

“Why isn't it worsening?” she demanded.

I looked down at the wound.

“I don't know.”

The admission tasted foul.

Ava stared at me.

“You don't know?”

“I said I don't know.”

“Then stop acting like you have everything under control, because you look like shit and you're still refusing help.”

My vision blurred again.

I heard the blood before I felt it, a thick drop striking the floor between us.

Then another.

The pain had moved beyond my side. It was inside my bones now, crawling through my chest, tightening around my lungs. My wolf was no longer pacing.

It was panicking.

That was worse than the pain.

A wolf did not panic.

An Alpha did not panic.

I forced my breathing into order, but my body betrayed me with another cough. Blood filled my mouth. I turned my head and spat it onto the floor.

Ava recoiled.

“That's not normal.”

“No.”

The word came out low.

She looked toward the door.

I felt her preparing to move before she actually did.

My hand caught her waist.

She jerked violently.

“Damien, what the hell are you doing?”

“Stay.”

The command left my mouth before I could soften it.

Her eyes flashed.

“You don't get to order me around after trapping me in this room and bleeding on me.”

I pulled her down beside me.

She fought immediately, pushing at my shoulder, trying to wrench herself out of my hold. I could have stopped her easily under ordinary circumstances.

These were not ordinary circumstances.

Every movement tore the wound open.

Every struggle made the pain worse.

Still, I wrapped one arm around her waist and held her against me.

Her body fit against mine with an accuracy that made denial almost impossible.

My wolf went still.

Ava froze when she felt the blood soaking into her clothes.

“Damien, you're getting blood on me.”

“I know.”

“You need to let me go.”

“No.”

Her breath shook against my neck.

“Why are you doing this? I tried to leave, and you blocked the door. I picked up a knife, and you still stood there like nothing could happen. Now you're bleeding like I've done something insane, and you're holding me here as if I'm the one who needs to be restrained.”

I closed my eyes.

The mark on her neck burned.

My wound opened again.

Ava cried out when my arm tightened around her.

I felt the sound move through her body.

Mine, my wolf insisted.

I rejected it.

Human.

The rejection struck through me like another blade.

My breath caught. Ava lifted her head.

“Damien?”

I opened my eyes.

She was close enough that I could see the pulse beating in her throat, close enough to smell the blood beneath her skin, close enough to know that if I released her now, she would be gone before I could reach the door.

A knock sounded from outside.

“Sir, are you all right in there?”

Ava turned toward the door. My hold tightened.

The footsteps came closer. The handle moved.

I felt the mark on her neck flare hot beneath her hair.

My wound opened wider.

Blood spilled over both of us.

Then my wolf spoke inside my head with a certainty that left no room for argument.

If anyone takes her from you, kill them.

DAMIEN

The command was still inside my head when the knock came again.

If anyone takes her from you, kill them.

I had heard my wolf before, through rage, hunger, blood, pain, but never with that kind of certainty, and I hated the words because some part of me had already decided they were right.

Ava was still trapped against me, staring at the blood on my hand as if she could not understand how something so small had made such a fucking mess.

Neither could I.

The knife remained buried in my side.

I lowered my eyes to it.

The blade had gone in shallowly, but it had no business still being there, and my body had no business behaving like this. I had taken bullets, blades, broken bones and wounds that should have put an ordinary man into the ground, yet my flesh had always closed before the blood had enough time to matter.

This one refused.

I wrapped my fingers around the knife handle.

Ava saw what I was doing and immediately caught my wrist.

“Wait, what are you doing? You cannot just pull that thing out when you are already bleeding like this, Damien, please stop messing with it.”

I looked at her hand around mine.

Her fingers were shaking. Ava's grip tightened around my wrist, but the blade came free with an ease that made my attention snap toward her.

There was no resistance.

None.

The knife slid from my body as though her hand had somehow loosened something I could not see, and I stared down at the blade while blood ran over my fingers.

Ava stared at the knife. Then at me.

Then at the wound.

I watched the realization struggle across her face before fear swallowed it.

“What the hell is happening to you?”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

I did not answer. I could not. The wound was open beneath my palm, hot and wrong, but the moment Ava's fingers brushed against my side, the pain changed.

She had reached out because she was frightened by the blood, because she had seen it pouring between my fingers and apparently forgotten that I was the man she had just stabbed.

Her fingertips pressed against my skin.

Everything stopped.

The pain vanished so violently that my body almost moved away from her.

I stared at her hand.

The torn flesh beneath it pulled together.

Ava gasped and jerked back, but not quickly enough.

The wound closed under her palm, the edges drawing into one another until there was nothing left except blood smeared across my skin.

I caught her wrist before she could pull away.

She looked down at my hand around hers, then back at my side.

“No.”

The word came out of her mouth like she had not meant to say it.

I released her.

She stumbled backward.

Her eyes stayed fixed on my stomach, searching for the wound that was no longer there.

“What did I just do?”

I said nothing. My wolf was no longer screaming.

It was watching her.

Waiting.

Claiming.

The realization I had fought against came back harder than before, dragging everything with it; the bite, the mark beneath her hair, the way my instincts had reacted to her from the moment she walked into my room, the impossible healing beneath her hand.

Mate.

The word was poisonous.

I refused it.

My wolf snarled.

Ava looked at me sharply. She had heard nothing, but she saw something change in my face.

I stepped toward her.

She stepped back.

“You need to stay away from me.”

Her voice was trembling now, and she looked toward the door as though measuring the distance.

I should have stopped her.

Instead, I watched her. Blood covered my hands.

My shirt was ruined. The knife lay on the floor between us.

She looked at me as though she had finally realized that the man in front of her was not the man she thought she had sold one night of her life to.

She grabbed her bag.

I moved but she moved faster.

The door opened, and she slipped through before I could reach her.

“Ava.”

She did not stop. She ran.

I stood there for one second too long, staring at the empty doorway while the smell of her skin still clung to the room.

Then a voice came from the corridor.

“Sir, I heard something break, and I thought you might need… ”

The man stepped inside. He was one of the hotel staff.

His eyes went straight to the blood on my hands.

Then to my shirt. Then to the knife lying near the table.

His face drained.

“What happened in here?”

I turned toward him.

His question irritated me more than it should have.

“Where did she go?”

He blinked.

“I don't know who you're talking about, sir. I came because I heard shouting and…”

“Where did she go?”

I heard the edge in my own voice.

The man swallowed and glanced toward the open corridor.

“I saw a woman running toward the elevators, but I didn't…”

My vision sharpened, and his face changed. His eyes widened as he took one step backward, then another.

I felt the change before I understood it, the heat moving through my eyes as my wolf rose beneath my skin, furious that someone else had seen me like this, furious that Ava was gone.

The man's breathing stopped.

His gaze locked onto mine.

“What the hell are your eyes?”

I did not answer. The room went strangely quiet around us.

His mouth opened.

A scream tore out of him.

He stumbled backward so violently that his heel caught against the doorframe, and he crashed onto the corridor floor, scrambling away from me with both hands as though distance alone could save him.

I looked away from him.

Ava.

I could still smell her. I pushed past the man and ran.

The elevator doors were closing.

I reached them too late.

By the time I reached the lobby, the scent had already thinned beneath perfume, polished marble, coffee, human sweat and hundreds of strangers passing through my hotel every day.

I reached the entrance just as she climbed into the back of a taxi.

Ava slammed the door behind her, and the car pulled away before I reached the curb.

I stopped beneath the hotel lights, watching the rear of the vehicle disappear into traffic.

The plate caught beneath the streetlight. I read it once. Then again.

I had no need for a third look.

I had spent centuries remembering things other men forgot.