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.

AVA

The taxi smelled like somebody had smoked inside it too many times, and normally I would have complained about that because I hate when my clothes pick up other people's disgusting habits, but I sat in the back with my bag clutched against my stomach and barely noticed the smell.

I kept looking at my hands. Then at the window.

Then back at my hands. There was still blood underneath my fingernails.

Damien's blood.

I rubbed my fingers against each other and felt my stomach twist because no matter how many times I told myself I had only stabbed him because he would not let me leave, the image would not fucking disappear from my head.

The knife had gone into him. He had bled a lot.

Then I had touched the wound because I was scared and confused and apparently had completely lost my mind, and the damn thing had closed underneath my hand like it had never been there.

I swallowed hard and looked out the window again.

Maybe I had imagined it.

That was the only explanation that made any sense.

Except I had seen it.

I had felt his skin move beneath my fingers.

I had watched the blood stop.

No, that was bullshit.

People did not heal like that.

I pulled my bag onto my lap and opened it just enough to see the envelope sitting inside.

The money was still there.

At least something about tonight had gone according to plan.

I closed the bag again and leaned my head against the seat, letting out a breath that shook more than I wanted it to.

I had gone to that hotel because Damien Cross had offered me money for a night, and I had accepted because I knew exactly what I was doing. I was not some stupid girl who had wandered into a rich man's room expecting him to fall in love with me because I looked good naked, and I certainly was not going to sit in a taxi pretending I had been some innocent victim who had no idea what kind of arrangement I had agreed to.

I knew.

I had wanted the money.

I had wanted him too, if I was being honest, which was probably the part that irritated me most.

Because even after everything that happened, my body still remembered him.

The way his hands had felt. The way he had looked at me.

The way he had made me forget where I was for a while.

That was the problem with being a whore, or whatever name people wanted to give women like me when they were feeling particularly generous with their judgment. I knew how to separate sex from feelings, and I was damn good at it.

Except Damien had somehow managed to crawl into my head without permission.

I pressed my fingers against my neck.

The mark burned.

I pulled my hand away immediately.

“Fuck.”

The driver glanced at me through the mirror. I forced myself to look out the window.

“I am fine, sorry, I just hit my neck earlier.”

He nodded, apparently deciding that was none of his business, which was exactly what I wanted.

When the taxi finally stopped outside my building, I paid him, grabbed my bag and stepped onto the pavement with legs that still felt strangely weak.

I looked behind me before entering.

There was no Damien. No black car.

Nobody standing across the road.

Nothing.

I went inside anyway like some paranoid idiot who had watched too many fucking movies.

By the time I reached my apartment, my hands were shaking again.

I locked the door.

Then I checked it. Then I checked it again.

I stood there with my forehead against the wood, breathing slowly while the silence pressed around me.

I was home. Damien was not here.

The thought should have made me relax, but it didn't.I dropped my bag onto the couch and went straight to the bathroom.

The woman staring back at me in the mirror looked exhausted, disheveled and slightly insane.

My hair was a mess. My lips were swollen.

There were faint marks along my skin from the night, and the bite on my neck stood out darker than everything around it.

I leaned closer. The mark looked just… wrong.

I touched it carefully. Heat shot through my fingers.

I jerked away so quickly that my elbow knocked against the sink.

“What the fuck?”

I stared at my reflection. Nothing happened.

The mark was still there.

I touched it again, slower this time, and the heat returned beneath my fingertips.

I pulled my hand back.

“No.”

I didn't know who I was arguing with.

Maybe myself.

Maybe the mirror.

Maybe the universe, because apparently it had decided I had not suffered enough tonight.

Later that night, I showered until the water went cold, changed into an oversized shirt and shorts, and crawled into bed with the envelope still inside my bag on the floor beside me.

I told myself I would sleep.

I needed sleep.

Tomorrow I would wake up, go about my life, keep the money, forget Damien Cross, and never again accept a job that involved a man who apparently healed from knife wounds like some fucking horror movie character.

I turned off the light.

For several minutes, nothing happened.

Then sleep took me.

I was standing somewhere I had never seen before.

There was grass beneath my bare feet, pale and damp, stretching in every direction without a road, house or single light anywhere around me.

I turned slowly, trying to find something familiar.

There was nothing.

Then I heard something moving behind me.

The sound was low and heavy, the kind of movement that made the hairs along my arms rise before my brain even understood why.

I turned.

A wolf stood several feet away.

It was enormous.

Not the biggest wolf I had ever seen in pictures, because that sentence would have been stupid considering I had never seen anything remotely that size in real life, but this thing was fucking huge, with dark fur that seemed to swallow the weak light around it.

It stared at me. I couldn't breathe properly.

I backed away. The wolf stepped forward.

I backed away again.

It came closer.

My heart hammered against my ribs so violently that I could feel every beat in my throat, and when the wolf lowered its head, I knew what was coming because every stupid instinct inside me screamed that it was about to tear my throat open.

I lifted my arms over my face.

Nothing happened.

I lowered them slowly.

The wolf was standing directly in front of me.

It could have attacked. Instead, it lowered its head again.

Its nose touched the mark on my neck.

Pain exploded through me.

I screamed and grabbed my throat as the mark burned like somebody had pressed a piece of hot metal against my skin.

The wolf stayed there.

I could feel its breath.

I could feel the heat.

I could feel something inside me pulling toward it even while every frightened part of me wanted to run.

I woke violently in my bed, choking on a scream.

My hands flew to my neck.

The mark was burning. Not in the dream.

Here.

In my room.

My fingers trembled against it as I stared into the darkness, trying to slow my breathing.

Then something growled outside my bedroom door.

The sound was low enough to make my entire body lock up, and before I could convince myself that I had imagined it, the handle began to turn.