Chapter 1 Unmarked Mate

Patricia

The alarm goes off suddenly while I am staring at the last vial in one of the labs at Arcadia.

Layla's voice cuts through the comm unit: "B2-07 containment breach. Subject Three has entered partial feral state, moving toward the isolation corridor. All non-emergency personnel evacuate immediately. Security ETA..."

I press the comm. "Security needs two minutes. Give me thirty seconds."

A beat of silence. "Patricia..."

I set the unit down without turning it off. The syringe completes its final push. I hold the plunger steady for the full count, watch the reaction chamber fog over with the pale iridescence that means the trial has taken, and write down the reading. Then I pull the emergency cabinet open, check the tranquilizer gun's cartridge, and walk into B2.

The corridor carries the signature of a feral episode: copper underneath, and above that, the specific sweetness of vampire decomposition. Subject Three has done significant work on the isolation door. Through the crack in the reinforced panel, half a face is visible: red-filmed eyes, jaw working against the metal, black residue tracking from the corner of a mouth that no longer functions entirely as a mouth should.

Two researchers are pressed flat against the far wall, currently vibrating with the full-body stillness that means the fear pheromones have taken complete hold. There is nothing wrong with them. I simply happen not to share the response, which is either a personality flaw or an occupational hazard depending on who you ask.

I walk in at an even pace. Subject Three tracks me through the crack with the single-minded fixation of stage-three feral progression. I stop at three meters. Close enough for accuracy. Far enough for a margin.

I wait until the head comes through the gap fully.

Then I fire.

The cartridge hits the lateral neck. The shriek cuts off mid-frequency. The body slides. The isolation door settles back into its frame.

Security arrives forty seconds later to a resolved scene. I hand off the tranq gun and turn to the two researchers still against the wall. "It's done. Go file the incident report."

The cleanup takes the better part of an hour.

Layla materializes at my shoulder during the decontamination sweep, clipboard tucked under her arm. "Those two researchers have been here three years," she opens with, in the tone of someone who does not actually find anything funny. "And they still get spooked."

I check a box on my list: "Fear pheromone suppression is a physiological response. Even for low-tier vampires."

One of the researchers approaches with the careful posture of someone performing recovery from recent terror. He nods at me. "Patricia. Thank you. Can I... would you want to get dinner? As a thank-you."

"You want to take the person who just manually subdued a feral vampire to dinner?" Layla pivots toward him with unhurried precision. "Whoever ends up as her mate is going to have to match that energy."

"I have a mate," I say, without looking up.

The corridor goes completely silent.

Layla turns so fast I hear the clipboard hit her hip. "What?"

"Mm."

"When? You never said... How long has—"

"Recently." I make a note in the margin. "It's complicated."

"Complicated how—"

"The B2-07 structural reinforcement log." I hold the clipboard out. "Two columns short."

She takes it and looks up at me with an expression that communicates, I know exactly what you're doing and I will be returning to this. Then she leaves, and I turn back to the decontamination cart.

"He hasn't even marked you," a voice says from the stratum of my consciousness. "How could you call him your mate?"

My wolf, Louella.

"That's why it's complicated," I answer her.

The first time I saw Julius Morrow was at a Greyson family gathering four weeks ago. I was standing at the edge of the reception hall with an untouched drink, watching the crowd redistribute itself around him. Deep charcoal suit. Expression like a door that had been closed so long it had forgotten it was a door. The ancient-bloodline Lycan signature in his pheromone profile made the air feel heavier.

Gloria stood next to him. My half-sister, the Greyson family's elder daughter, present as his fated mate. She wore an expression I couldn't parse. I looked at her for a moment, then went back to the reagent calibration problem I'd been running through my head all evening.

I thought I'd never get to know him like everyone else, until four days after Gloria disappeared, my father called me into his study.

"Alpha Lycan Julius wants you to be his mate." That's what he said.

I considered this. "Does he know I'm not his fated mate?"

"He does."

"Do I have a choice?"

The silence that followed was its own answer.

"I wish you have," he said finally. It's the most honest thing he'd said to me in years, and I know exactly what he means.

Gloria had rejected the mate bond and vanished. The alliance meant to stabilize the Greyson family's commercial position was suspended in midair. Julius Morrow had decided a Greyson daughter was still preferable to the alternative, and the alternative was considerably worse than this.

I said yes. That night I moved into Blackrock Estate. And that's the second and the last time I saw him.

"I don't see why it's complicated," Louella says now. "He's not our mate. We should be looking for our actual mate."

Ignoring her, I pick up the decontamination spray.

The others clear their assigned areas and leave in ones and twos. Layla is last, pausing in the doorway with her coat half-on.

She looks at me, as if wanting to resume our previous topic, but in the end she just says, "Don't stay too late, Pat."

"I won't."

I go back through the checklist from the beginning. Nothing missing. I close the folder, set it in the filing tray, and allow myself the minor satisfaction of a crisis correctly managed. Then I walk to the far end of the corridor, fold my clothes onto the shelf outside the shower stall, and stand under the water for thirty minutes, which I justify on the grounds that feral vampire pheromone residue requires extended decontamination.

I turn off the water, wrap myself in the changing-room robe, and reach for the shelf.

The shelf is empty.

I stand there with my hand extended, processing this. Correct height. Correct shelf. I folded the clothes there myself. I check the floor. Nothing has fallen. The shelf is straightforwardly bare. Is someone playing a prank on me?

"Layla? This isn't funny." I call out.

No answer.

I pull the robe tighter at the collar and push open the door.

Then I see Julius Morrow. My "mate."

He is standing in the corridor with his back to me. The same impeccable charcoal suit, entirely incongruous against the institutional lighting. He is holding something up near his face, close, with focused attention.

For a Lycan with sensory perception that outstrips any werewolf I have ever met, what, exactly, requires this kind of proximity to examine?

"Your clothes," Louella says, before I finish forming the question. "He's smelling your clothes."