Chapter 2

KAEL

My wolf had been screaming for six hours.

Not words. Wolves don't use words — not exactly. It was more like a sound turned into a feeling turned into an imperative that drilled through every rational thought I'd ever had and replaced it with one blazing syllable:

MATE.

I'd ignored it. I was good at ignoring things — emotions, inconveniences, my father's phone calls. But ignoring my wolf while a woman I couldn't see was pressed against me, skin to skin, warm and soft and smelling like rain on white jasmine — that was a new level of difficulty.

She was asleep now. Curled against my chest, her breathing slow and even, one hand resting over my heart like she'd put it there on purpose. She hadn't. She'd done it in her sleep — reached for me, tucked herself into the exact configuration that made my wolf go quiet for the first time all night.

Not silent. Just... content. A low, steady hum instead of the howling.

Mate, my wolf murmured. Ours. Keep. Protect.

I don't even know her name, I told him.

He didn't care.

The room was still dark. The curtains were industrial-grade blackout — not a sliver of light. I hadn't seen her face. Not once. Not even a shadow of it.

But I'd seen something else.

Just before she fell asleep — when she'd flinched at something and shifted in my arms — I'd felt it. A pulse of heat under my palm, right where my hand rested on the curve of her waist. My wolf had surged forward so violently I'd nearly lost control.

That's where I marked her.

Not a full mark. Not even close. A proper Mating Mark required eye contact, mutual consent, my wolf's fangs on her throat. What I'd left on her was something else — something I'd only read about in the old Pack texts.

A Ghost Mark.

When a partial mate bond fires during intense physical contact — when the wolf recognizes his mate but can't complete the recognition — it leaves a trace. A shadow of a mark. Invisible to human eyes but seared into the skin at a frequency only the bonded Alpha can sense.

I'd felt it under my palm. A crescent shape, barely warmer than the surrounding skin. My wolf had practically wept.

She's ours, he said again.

She might be, I corrected. We can't confirm without seeing her eyes.

But I knew. In the same way I knew my own heartbeat, I knew. The woman in my arms was my fated mate, and my wolf had branded her in the dark like a goddamn caveman.

Romantic, he offered.

Shut up.

I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, the bed was empty.

Cold sheets. Her scent — rain, jasmine, and something sweeter underneath — lingering on the pillow. No warmth.

Gone.

I sat up. Scanned the room with wolf-enhanced eyes. The curtains had been pulled apart an inch, letting in a thin blade of gray morning light. Enough to see the aftermath.

My black suit jacket crumpled on the floor. Her dress — torn. Her underwear — torn in half. Christ, Kael. My white shirt — missing. My suit pants — missing. My belt — still here, but barely.

She'd worn my clothes out. Every piece.

A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth before I could stop it. Bold.

I got up. Walked to the desk by the window.

And stopped.

A single coin sat on the dark red wood. Silver. Round. Catching the morning light.

A quarter. I picked it up. Flipped it over.

She'd left me a quarter minted in 2000.

I stared at it for a full thirty seconds.

A quarter. After the night we'd just had — the best night of my life, the most intense physical experience I'd ever been through, the night my wolf found his mate — she'd left me twenty-five cents and walked out.

Was she mocking me? Thanking me? Paying me?

Was this some kind of review? Service: adequate. Tip: one quarter.

My wolf, for once, had nothing to say.

I closed my fist around the coin. The metal was cool and rough against my palm.

I'll find you.

I didn't find her.

Not that day. Not that week. Not in the months that followed.

The hotel's security cameras for that floor had been destroyed — tampered with by someone who knew what they were doing. No footage. No guest records that matched. Nothing.

I'd pulled every resource I had. Private investigators. Pack trackers. Digital surveillance. I'd described her to anyone who'd listen — her scent (rain, jasmine, vanilla), her height (tall, my chin rested on her head), her skin (impossibly smooth), her body (I kept that part to myself), and the Ghost Mark.

The mark no one else could feel.

The mark she didn't know she had.

I carried the quarter everywhere. Not as a keepsake — as a reminder. She's out there. My wolf found her once. He'll find her again.

I slipped it between the pages of Wuthering Heights. Right at the line I kept rereading.

"Do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you."

One year later.

I sat in a booth at The Crescent Café, the quarter tucked in my book, a coffee I hadn't touched going cold in front of me. I was supposed to be meeting a potential mate — some arrangement my grandmother had set up and refused to tell me the details of. Blind date. Open the box and see what's inside.

I'd done this eighty times. Maybe more. Beautiful women, every one of them. Perfect lineage, perfect teeth, perfect resumés. I'd rejected them all before the appetizers arrived.

My wolf didn't want perfect.

He wanted her.

The door opened. A gust of summer wind swept through the café, rifling the pages of my book, carrying with it a scent that made my wolf slam against the walls of my chest like a caged animal.

Rain.

Jasmine.

And underneath — something different. Something that hadn't been there before. Sharper. Wilder. Like the scent had been unlocked.

I looked up.

A woman in a red dress stood in the doorway.

Black waves of hair. Dark eyes that tilted up at the corners. Flawless skin. A body that made the room go silent.

My wolf said one word.

Her.

But her scent — it was the same and it wasn't. Stronger. Cleaner. As if something that had been suppressing it was gone.

Our eyes met across the room.

My heart stopped. Restarted. Stopped again.

Her?

My wolf snarled: HER.

She walked toward me. Red dress swaying. Heels clicking. The most dangerous woman I'd ever seen.

And she sat down at my table.