Chapter 4

Zane's POV

I had kissed three women that night and felt nothing.

Then I kissed her, and my wolf nearly tore through my skin.

The first touch of her mouth should have been no different from the others—warm lips, artificial perfume, another willing stranger in a dark room built for forgetting names. Instead, a current snapped through me so violently that my hand tightened around her waist.

Raze surged to the surface with a growl.

Her.

The girl beneath me went still. One palm rested against my chest, braced as if she meant to push me away, and for half a second I expected her to do exactly that.

She didn’t.

Her fingers curled into the front of my racing jacket.

Something in me broke loose.

I kissed her again, slower this time but deeper, trying to understand why the contact felt familiar when everything else about her was wrong. Cheap synthetic pheromones clung to her neck, her hair, and the ridiculous scrap of fabric someone had called a uniform. The scent was cloying enough to burn my nose, completely unlike the quiet, strange sweetness I remembered from the hallway.

The perfume said she was a stranger.

Everything beneath it said otherwise.

Her breath caught as my thumb traced the line of her jaw, and the tiny sound went through me like another live wire. I knew attraction. I knew its temporary heat and the easy way it disappeared once I stepped back.

This felt less like meeting someone and more like remembering her.

She shifted beneath me, and her lips parted on a startled breath. I followed without thinking, my free hand settling at the curve of her waist to draw her closer. Her body remained tense, ready to run, yet when I eased back enough to give her space, she followed me by a fraction.

That small, unconscious movement hit harder than it should have.

Raze paced beneath my skin, possessive and unbearably pleased.

You know her.

I didn’t. I couldn’t.

But I wanted to.

—

Coming to the Meridian had been a bad decision long before I put on the blindfold.

I had left Sage Bennett in the Wildfire garage after threatening her mother’s job, telling myself I had made the only reasonable choice. The brake investigation had uncovered seven missing minutes, but that didn’t make Sage innocent. Keeping her close meant I could watch what she touched, where she went, and whether anyone tried to contact her.

It was strategy.

At least, that was what I had called it when Raze asked why the thought of sending her away had made me want to put my fist through something.

You could have assigned security, he had said.

I don’t trust security.

You don’t trust anyone else to watch her.

There was a difference. I simply hadn’t bothered explaining it to him.

By the time I reached the Meridian, I needed one uncomplicated night to prove that whatever had happened in the hallway—and again when I touched Sage in the garage—was nothing more than adrenaline and bad timing.

Blindfold Kiss was juvenile, but it offered a simple test.

Three women found me during the first ten minutes. All of them were attractive, willing, and exactly the kind of distraction I had come for. I kissed each of them and felt less every time.

I had been ready to leave when Raze seized my attention.

The synthetic pheromones hit first, sharp and unpleasant beneath the sweeter scents filling the room. Then I heard a struggle near the side exit: furniture scraping, a man swearing, a girl telling someone to let go.

My body moved before my mind made the decision.

I caught the male by the shoulder and tore him away from her. He hit the floor hard enough to rattle the nearest table, and the girl stumbled backward into my arms.

The moment I touched her, the same current from the hallway exploded beneath my skin.

Someone took a step toward us.

“She’s mine.”

The words had left me before I chose them. Rank rolled through the room, silencing every wolf within earshot, but the girl in my arms only stiffened.

Mine.

I should have corrected myself. Instead, I backed her toward the nearest couch, unable to tolerate the thought of anyone else touching her.

Then I kissed her.

And now I couldn’t make myself stop.

—

Her fingers tightened against my jacket as my mouth moved over hers. She tasted faintly of champagne she probably hadn’t drunk and something warmer that the synthetic perfume couldn’t hide. My lip rings caught lightly against her lower lip, and she inhaled sharply.

I paused.

Her pulse beat fast beneath my thumb, but she hadn’t pushed me away. Her hand was still fisted in my jacket, holding on with the same stubbornness I had seen in a certain pair of gray-green eyes that afternoon.

The thought arrived uninvited.

Sage.

Raze went still.

I rejected it immediately. Sage had left the garage wearing an oversized hoodie, furious enough to slam a door. She had no reason to be at the Meridian, and even if she were, I would know her scent.

Wouldn’t I?

The girl turned her face slightly, as if the pause had given her enough sense to reconsider. I should have let her go.

Instead, I brushed my mouth over hers once more.

She kissed me back.

It lasted no more than a heartbeat, but there was nothing uncertain about it. Heat moved between us, swift and impossible, and the room disappeared—the music, the other wolves, the pain still healing beneath my ribs. Even the constant pressure at the back of my mind went silent.

For three weeks, every thought I’d had had led to my mother’s hospital room.

Rogues had struck Nightfall’s eastern border and caught her in the attack. A newly arrived doctor named Naomi Bennett had kept her alive long enough to reach Blackthorn General, but surviving wasn’t the same as waking. My mother had not opened her eyes since.

My father had called healers from every allied pack. Specialists came with equipment, rare medicines, and promises that grew less confident by the hour. None of them could bring her back.

Then Crew found the underground race.

The winner’s prize was a regenerative serum distilled by a healer from the northern territories—illegal, untested, and rumored to restore damage ordinary medicine couldn’t touch. My father would never permit me to compete for it. He had made me promise years ago that I would stay away from underground tracks, and I had kept that promise until legitimate options ran out.

The practice crash should have stopped me. My brake line failed at a hundred and twenty miles per hour, and only Alpha healing had kept a shattered rib from puncturing my lung. The healer ordered me out of the driver’s seat for a month.

My mother didn’t have a month.

Until this kiss, neither the pain nor the girl suspected of causing it had left my mind.

Now there was only the stranger beneath me.

I drew back just enough to breathe. The blindfold shifted against my temple, loosened by our movement, but still covered my eyes.

“Who are you?” I asked against her mouth.

Her body locked.

The question changed something. Her hand flattened against my chest again, no longer holding me close.

I felt the sudden distance even before she moved.

“Tell me your name.”

She pushed at my shoulder.

I caught her waist by instinct, not forcing her down but keeping her from disappearing before I understood what was happening. My other hand rose along her side, and she flinched.

I stopped.

The reaction was small, but it cut through the haze. Beneath the artificial perfume, I could finally smell her fear.

Not the breathless nerves of the women who had volunteered for the game. Real fear.

Someone had been holding her when I found her. She had been fighting to reach the door.

And she had never been wearing a volunteer’s wristband.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice harder now. “Who put you in here?”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, her fingers found the edge of my blindfold.

For one second, I thought she meant to pull it away.

Then her teeth sank into my lower lip.

Pain flashed bright and clean. Blood filled my mouth, and my grip loosened more from surprise than injury.

She shoved me backward and scrambled off the couch.

“What the hell?”

Her footsteps raced toward the side exit. I tore the blindfold away in time to see messy dark hair, bare shoulders, and the back of a black uniform disappearing through the door.

“Sage?”

The name escaped before I could stop it.

She didn’t turn.

I went after her, but a couple stumbled into my path as the door swung shut. By the time I reached the staff corridor, it was empty. Two identical doors stood open at opposite ends, one leading toward the kitchen and the other to the service stairs.

Something metallic struck the floor behind me.

I looked down.

One of the black metal buttons from my jacket rolled beneath the edge of the couch and disappeared into shadow. She must have torn it loose when she pushed away.

I left it there and searched the service stairs.

No one.

When I returned, the game room had begun to empty. The man I had thrown aside was gone, along with anyone else who might have identified the girl. No cameras operated inside the private rooms, and the synthetic perfume had made following her scent impossible.

I touched my lip. The bite was already beginning to close, but I pressed my tongue against the wound and held back the healing for another moment, unwilling to lose the sharp proof that she had been real.

Raze paced restlessly.

That was her.

“The perfume didn’t smell like Sage.”

Your nose is the only part of you that believes that.

I ignored him and stepped outside, where the cold air cut through the heat still trapped beneath my skin. The party continued behind the glass, but every woman inside had become as irrelevant as the three I had kissed before her.

I pulled out my phone and called Crew.

He answered on the fourth ring. “Please tell me you didn’t wreck something my family owns.”

“I need the Meridian’s security footage.”

A pause. “What happened?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“The girl who left the east game room through the staff corridor.”

Crew was silent for a second. “Does this have anything to do with why people are saying an Omega bit you?”

News traveled fast in Nightfall.

“Pull every camera covering the service hall and exits.”

“There aren’t cameras in the private rooms.”

“I know.”

“And if she left through the employee stairwell, we may only have her back.”

“Then find me her back.”

Crew exhaled. “That sentence sounded less insane in your head, didn’t it?”

“Get it done.”

I ended the call and stared at the blood on my thumb.

I told myself I wanted to find her because she had entered a restricted game without a wristband, drawn blood, and disappeared before answering a single question. Any future Alpha would want an explanation.

Raze laughed quietly at the lie.

The girl in the dark had made me forget the race, the crash, and the hospital room waiting at the end of every night. She had kissed me back, bitten me, and vanished with the only real reaction anyone had pulled from me in months.

There was no chance I was letting her remain a stranger.