Chapter 3

I had just returned to the car after visiting my parents’ graves when chaos erupted across the Pack like wildfire.

[BREAKING NEWS: Alpha Kayle is at the eastern border, fighting Bloodfang’s Alpha—over the new Omega.]

I froze.

The driver turned, waiting for instructions, but I could barely breathe. Kayle. Fighting. Over her? Before I could even process the headline, my phone rang. Elder Wilson.

“Get to the hospital. Now,” he snapped.

That was all he said before the line went dead.

I swallowed hard, buried my grief, and turned to the driver. “Step on it.”

As the car sped through the forest roads, my phone vibrated again. A message. From Amy.

“Your man’s here. Head split wide open. I just stitched him up—eighteen stitches. My goddess, Seraphina... another grand romantic gesture for that hussy?”

I stared at the words, numb. My fingers trembled around the phone. Eighteen stitches.

Kayle was many things—cold, cruel, indifferent—but impulsive? Rarely. The last time he lost control like this… I was eighteen. Right after my coming-of-age ceremony.

Amy had dragged me to a pub near the border—something fun, something reckless. She left me alone for five minutes to greet some friends.

That was all it took.

A Rogue cornered me. Drunk. Slurring. Grabbing. I froze, heart pounding, too stunned to scream.

Then, suddenly—crash.

A liquor bottle smashed across the Rogue’s head. Alpha Kayle stood in the doorway, shirt half-buttoned, breathing fire.

“You dare lay a hand on my woman?” he growled.

The Rogue didn’t recognize him. Big mistake.

Kayle beat him within an inch of his life—and nearly tore the whole pub apart when others tried to interfere. Chairs shattered. Tables flipped. Blood splattered.

The Elders whipped him for it the next morning. Twenty lashes, bare skin.

I snuck into his room that night with a jar of ointment and tears in my eyes.

The marks on his back were raw and brutal, deep and red. But even through the pain, he grinned.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Worst case? You can just... give yourself to me.”

I’d rolled my eyes, furious, and jabbed the ointment straight into his wound.

“OW—damn it, woman!” he hissed, flinching. “Mercy!”

For once, his Alpha dignity was nowhere in sight. He was just a boy—bruised, bleeding, grinning through the pain.

We sat in silence for a long time after that.

Then, softly, he said the words that stayed with me for years:

“Seraphina... in this life, I’ll only protect you.”

I believed him.

Fool that I was, I believed every word.

But time has a cruel way of changing people. Of eroding promises and twisting love into something unrecognizable.

Now, at twenty-eight, Alpha Kayle’s list of women to protect had grown long and forgettable.

And no matter how many names he added, one thing had become painfully clear:

That list would never include mine.