The night I was supposed to become someone's chosen mate, I found my stepsister in his bed. I did not cry. I did not beg. I ran into the forest, into the dark, into the arms of a stranger who smelled like pine resin and something deeper I had no name for. Something that made my blood burn and my wolf, the wolf that had never once shown herself, go completely still and completely certain. I told myself it was one night. A broken girl taking one thing for herself before the world took everything else. I was wrong. I came home with his mark on my neck. In my pack, that mark is a death sentence. My stepfather gave me three days. Find a husband at the Bond Gathering or don't come home at all. Every man in that hall turned away from me. Everyone except him. Alpha Damien Cole. The most feared Alpha on the continent. A man who has dismantled three packs and never apologized for any of it. Cold where other men are warm. Still where other men move. The kind of power that does not need to announce itself because rooms already know. He claimed me in front of everyone. Said four words that changed the shape of my entire life. He knew who I was. He had known since the moment I walked through that door. Now I am inside his walls. Inside his pack. Wearing his name like armor, I do not yet know how to carry it. And the man I gave myself to in the dark, the careful stranger who waited when no one had ever waited, is standing three feet away from me in full daylight, watching me like I am the one thing in his life that has ever surprised him. I should be afraid. I am not afraid. That might be the most dangerous thing about any of this.