Chapter 2
1145 Words
Zain
The alarms rip me from the best dream I’ve had in years—warm sunlight, open fields, a woman’s laugh I swear I almost recognize. Then reality crashes in: red lights flashing and pulsing in the hallway, sirens howling like wounded animals.
I bolt upright, my heart bumping along riotously, and the first thing my eyes see is the knife.
It stands straight up from the hardwood floor beside my bed, blade buried half an inch deep, like some deadly exclamation mark.
Moonlight coming through the window catches the extremely sharp edge and throws back a cold gleam that makes me wince.
One s***h from that, and I’d be bleeding out before I could shift.
The door explodes inward. Beta Ramos barrels through, rifle raised, flanked by four guards sweeping the room with their shotgun muzzles and their weapon lights.
“Alpha!” Ramos barks. “You all right?”
I hold up both hands. “Alive. Confused. But alive.”
Ramos’s gaze drops to the knife sticking out of the floor. His jaw drops open and his eyes squint. The guards fan out, checking closets, under the bed, the balcony doors.
“Clear!” each one declares one after the other.
“Perimeter breach,” Ramos says, lowering his weapon. “We’re running traces now. Wanted to make sure you were secure first, alpha.”
I swing my legs over the side of the bed, bare feet hitting the cool floor. “Looks like the intruder got a lot farther than the perimeter,” I say as I lean down, wrap my fingers around the hilt, and pull the knife free with a soft scrape.
“By jove!" Ramos exclaims.
It’s heavier than it looks, perfectly balanced, the curve of the blade is old-fashioned, almost ritualistic. Intricate swirls are hewn into the bone-white handle, patterns that mimic the type in history books about long-dead assassin orders.
I turn it over in my hand. “You ever seen a blade like this?”
Ramos steps closer, eyes narrowing. “No, Alpha. Not in active use. That’s the kind of thing you find in museums, or graves.”
A chill crawls up my spine, but anger follows fast behind it. Someone stood right here, close enough to end me, and walked away. I hand the knife to Ramos.
“Bag it. Dust it. Whatever you have to do. I want the owner.”
He nods sharply. “Already on it.”
“I’m coming with you,” I say, pulling on jeans and a shirt. “I want to see the security camera footage.”
Ramos hesitates. “You could go back to sleep, alpha. I’ll handle—”
“Not a chance!”
“But alpha . . ."
I’m already moving toward the door. “This is the fourth attempt in two weeks, Ramos. Fourth. And this one leaves me breathing and leaves his weapon behind. I need to understand why,” I blow hot.
Ramos falls in beside me as we stride down the corridor, guards trailing us. The estate is alive now and lights are blazing, security personnel running with headsets and tablets.
My pulse is still pumping fast, but underneath the anger is curiosity. A puzzle I can’t leave alone.
We reach the situation room. Screens cover one wall; techs hunch over consoles. Ramos gestures, and the lead technician pulls up the bedroom feed.
I brace myself for a masked brute, someone I might recognize by the way they move, an exiled enforcer maybe, a rival pack’s champion.
Instead, the clear night-vision footage shows a slim, petite figure slipping through the balcony doors like mist. Hooded jacket, dark pants tucked into boots, the movements are quick and graceful.
“It's a . . . woman," I gasp, my eyes narrowing at the screen. "Can you believe this?”
“Well, I'll be damned, alpha," Ramos scoffs.
The woman pauses at the side of my bed, raises something small, a pen torch, and the faint glow lights her hand for half a second. Delicate fingers. A woman’s dainty fingers coated in a black, tight glove.
She leans over the sleeping me. I lick my dry lips and freeze.
Even through the hood and shadows, the outline of her body is unmistakably feminine: narrow waist, gentle curve of hip.
"Beautiful,” my mind supplies before I can stop it.
I feel an unwelcome stir low in my gut, heat chasing away the last of the fear.
Then she stumbles, catches herself on the mattress, and bolts. The knife drops, embeds itself, and she’s gone out the door just as the silent trip alarm finally wakes the system.
The room is quiet. I realize I’m staring at a frozen frame of her silhouette. Ramos clears his throat.
“Professional entry, amateur exit. She panicked,” Ramos breathes.
“Or something spooked her,” I murmur and clear my throat. “She had me dead to rights. I should be dead, Ramos. She had me. Why did she stop?”
Ramos shrugs. “Maybe she realized she had the wrong room.”
I shake my head slowly. “No. She looked right at me. She knew who I was.”
I turn to him, the decision already settled in my head.
“Find her.”
“Alive, I assume?”
I look at the woman on the screen again. “Very alive,” I reply, “I want to meet her.”
Ramos studies me with a puzzled look for a second, then nods. “We’ll start with the knife. Custom work like that . . . someone local made it. And she knew the patrol rotations well enough to get inside. She’s either one of ours or she’s been watching us a long time.”
Yeah. Watching us. Watching me, especially. I glance back at the screen, at the frozen image of the hooded woman poised over my bed. Something about the way she moved, the quiet economy of it, feels familiar, like a half-remembered scent on the wind.
“Pull employee files,” I say. “Farmhands, housekeeping, kitchen staff—anyone who’s been on the estate longer than a month. Cross-reference with the blade’s design. And check the fields at dawn. If she works here, she’ll try to blend in.”
Ramos is already relaying orders. I linger a moment longer, eyes on that slender shadow.
An assassin who couldn’t kill me.
A woman who looked at me and walked away.
I don’t know whether to be furious. But I know I'm deeply fascinated by her . . . beauty. Maybe both.
But one thing is certain: when we find her—and we will—I’m going to look into her eyes and ask why she left me breathing.
And why she left her knife behind like a calling card.
- Writer
