Marked By My Father's Enemy

CHAPTER 2

CHLOE'S POV

The darkness in that elevator was thick and complete.

I could not see him, but I could feel him. The warmth of his body, steady and close, like standing beside an open furnace. My wolf was not pressing against my ribs anymore. She was clawing.

"I'm not in heat," I said.

My voice sounded nothing like me.

"You are." Eric Stone did not move. He was completely still, the way dangerous things go still right before they act. "Your scent changed the second those doors closed."

I pressed my back harder into the wall. "This is a malfunction. The emergency line..."

"I already checked." A pause. "No signal."

Of course there was no signal.

My skin was burning. That was the only word for it. Burning from the inside, spreading through my shoulders and down my arms and settling in places I refused to think about while standing in a broken elevator with a man I did not know.

Eric Stone. The name alone made board members reschedule their meetings. Brad had called him ruthless, calculating, the kind of Alpha who took what he wanted and left nothing behind. The kind who never lost.

"You should back away," I said.

"You should stop breathing so fast," he replied. "It makes it worse."

I hated that he was right. Every breath I pulled in was drenched in his scent. Something dark and clean, cedar and cold night air, with an edge underneath that my wolf recognized even if I did not. She went completely quiet the second that scent reached her.

Not quiet like sleep.

Quiet like something finally found.

My wolf had been silent for twenty-two years. She had never once responded to Brad like this.

"I just found out my fiancé has a fated mate," I said. My voice cracked on the last word. "Whatever you think you are sensing, it is grief. Stress. I do not even... my wolf barely functions."

"She is functioning right now," he said.

He was closer. I had not heard him move but he was closer, and the heat coming off him hit my skin like sunlight through glass. My breath stuttered.

"Don't." The word came out quiet. Half warning, half something I did not want to name.

"I am not doing anything." A pause, then softer: "You are."

I realized my hand had moved without my permission. My fingers had found the front of his shirt in the dark and I was gripping the fabric. Just holding. Like something in me had reached for him before my mind could stop it.

I let go.

Or I tried to.

My fingers would not open.

My heartbeat was loud in the silence, and I was very aware of how close he was, and how small this elevator had become.

"Chloe." My name in his mouth was unhurried. He said it like he had time, like there was nowhere else in the world he needed to be. His hand came up and covered mine where I gripped his shirt, warm and steady. Not pushing me away. Not pulling me closer. Just holding.

"This is just the heat," I said. "None of this is real."

"Heat is only triggered by a compatible mate." His thumb moved once across my knuckles. "That part is real."

Something broke open in my chest.

Three years. Three years of being the chosen mate of an Alpha who made me feel like I was enough. I had ignored every whisper, buried every doubt, and told myself the quiet wolf inside me did not matter as long as he chose me.

Not grief. Not anger. Something older than both of those.

My wolf surged forward and this time I did not fight her. I was tired. I had just lost everything I spent three years building in less than ten minutes. I had walked through a room of two hundred wolves with my chin up and my hands perfectly still, and now I was in the dark with a man who smelled like something my wolf had been searching for without telling me.

I moved first.

I did not plan it. My hands found his jaw in the dark, and I pulled him down, and his mouth found mine like he had been waiting for exactly that.

The kiss was not soft.

It was the kind that answers a question neither person knew they were asking. His hands moved to my waist, sure and firm, and he walked me back into the wall with slow, deliberate pressure. My wolf went completely still inside me. Not from fear. From something deeper, something she recognized at a level that had nothing to do with logic.

His mouth was unhurried. Like he was learning something and intended to know it fully.

I made a sound I did not intend to make.

His hands tightened, and one slid to the small of my back, drawing me forward. I could feel the difference in our size, the solid weight of him against me, and instead of fear, something slotted into place inside my chest like a key turning in a lock that had been rusted shut for years.

He pulled back just enough to rest his forehead against mine, both of us breathing unevenly in the dark.

"Tell me to stop," he said. His voice was lower now. Unsteady in a way that surprised me.

I did not say it.

His lips grazed the edge of my jaw, slow and careful, then the corner of my mouth. My wolf pressed forward, and I turned my face toward his and stopped thinking entirely.

We lost time.

I do not know how long that elevator sat between floors. Long enough for everything above us to stop existing. Long enough for me to stop thinking about Brad and Vanessa and the room full of wolves waiting for an announcement that was never going to happen.

When the lights blinked back on they were brutal.

The elevator shuddered and began to move.

I stepped back. He let me.

Eric Stone stood with his collar crooked and his dark eyes steady on my face. No smirk. No satisfaction in his expression. Just that same quiet, focused attention that had unnerved me the moment he stepped inside.

I straightened my dress. Looked at the floor numbers rising.

He said nothing.

Neither did I.

The doors opened on the lobby. A cluster of guests stood waiting outside, dressed and polished and completely unaware.

I stepped out without looking back. My legs were steady. My hands were steady.

I was four steps into the marble lobby when I felt it.

A slow burn at the side of my neck. Deep and spreading outward, like a brand settling into skin.

I stopped walking.

My fingers touched the spot, and every muscle in my body locked.

No.

That was not possible.

I turned slowly.

Eric Stone was still standing at the elevator doors, watching me from across the lobby with an expression I could not read.

He already knew.

I had been marked.