Daniel watched the girl on the bed breathe.
Rain whispered against the windows of the roadside lodge. Outside, his guards waited in the corridor; the warriors who had chased her were gone, sent back into the storm with a crest they hadn't dared question.
Inside, it was just him and her.
His bride, his wolf kept saying, pacing behind his ribs. Our second chance.
Second‑chance mates were rare. Yet the moment this woman had crashed into him in the dark, dagger at his throat, something in him had gone stark and sure. The bond was there, bright and new, humming under his skin.
Martha, the warriors had called her.
He took in the red marks circling her wrists where restraints had rubbed the skin raw, the shadows beneath her eyes, the bruise at her temple from the fall. She did not look like
