Chapter 1
Kael Blackwood scented her before he saw her.
The wind shifted as he patrolled the southern border of the Nightshade Pack territory, carrying a thread of something impossibly sweet—honeysuckle and fear, sharpened by fresh blood. His wolf, a great silver beast named Kyr, stirred restlessly beneath his skin. Kyr whispered. Injured.
Kael moved through the pines without sound, his Alpha senses honing to a razor’s edge. The rain had just stopped, and the forest floor steamed with the last heat of autumn. He found her crumpled in a ditch beneath a fallen oak, a dark-haired slip of a woman in tattered clothes, one leg twisted at an angle that made him wince. Dirt smeared her cheek. A gash on her temple bled freely. She was unconscious, her chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths.
Something unfamiliar clenched in Kael’s chest. It wasn’t pity; he’d seen injured rogues before and left them to their fates. This was different. This was a pull, as if invisible threads had hooked into his ribs and were drawing him toward her.
He crouched, brushing the hair from her face. Even bruised and filthy, she was exquisite—high cheekbones, a rosebud mouth, long lashes that fluttered as he touched her. Her scent flooded his senses, and beneath the blood and terror, there was something else. Something that made Kyr growl with possessive need.
Kael recoiled. That was impossible. The Moon Goddess didn’t bind an Alpha to a dying rogue. He was twenty-eight, unmated, and perfectly content ruling his pack without the complication of a Luna. He’d never felt the pull. Never even been tempted.
But his wolf was already whining, desperate to gather her close.
“Damn it,” Kael muttered. He scooped her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. She weighed nothing. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and a small, pained sound escaped her lips. The sound hit him like a physical blow.
He would take her home. He would let the healers patch her up. Then he would figure out why the Moon Goddess had chosen to torment him with a nameless rogue.
The Nightshade Pack house was a sprawling stone mansion nestled in a valley ringed by ancient mountains. Kael strode through the grand foyer, ignoring the startled gasps of the pack members who caught sight of the bleeding woman in his arms. He barked orders for the healer, for clean linen, for a room to be prepared in the east wing—away from prying eyes.
His Beta, Rylan, fell into step beside him. “Alpha, who is she?”
“I don’t know. A rogue. I found her at the border.”
Rylan’s dark eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “And you brought her inside? Kael, you’ve never brought a rogue within a mile of the pack house.”
“She’s injured,” Kael said, his jaw tight. “I wasn’t going to leave her to die.”
Rylan opened his mouth to argue, but a look at Kael’s face made him reconsider. There was something in the Alpha’s silver eyes—something feral and protective—that Rylan had never seen before. He wisely said nothing.
The healer, an older she-wolf named Mari, took charge of the stranger. She shooed Kael out of the room while she worked, but he didn’t go far. He stood in the corridor, arms crossed, listening to every muffled cry of pain. Each one made his wolf snarl.
Ours, Kyr insisted. Protect.
“She’s not ours,” Kael muttered. “We don’t even know her name.”
But even as he said it, he knew he was lying to himself.
