FATED TO BURN

The Hunt

The moment his eyes found mine across the crowded club, I knew I was dead.

Not literally. Not yet. But the way Kieran Ashford, Alpha of the North Ridge pack, stared at me like I was both his salvation and his doom made my pulse spike in ways that had nothing to do with the electronic beat thundering through The Velvet Underground.

I wasn't supposed to be here. Humans didn't belong in this place—didn't even know this place existed—hidden beneath an abandoned subway station in downtown Boston, where the city's most dangerous supernaturals came to hunt, gamble, and feed their darkest urges.

But I wasn't exactly human anymore, was I?

"Last call, sweetheart," the bartender growled, sliding a shot glass across the obsidian counter. The green liquid inside glowed faintly. Fae liquor. The kind that made you forget what you were supposed to forget.

I knocked it back.

The burn started in my throat and exploded through my chest like a wildfire, igniting every nerve ending I had. My vision sharpened. The colors in the club shifted—reds became crimson, blues turned electric, and suddenly I could hear everything. The heartbeat of the witch in the corner. The whispered bargain between two vampires by the velvet booths. The predatory breathing of the man who wouldn't stop looking at me.

"Problem?" I asked the bartender, eyeing him through the mirror behind the bar. He was tall, built like a tank, and had the kind of scarred face that came with centuries of violence.

"No problem," he said carefully. "Just... careful with that one. He's already marked you."

"Marked me?" I turned on my stool, scanning the crowd. The music seemed to pause in that moment—or maybe my heightened senses just slowed everything down. Either way, I saw him clearly.

Kieran Ashford stood near the VIP section like he owned it. Because he did. Expensive black suit tailored to perfection, silver watch that cost more than my apartment, dark hair swept back from a face that looked like God had been feeling generous. Ruthless cheekbones. Full lips curved in a smirk that promised sin.

But it was his eyes that made my breath catch.

Silver. Actual f*****g silver, rimmed with gold that seemed to glow against the club's neon haze. Those eyes were locked on me like a predator tracking wounded prey, and something deep inside me—something that had awakened only three months ago when my late aunt's blood activated my dormant werewolf genes—responded with an intensity that bordered on feral.

My wolf was awake. And she was hungry.

"Stay away from him," the bartender warned, his voice suddenly serious. "The Ashford line are apex predators. He's Alpha because he's killed for it, bled for it, and earned the right to take whatever he wants without question. And right now, he wants—"

"Me."

The word left my lips before I could stop it. But I already knew it was true. Knew it in the way my skin buzzed with electricity whenever he looked at me. Knew it in the way my wolf was clawing at my insides, desperate to run to him or run from him—I couldn't figure out which.

"Fated," the bartender confirmed grimly. "Which makes you the most dangerous thing he's ever seen. Alphas don't do fated mates anymore. Not since the pack wars. They see it as weakness."

"Then I'll be his weakness," I said, and the voice that came out wasn't mine. It was deeper, darker, rougher. It was the voice of my wolf, bleeding through.

Before I could breathe my next breath, the crowd parted. Not physically—the bodies around us didn't move. But something in the air shifted, like reality itself bent away from the predator now walking straight toward me.

Kieran's footsteps were silent. Predators don't make noise when they're hunting.

"You shouldn't be here," he said, and his voice was sin wrapped in velvet. Dark and delicious and dangerous. Up close, he was somehow more devastating. I could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the small scar above his left eyebrow, the way his eyes held a thousand violent secrets.

"Free country," I said, lifting my chin. I was tall for a woman—5'10"—but he had me by at least five inches and probably a hundred pounds of pure muscle. The smart move would be to run. To leave. To never come back to this place.

I'd never been good at smart moves.

"You're bleeding," he said, not a question.

I followed his gaze down. My hand, wrapped around the empty shot glass, was trembling slightly. And there—a small cut on my palm from where I'd unconsciously squeezed too hard. Three drops of blood, deep crimson, ran down the side of my hand.

"Accident," I said.

"There are no accidents with you." His eyes tracked the blood like it was the most hypnotic thing he'd ever seen. "You're the one. The human who's not quite human. The girl who got turned three months ago by blood inheritance and has been walking around Boston like she owns the city, leaving a trail of confusion wherever she goes."

My stomach dropped.

"The pack has been looking for you for weeks," he continued softly, reaching out. When he touched my hand—just a simple brush of his fingers—the entire club seemed to gasp. "They knew what you smelled like before you even knew what you were."

"I didn't know there was a pack," I said, hating how breathless my voice sounded. "Didn't know any of this was—"

"Real?" His fingers curled around mine, and the touch sent a bolt of lightning straight through my chest. His thumb traced the cut on my palm, and I watched, completely mesmerized, as he brought my hand to his mouth and licked the blood away.

Oh. Oh no.

The taste of my blood on his tongue shouldn't have made me feel like my skin was too small for my body. It shouldn't have made my knees weak. It shouldn't have made my wolf howl inside me, desperate and aching and needy in a way that was absolutely wrong.

"Very real," he whispered against my hand, and when he looked up at me, there was a dark promise in those silver eyes. "And you, little wolf, just made a very dangerous mistake walking into my territory without a claim."

"Claim?" I breathed.

His hand released mine and came up to cup my jaw, his thumb brushing my cheekbone with a gentleness that was somehow more frightening than violence. "That's what fated mates are for, isn't it? To claim. To own. To make sure no other predator in this city even thinks about tasting what's mine."

"I'm not—"

"Yours?" That lethal smile widened. "Not yet. But you will be. By the end of the week, you'll beg me for it."

"In your dreams, Ashford."

The moment the words left my mouth, I knew I'd made a mistake. His eyes flashed—literally flashed, the silver engulfed by deep amber as his wolf surfaced under the skin. Around us, the other supernaturals in the club went absolutely still, sensing the danger crackling through the air.

"Dreams are nice," he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "But what I'm planning for you is so much better than a dream, Seraphine."

He knew my name.

"How do you—"

"I know everything about you." His fingers slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, pulling me closer. Close enough that I could smell him—leather and smoke and something wild and untamed that made my wolf sing. "I know you live alone in a studio in Cambridge. I know you work night shifts at the hospital as a surgical nurse. I know you lost your aunt three months ago and inherited her entire estate, including a blood-locked journal that told you exactly what you are and what your bloodline was capable of."

My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.

"And I know," he continued, his lips brushing the side of my neck, "that despite what you're about to say, your wolf wants me. Can smell that? That's your scent changing. That's your body recognizing its mate."

"My body can recognize that you're insane," I managed, but the words were a lie and we both knew it. Because he was right. My scent was changing—I could smell it myself now, a subtle shift in the pheromones rolling off my skin. It smelled like want. Like surrender.

Like his.

"Three days," he said, pulling back just enough to look at me. "I'm giving you three days to come to terms with what we are. And then I'm coming for you, Seraphine. I'm coming for my mate, and I'm not stopping until you're marked with my claim, bound to my pack, and every single supernatural creature in this city knows that you belong to Kieran Ashford."

"And if I run?" I whispered.

"Then I hunt." His smile turned vicious. "And we both know how that ends for prey."

Before I could respond, before I could even process what the hell was happening, he let me go. Stepped back. Disappeared into the crowd like he'd never been there at all, leaving me alone at the bar with the taste of his threat still on my tongue and my wolf clawing at the walls of my skin, desperate and confused and absolutely ravenous.

The bartender slid another shot across the counter.

"You're going to need this," he said grimly.

I picked it up with shaking hands and threw it back.

Because he was right.

And because I'd already made my decision.

I wasn't going to run. Couldn't run, not when every cell in my body was already marked by the ghost of his touch, already singing with a bond I didn't understand and definitely didn't want.

I was going to walk directly into the jaws of the most dangerous predator Boston had ever seen, and I was going to let him devour me whole.