Second-Chance Mate:The Alpha Who Took What My Mate Threw Away

The car didn’t just pull into my shop. It crashed into it. Metal screamed against metal as the black SUV clipped the edge of the open bay door and shuddered to a stop, its front wheel mounting the concrete lip with an ugly bump. My wrench slipped from my fingers and clanged across the floor. For a second, all I heard was the low hiss of the compressor and my own heartbeat. Then I smelled blood. Not the metallic tang of scraped knuckles and careless cuts I dealt with every day, but something thicker, wilder. It rolled in under the sharp stink of overheated engine and burned rubber, made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Nyra? Silence. Of course. I wiped my hands on a rag and forced my legs to move. It was almost midnight; the “Closed” sign was already hanging, the street outside empty except for the old streetlamp flickering on the corner. No one should have been here. The driver’s door flew open before I got there. A man unfolded himself from the SUV in one smooth, controlled motion. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Dark hair matted at the temple where blood had already dried and crusted. He caught the frame when he swayed, fingers whitening on the metal, and looked straight at me. His eyes were wrong. Not the color—dark, steady, almost too calm—but the feel of them. Like standing on the edge of a drop and realizing the ground ends a step sooner than you thought. “Garage is closed,” I said, because that was safer than asking why my pulse had just doubled. “You trying to add a broken door to your list, or is the bumper enough?” His mouth twitched, almost a smile. “I’ll pay for whatever I broke. I just need the car drivable.” His voice was low, roughened by more than smoke. “And I need it now.” The wild scent thickened as he took a step toward me. It wasn’t just blood. It was forest and cold and something that scraped across old scars inside my chest. No. No, no, no. “Sit,” I snapped, jerking my chin toward the beat-up plastic chair by the wall. If I focused on the job, everything else could stay buried. “You’re bleeding on my floor.” He glanced down at the smear on the concrete, then back at me. Instead of arguing, he limped over and lowered himself into the chair like the king of patience, rolling his shoulder once, testing something only he could feel. “I’m fine,” he said. “Sure,” I muttered. “Head wounds always gush like that for fun.” I popped the hood and followed the familiar routine: eyes on the engine, hands on metal, brain narrowing to bolts and belts and cracked plastic. The damage wasn’t pretty, but it was fixable. Radiator intact, frame mostly straight. Whoever he was, he’d gotten lucky. He watched me. I could feel it. A steady weight between my shoulder blades. “Rough night?” he asked after a minute. “Depends who you ask,” I said. “The door would probably say yes.” He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. The sound curled under my skin in a way that made me want to step farther away. The scent kept dragging at me. Under the blood, under the engine oil, under the faint cologne there was…pack. Pine needles after rain. Cold river. Moonlight on fur. My vision blurred for a second. The wrench slipped in my fingers. Not here. Not now. Nyra pushed against the edges of my mind, a slow, aching scrape like claws against stone. …Maia. The whisper was so faint I almost missed it. My heart lurched. For eight years she’d been nothing but a distant ache and a few bad dreams. Now, with this stranger bleeding in my shop, she sounded closer than my own breath. I gripped the edge of the engine block until my knuckles went white. “Hey.” His voice was closer. I hadn’t heard him get up. A large, warm hand hovered near my elbow, not quite touching. “You okay?” I jerked back, wrench clanging against metal. Too close. Too much. The scent roared in my head, dragging up images I’d spent nearly a decade shoving down—trees, teeth, a circle of faces turning away. “I’m fine,” I said too sharply. “Don’t sneak up on people. It’s bad manners.” His brows lifted slightly. Up close, the wrongness in his eyes was clearer: not human-wrong, but too focused, too sharp. Predatory. “I didn’t sneak,” he said softly. “You just didn’t hear me.” Because Nyra was screaming in my skull. I swallowed hard. “Radiator’s okay. Front suspension’s pissed, but I can get you moving. You’re not driving far tonight, though.” “How long?” he asked. “Couple of hours, if nothing else decides to fall off.” I turned away, reaching for the jack. “You can wait in the office. There’s a couch that only smells a little like old coffee and despair.” “Here is fine.” He leaned against the workbench instead, folding his arms. “I like to see what people do with things I care about.” The way he said it sent another shiver down my spine. I shoved the jack under the frame and started to crank. Headlights swept across the bay door. I froze. No one drove this street at this hour unless they were lost or looking for trouble. The SUV already in my shop was proof of the second. A second set of lights joined the first. Two cars. Engines idled outside, low and expensive-sounding. The man’s head snapped toward the open bay, every muscle going tight. The lazy, almost-amused air around him vanished like it had never been. “Expecting company?” I asked, my voice thinner than I liked. He shook his head once, jaw clenched. “No.” The wild scent in the air sharpened to a knife edge. Nyra’s voice, clear and terrified, tore through my mind. Wolves.