I shook my head violently, trying to drive away the thoughts. I didn’t have time to be circling that emotional drain. I needed to figure out what the hell to do.

More than likely, they’d come to collect me for an audience with the Alpha. He determined the fate of wrongdoers in his pack. And it wasn’t like I would have stood a better chance with a jury of my peers. The shifters were loyal, almost blindingly so. They’d caught me with the body and thought I was an outsider.

They’d want blood for that.

I shivered and rubbed my arms.

The idea of facing down Lachlan made me almost sick inside. What if he recognized me?

I couldn’t bear it.

My last memory of him was from when he’d learned that I was meant to be his fated mate.

I’m not mating her. She’s a mutt.

The words still burned. I couldn’t shift, and I’d been an ugly duckling. Combined with the seer’s prophecy that being his mate would end in my death, his scorn had been the one-two punch that had sent me running.

With my mom recently dead, there was nothing left for me in Guild City. No way was I going to stay and get kicked around by Lachlan or face the mysterious and horrible prophecy laid down by the seer who was never wrong.

Fortunately, my mom had kept some spare cash lying around, and she’d had nice jewelry. As much as I’d hated selling it, the nest egg had built me a little life in London. Not a great one, but a free one. Her friend, a potion master named Liora, had put me up for a while, teaching me everything I needed to know to create a life for myself and hide what I was. It had been an incredible gift, actually, since Liora knew how to fake being a fae. It was magic that should have been impossible, but I’d learned it and used it to make the potion that anointed my necklace.

I’d returned to Guild City when I was twenty, after I’d learned enough about potions to use them to conceal myself. The fact that I was no longer an ugly duckling helped.

When I’d first left, I’d planned to stay in London, but I’d missed Guild City too badly to stay away. But now I was stuck here.

Heart pounding, I stared at the door.

What the hell was I going to do?

3

Eve

 

Sometime later, the door swung open. It jarred me from an uneasy sleep against the wall, and I leapt to my feet.

A stocky guard stood at the entrance, glowering. “He’ll see you now.”

Cold rushed over me.

Shit.

The guard strode forward, reaching out to grab my arm. His grip made my skin crawl, and he tugged me toward him.

I yanked myself free. “I can walk.”

He growled, and I got a hit of his magic—the scent of grass and the sound of birds screeching. Each supernatural had a magical signature that corresponded to one or more of the five senses, and the strongest had all five. For shifters, their signatures didn’t necessarily correspond to their animal side, but I’d bet money this guy was some kind of bird of prey. But he only had two signatures, so he was of moderate strength.

I could probably take him.

A sound in the hall caught my attention, and I looked around him. Four more guards.

Double shit.

“Don’t even think of trying anything,” he said.

Yeah, I wasn’t an idiot.

“Looks like I’m going to meet the Alpha,” I said.

“I know.” The guard frowned.

“I wasn’t talking to you.” I strode forward and stepped around him. I didn’t like my fate, but I wasn’t going to cower.

As the guards escorted me up the wide stone stairs, fear iced me to my bones. Years of hiding had made me exceptionally wary, and my self-preservation instincts were in overdrive.

What if he recognized me?

Surreptitiously, I touched my pointed ears. He’d buy it. As far as he knew, it was impossible to fake your species. And anyway, I looked so different now.

All the same, terror followed me every step of the way.

As we climbed to the main level, I caught the sounds of conversation and music. Shifters loved to party. Normally, I loved a good party. Now? It was just more of an unwanted audience.

Stepping into to the main room, I straightened my shoulders and stiffened my spine. No way I was going to let them see how scared I was.

“Go on.” The guard nudged me, and I walked forward.

The room I’d passed through earlier looked entirely different now, full of people and food and a band in the corner—it really was a party. It seemed like it’d been going for hours, with cups and plates everywhere.

Homesickness pierced me.

Sure, I still lived in Guild City, and I would never leave. But this part of it—the shifters’ domain—had been my first home, and I missed it.

Anger heated my blood, giving me strength.

Good thing, too, because I caught sight of Lachlan then.

I’d seen him a few times on the street and ducked my head, but this was entirely different. He sat in the massive wooden chair by the fire, relaxed yet deadly. His massive form was draped gracefully, arms over the armrests and one ankle propped on a knee. He looked like the king he was—a warrior king. Sweaty and bruised from battle, he was a beauty, though a brutal one. The golden firelight flickered over his dark hair, making his green eyes look like shadowed emeralds as he studied me.

There was an eerie stillness about him, the kind that marked true predators. As the Alpha Wolf, he was the truest predator of them all. This post wasn’t his by gift of his father—he’d earned it.

I swallowed hard and strode up to him, stopping ten feet from the chair. Throne, more like.

Even from this distance, his magical signatures hit me in the face. The scent of evergreen, the sound of a low growl, the taste of whiskey, and the feeling of a strong embrace. Protective. Or destructive, depending.

He was a man of contrasts, particularly his aura. Only the strongest supernaturals had auras, and his was wild. He was a core of fire surrounded by ice. Tightly leashed power, yet something inside him desperately wanted to be let free.

His wolf?

There was something…broken about him. But it also seemed like he’d welded himself back together, made himself stronger, somehow. Fucked up, but stronger.

My gaze finally met his, and a connection zipped between us, a zing of energy that crossed the air. Almost like my soul recognized him, and it scared the shit out of me.

He arched a dark brow. “Looked your fill?”

Like many of the shifters in this pack, his accent was Scottish. Our ancestral grounds were there, and he’d spent a lot of time in the Highlands as a child. I fought back a blush. “Not much to look at.”

The words had been waiting a decade to come out, and damn, did they feel good.

The fact that they were a lie was beside the point.

The corner of his mouth twitched slightly, almost like he would smile. I found myself riveted by his mouth, far more interested than I should be.

He frowned, instead, then surged to his feet.

He was utterly massive, like a redwood built of muscle. The T-shirt that stretched across his shoulders was threadbare, as if it fought every day of its dumb life to hang on to him. If he hadn’t been such a bastard to me all those years ago, I might have wanted to hang on to him, too.

As it was, he’d been horrid, and I hated him.