Chapter 1

YARA

I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that something was wrong.

Autumn leaves crunched under my shoes as I made my way back to the cabin… the same cabin I’d heard terror filled screams coming from. I could no longer control my hands – they were shaking in an odd trembling rhythm – and my heart thumped wildly as I desperately hoped that my parents were okay.

When I was finally close enough to the cabin, I noticed that the front door was wide open and my heart beat even faster because my parents hated leaving the front door open but before I could walk around my dad’s car which was parked in the driveway, movement in the doorway caught my attention. I instantly stepped back, using the car to shield myself, and the moment I peeked around it to see who was coming out of the house, my heart froze.

There was a wolf in the doorway. A huge gray one.

Oh my God.

A loud chime suddenly filled the air while something buzzed in my pocket and my eyes snapped open. Huh? The first thing I saw were lockers and a dressing table and I blinked twice in confusion before remembering that I was at work. I was done with my shift and in the staff changing room.

“Right,” I muttered hoarsely, quickly pushing the dream I just had to the back of my mind because I really wasn’t interested in thinking about what happened that day right now. My phone buzzed again and I sat up on the bench, still feeling a little bit disoriented, before pulling it out of my pocket.

Aunt A: Are you on your way back? Could you grab some milk from the store?

Aunt A: Where are you?

Aunt A: What the fuck Yara?!!!!

Along with several other messages, there were also several missed calls from her and my eyes widened when I saw that the time was 12:35AM. “Shit.” I got to my feet and quickly gathered my things before rushing out of the changing room.

The people I worked the afternoon shift with had already left and I didn’t want to leave the hotel through the ‘Employees Only’ door alone because it led to an passageway – there weren’t enough words to describe how much I despised passageways – but my supervisor would throw a fit if I used the main entrance so I just had to suck it up.

“Shit,” I muttered again before stepping into the passageway and I only shut the door behind me when I was sure that I was the only one in it. I then began to walk down the passageway as fast as I could while glancing over my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t being followed because people – supernatural folks and humans – had been turning up dead lately and I sure as hell didn’t want to become a statistic.

My phone buzzed as I neared the passageway’s end and I glanced at it to see another message from my obviously angry Aunt, Allison, before lifting my eyes back up to see a man walking into the passageway.

Crap. I came to a stop as I watched him groan while swaying sideways before choosing to lean against the wall. He hadn’t seen me though and when he still didn’t look up from the ground after a couple of seconds, I swallowed my nerves and resumed walking. Maybe he just wants to pass through and will ignore me.

That thought flew out of my mind the moment I heard him growl and my entire body jerked to a stand still immediately before he lifted his head. His eyes were glowing.

Alarm bells began to go off in my head and my heart rate picked up as I slowly took a step back. Calm down, Yara. Calm down. Maybe he still just wants to pass through and will ignore you. That hope dwindled by the second as he still kept his eyes on me and when he fell to his knees, his clothes ripping as he began to shift, I knew I had to get out of here.

I whirled around and began to run down the passageway while he growled again. I’d already dealt with shit this week and I wasn’t in the mood for more but he definitely did not get the memo because he didn’t hesitate to chase after me. I kept my eyes fixed on the ‘Employees Only’ door, hoping I would be able to get back into the hotel before he caught up with me, but I wasn’t fast enough.

“Ah!” I cried out as something hard knocked me sideways from behind and when I hit the wall, pain shot through my body. Shit.

My heart throbbed in my ears, loud and irregular, after I hit the ground and the wolf took what I assumed was an aggressive stance, baring its sharp teeth at me, before it lunged at me. I immediately kicked my foot out, hitting it square in the face, and it stumbled to the side with a whimper while I scrambled to my feet.

I was not going to die here.

I resumed running towards the door and just as I remembered I needed my employee card to open it, the wolf caught up with me again. It yanked me backward, its teeth tearing through my flesh, and I let out an ear-splitting scream while falling to the ground before it tossed me down the passageway like I was a rag doll.

Oh my God… Oh my God… My heart hammered a million miles an hour in my chest as the wolf growled somewhere behind me and I realized I was crying when the edge of my vision became blurry with tears.

Okay… It looked like I was going to die here.

Why the hell was he even attacking me? Was he drunk? Was he under a spell?

I rolled onto my back and glanced to my right to see the wolf slowly advancing toward me again. “Get away from me, you rabid dog!”

I managed to get back to my feet despite my aching body protesting against any kind of movement but I couldn’t run. I could try to but it would be more of a limping run and that would probably only make my injured, bleeding leg worse. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to make it anywhere before the wolf attacked me again.

There was only one thing left to do if I wanted to make it out of here alive and though I didn’t want to, I didn’t exactly have a choice. I swallowed.

The wolf began to run towards me while I pulled on the sparks building up under my skin as fast as I could and just before it got close enough for me to send a massive jolt through it, someone rushed past me at an unnatural speed, knocking the wolf to the side. Who– The newcomer glanced at me with glowing eyes and surprise written all over his face, and I gritted my teeth at the fact that he was also a werewolf before recognizing him as Aiden Hendrix, the CEO of the hotel whose passageway we were currently standing in.

What the fuck?!

The wolf snarled, drawing his attention, and as he moved towards it, it turned and bolted down the passageway.

“Shit,” he muttered while I let the energy I had built up under my skin disperse before he turned to face me. He drew his brows together slightly. “… You’re not a werewolf.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

He tipped his head to the side as regarded me curiously, most likely wondering how I knew about their kind since I wasn’t one. I actually was a werewolf… well to be more exact, I was a werewolf-witch hybrid with my werewolf side being latent but I wasn’t interested in telling him that.

I glanced at my bleeding leg and a wave of nausea hit me when I saw the blood that had pooled at my feet. “Shit.”

I needed to do something to staunch the bleeding and find my phone which I had lost while running so I could call my aunt for help. She’d give me hell for what happened and most likely never let me out of her sight again but I couldn’t bring myself to worry about that now.

I dropped my gaze to the ground to search for my phone and as the man a couple of feet away from me began to speak, I was suddenly hit by a dizzy spell that had me leaning to the side to balance myself against something. Except there was nothing there and next thing I knew, I was heading for the ground in a free fall.

Crap.

I shut my eyes, bracing myself, but instead of feeling my body hit the floor, I felt arms wrapping around me and pulling me flush against a solid body. My eyes immediately snapped open and as I blinked repeatedly at the man who had been several feet away from me a moment ago, I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was.

His features were even, masculine, and a strong chin and jaw shadowed with dark stubble complemented the chiseled planes. His thick dark hair was in unkempt waves, giving him a just-fucked look, and he had molasses-dark eyes with luscious, kissable lips that were currently moving as he spoke to me but I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

What… My knees weakened and my vision blurred once more just before I felt something apart from the pain singing in my left leg.

I felt a pull.

The kind my father had told me about when he was alive and based on what I remembered from what he said, it only meant one thing.

Mate.

Oh, hell no! And then the world went dark.