Chapter 2 HER SCENT

Mia didn’t sleep. She googled “Alessandro De Luca mate wolf” at 1:17AM and got conspiracy blogs, three Reddit threads marked, and one PDF of a lawsuit that was settled out of court after the plaintiff disappeared from his apartment and from Google.[deleted]

At 3AM she threw up in the café bathroom sink. At 6AM she went to work anyway, because rent was still due in three days and delusion didn’t pay ConEd. She covered the dark circles with concealer Rosa kept in the back and pretended her hands weren’t shaking when she steamed milk.

At 9:17AM, a black SUV parked outside the café.

Two men in suits came in. They didn’t order. They didn’t look at the menu. They sat at the corner table with a line of sight to the register, to the back door, to her. One had a scar through his eyebrow. The other had knuckles that looked like they’d met teeth before.

Rosa noticed. She wiped the same spot on the counter for ten seconds too long. “Mia, honey, who are those guys?”

“Collectors,” Mia muttered, pulling a double shot that tasted like metal.

For her soul, apparently.

At noon she got a text. Not from A. From an unknown number with a 917 area code.

You’re being watched because Ivan blew up my nightclub last night. You’re not safe. Come to the penthouse.

Her thumb hovered over the screen. She typed back: Who is this?

The man you’re going to marry. Unless you’d rather explain to Ivan why you smell like me.

She deleted the thread. Then deleted the folder. Then wanted to throw her phone in the deep fryer.

At 3PM the SUV was still there. At 6PM, when she locked up, they followed her to the 7 train. They didn’t hide it. They didn’t need to.

She didn’t go home. She walked into the biggest crowd she could find. Times Square, all lights and noise and tourists taking pictures of ads for shows she couldn’t afford, and called the only person who might believe her without having her committed.

Dr. Patel, her therapist, picked up on the third ring. “Mia? Is this about the intrusive thoughts?”

“Werewolves,” Mia said. The word felt stupid in her mouth. 

“Are they real?”

There was a pause. A long one. “Werewolves aren’t real, Mia,” Dr. Patel said gently, the same voice she used for your father isn’t coming back.

“This sounds like a stress-induced psychotic break. Have you been taking your medication?”

Mia hung up. Because the men in suits were still behind her, reflected in the glass of a TKTS booth. And because, for half a second when Alessandro had said mate in that office, every nerve in her body had said yes, like it recognized him.

Her phone rang. Unknown number.

“You’re making this hard,” his voice said. No hello. No preamble. Just that voice that made her spine go straight and liquid at the same time. “Ivan has men at your apartment. If you go home, you die. If you stay there, you die when the crowd thins.”

“How do you—”

“I own the city, Mia. I told you that.” A pause. She heard ice in a glass on his end. “There’s a car at 42nd and 7th. Black Maybach. My driver won’t touch you. Get in, or I come get you myself. And if I come get you, people see me, and people who see me in public tend to disappear.”

“Why do you care if I die?” The question ripped out of her before she could stop it.

The line went dead quiet. When he spoke, his voice was rougher, scraped raw. “Because I haven’t slept in five years. Because the second you walked into my office, my wolf stopped trying to claw out of my skin. Because you’re mine, and I don’t share. Not air. Not space. Not you.”

Her legs were moving before she decided. 42nd and 7th. Black Maybach, engine running, windows tinted to black. The driver opened the door. He didn’t look at her. Didn’t speak. He smelled like gun oil and loyalty.

They drove in silence. Up through the city until they were at a building with no name, no numbers, just a single steel door and a thumbprint scanner that glowed blue. Private elevator. No buttons.

Floor 100. Penthouse.

The doors opened to space and light and windows that showed all of Manhattan bleeding out below, gold and red and alive. And him.

Alessandro was in shirtsleeves now, tie gone, top two buttons undone, exposing a line of throat and collarbone that looked like it had been carved. He looked worse than he had that morning — tired, jaw tight, like he was holding himself together with wire and will.

“You came,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“You didn’t give me a choice.”

“I gave you two. You picked the one where you live.” He crossed to a bar made of glass and black stone, poured two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal tumbler. He didn’t offer her one. He drank it in one swallow. “Ivan De Luca is my uncle. He wants my title. He thinks I’m weak because I’m a hybrid. He’ll use you to prove it.”

“By killing me?”

“By taking you.” Gold eyes dragged over her, slow, cataloguing. “By putting his bite on your neck so the pack has to follow him. So the Council sees me as an Alpha who can’t keep his mate.”

The word bite did something to her stomach. She thought of dogs. Of claiming. Of the nightmares where teeth sank into her throat and she woke up gasping, throat raw from screaming silently.

“I’m not a wolf,” she said. But it sounded like a lie now. It sounded like something she was trying to convince herself of.

“Aren’t you?” He was in front of her again. That speed. One blink and he’d crossed twenty feet. “Your heart rate spikes when I’m close. Your pupils dilate. You can’t smell it yet, but I can. Vanilla and storm. It’s been in my head for five years. It’s in my clothes. In my bed. In my fucking lungs.”

He lifted his hand. She stepped back, hit the window. The glass was cold against her spine. The city was a million miles down.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. And it sounded like it cost him, like the words were dragged out of him. “But you need to understand. My wolf thinks you’re ours. And I’ve been keeping him caged for half a decade. He’s not sane anymore. He’s not rational. He wants.”

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t.” His forehead dropped to the glass beside her head. Defeated. Or hunting. His breath fogged the window. “If you leave, Ivan takes you. If Ivan takes you, I go feral and level the city looking for you. People die. You die. So you stay here. Where I can smell you. Where my wolf knows you’re safe. Where I know you’re breathing.”

“This is kidnapping.”

“This is survival.” He pushed off the glass. Put space between them that felt like miles and inches at once. “Guest room is down the hall. Lock the door. I won’t come in. I won’t touch you. I won’t even look at you if you don’t want me to.”

He walked away. Shoulders like iron, like he carried the weight of the building on them. At the hallway he stopped.

“Mia.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

“You asked why I want to marry you.” His voice was low, stripped of everything but truth. “It’s not just the debt. It’s not just the mate bond.”

“Then what?”

He didn’t turn around. “Because if I don’t put my ring on your finger and my bite on your neck, the Council will give you to someone else. And I will kill every alpha in this city before I let that happen. I will burn the world down and rule the ashes before I let another man smell you.”

He disappeared down the hall.

She stood there, shaking, with all of New York at her feet. And she realized she believed him. Not the wolf part. Not the mate part. But the part where he would burn the world. That, she believed.

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.

A photo. Her apartment door, kicked in, wood splintered. Blood on the floor. Not a lot. But enough.

Text under it: You’re welcome. – A

Then another text. Different number. Same area code.

Pretty little wolf. You can’t hide in his tower forever. -I