Prologue
Lilith
“An Omega carrying a Lycan Alpha’s child is dangerous, child. The pup’s aura is too demanding.”
The old healer’s weathered hands hovered over my stomach.
“Where is the father?”
Theo.
My king.
My executioner
The man who tore his own mating mark from my neck with his bare hands before sentencing me to die.
I barely escaped.
For three months I had lived as a human.
I wanted to stay invisible.
But he found me.
Every nerve in my body recognized him before the door even opened.
I froze behind the counter. The peaceful life I had built crumbled in a single breath.
He wanted me dead.
A part of me had already died that day on the hunting grounds.
I had tried to forget his touch. His voice. The way he used to say my name like it belonged only to him.
But how could I forget when I carried the proof of what we once were?
My hand drifted to the gentle curve beneath my dress.
His child.
---
Theo
Her scent reached me before I saw her.
Soft jasmine, almost drowned by human smoke.
I had been hunted that scent every night. Every morning. Every hour I was awake.
Lilith. My ultimate weakness.
The name tasted like poison.
She had been the woman I loved more than my own life. My mate. The one I trusted with every secret I possessed.
The one who destroyed my family.
By every law of the kingdom I should have despised the ground she walked on.
Yet when I looked at her trembling behind that counter, I couldn’t.
If she had died during the hunt, the agony in my chest might have died with her.
The bond that should have been gone pulled sharp and unwanted. I hated that it still answered to her. Hated that some buried part of me still called her mine.
Then my gaze dropped.
Everything inside me stopped.
Her hands rested protectively over the swell of her stomach.
Mine.
The possessive growl ripped from my chest before I could stop it.
