Chapter One: Coffee, Chaos and the Alpha
The first time I met Marcus Blackthorne, I ruined his shirt.
In my defence, the shirt was white, the coffee was hot, and the man was standing in the middle of a busy café doorway as if the entire world had been built around him.
I was late for work.
Again.
My boss had already threatened to replace me twice that month, my rent was due in four days, and the universe appeared to have decided that what I really needed was a six-foot-something wall of muscle blocking my way to caffeine.
“Move,” I muttered.
He didn’t.
I looked up.
That was my first mistake.
The man was gorgeous.
Not handsome in the ordinary, harmless way of a guy who smiled at you on the bus. No. This man looked like the sort of trouble your mother warned you about and your common sense begged you to avoid.
Dark hair. A sharp jaw. Tan skin. Broad shoulders beneath a fitted black shirt. His eyes were an unusual shade of amber-brown, and his expression suggested that patience was a virtue he had never felt the need to acquire.
He looked down at me.
I looked up at him.
“Excuse me,” I said, with considerably less confidence than I’d intended.
Nothing.
I tried to step around him.
He shifted in the same direction.
I went left.
He went left.
My temper snapped.
“Are you serious?”
One dark eyebrow lifted.
“Usually.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but someone behind me bumped my shoulder.
My coffee flew.
Straight across his chest.
Silence fell over the little café.
I stared at the brown stain spreading across his immaculate shirt.
He stared at me.
“Oh,” I whispered.
His gaze rose slowly to mine.
“That’s one word for it.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Would you prefer that I throw myself at your feet and beg forgiveness?”
His mouth twitched.
It was barely a smile, but somehow it made him even more dangerous.
“That would be a memorable start to my morning.”
I hated him instantly.
Possibly because he was attractive.
Possibly because he knew it.
Mostly because I was now going to be late for work and probably unemployed.
I grabbed a handful of napkins from the counter and pressed them against his shirt.
“Here. Let me fix it.”
The second my fingers touched his chest, something inside me broke open.
Not physically.
Not exactly.
It felt as though a door had slammed wide inside my skull.
Heat rushed through my body. My heartbeat stumbled. The noise of the café faded until all I could hear was a low, thunderous pulse.
His pulse.
I jerked my hand away.
The man’s expression changed.
Every trace of amusement vanished.
His shoulders went rigid. His nostrils flared, and the amber in his eyes seemed to catch fire.
For one impossible second, I thought his pupils had narrowed into slits.
Then he took a sharp breath.
“No.”
The word came out so quietly I almost missed it.
I swallowed.
“No what?”
He stared at me as if I’d just risen from the dead.
“What’s your name?”
“That’s a strange way to apologise for making someone spill coffee.”
“Your name.”
Something in his voice made the hairs on my arms stand up.
I lifted my chin.
“Lily.”
“Lily what?”
“Do you always interrogate women you’ve just met?”
“Only the ones who smell like you.”
I blinked.
“I’m sorry?”
He stepped closer.
I should have stepped back.
I didn’t.
There was something about him that made the air feel charged, as though a storm had gathered inside the café and decided to take human form.
He smelled like cedarwood, rain, and something dark I couldn’t quite identify.
Something that made my stomach tighten.
His gaze moved over my face, searching for an answer I didn’t have.
“Who are your parents, Lily?”
My humour evaporated.
“My parents are dead.”
For the first time, he looked genuinely shaken.
It lasted only a heartbeat, but I saw it.
“Both of them?”
“Is there a reason you’re asking?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he turned his head slightly.
A man standing near the window straightened immediately. Another, seated by the counter, rose to his feet.
I hadn’t noticed either of them before.
They were both watching me.
Not casually.
Not with curiosity.
With something dangerously close to fear.
The man in front of me noticed my attention.
“Outside,” he ordered.
I folded my arms.
“Excuse me?”
“Come outside with me.”
“Absolutely not.”
His eyes flashed.
For the second time that morning, I thought I’d imagined it.
A flicker of gold.
Bright, unnatural gold.
My breath caught.
He noticed.
Of course he noticed.
Something changed in his face. His expression grew harder, but beneath it I saw something else.
Wonder.
And fear.
“Tell me something, Lily,” he said softly. “Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with you?”
I laughed, because the alternative was admitting that his question had landed far too close to home.
“Constantly. I work two jobs, I can’t afford decent groceries, and apparently I have a gift for destroying expensive clothing.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Have you ever heard things other people couldn’t hear? Smelled things before anyone else noticed them? Felt angry enough that you thought you might lose control of your own body?”
My smile faded.
Because the answer was yes.
All of it.
I’d heard footsteps through walls. Smelled rain hours before clouds appeared. And sometimes, when fear or anger swallowed me whole, the world became painfully sharp and bright.
I’d always blamed exhaustion.
I’d never told anyone.
“How do you know that?” I whispered.
Marcus went completely still.
Then he said something that made my blood turn cold.
“Because you’re not human.”
I stared at him.
Then I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because surely, surely, the alternative was that the handsome stranger covered in my coffee had finally lost his mind.
“Right. Of course. And I’m the queen of England.”
He didn’t smile.
“Lily.”
“No. Absolutely not. I’m not doing this.”
I turned towards the door.
He caught my wrist.
The instant his skin touched mine, the world exploded.
A howl tore through my mind.
Not from the café.
From somewhere deep inside me.
Something huge and wild surged against the walls of my consciousness, furious at being confined for so long.
My knees buckled.
Marcus caught me before I hit the floor.
His arm locked around my waist, holding me against his chest.
His eyes were no longer brown.
They were gold.
Brilliant, blazing gold.
And when he spoke, his voice carried a strange double edge, as if something much older were speaking through him.
“Mate.”
The word seemed to shake the air.
Every person in the café dropped their gaze.
One of the men by the window sank to one knee.
I stared at them, trembling.
“What is happening to me?”
Marcus looked down at me.
For the first time since we’d met, the arrogant Alpha looked utterly lost.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
A terrible answer.
Because the man who apparently wasn’t human, who commanded strangers with a single word, who looked at me as if I’d just rewritten every law he understood, was supposed to know everything.
His hand tightened protectively at my waist.
Then he looked towards the café windows.
His entire body went rigid.
“What is it?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer me.
He was staring across the street.
At a black car parked beneath a jacaranda tree.
The rear window lowered.
A woman sat inside.
Even from this distance, I could see her face had gone deathly pale.
She was staring straight at me.
And she was crying.
Marcus swore under his breath.
“Get her out of here,” he ordered.
One of his men moved towards us.
I twisted out of Marcus’s arms.
“Nobody is taking me anywhere!”
His gaze snapped back to mine.
“Lily, listen to me very carefully. Whatever happens next, you must stay close to me.”
“Why?”
He hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than anything else he’d said.
Then the woman in the car mouthed two words through the glass.
I couldn’t hear her.
But I could read her lips.
She’s awake.
Marcus saw it too.
The colour drained from his face.
And somewhere beneath my ribs, something answered with a growl.
End of Chapter One
