Chapter 1
The whiskey tastes like rust and regret.
Nick turns the glass in his hand as he watches the amber liquid catch the dim overhead light—one of three bulbs still working in the bar’s fixtures. The corner table suits him. His back to the wall with clear sightlines to both exits. He is close enough to the bar for another drink but far enough that the bartender won’t try conversation.
His leather jacket creaks when he shifts. Worn soft in places, cracked in others. The fabric smells like the road—gas stations and cheap motels and the particular staleness of sleeping in his truck too many nights to count. Beneath it, his shoulders are tense, muscles coiled tight even though he’s been sitting here for twenty minutes. Old habits. Beta training that won’t leave him even now, even after everything.
The bar is nearly empty. Two men sit at a table near the back, bent over their beers and arguing in low voices about a football game. A woman at the bar itself, her back curved, nursing something clear in a glass. The bartender moves through his routine with the mechanical precision of someone who stopped caring years ago—wipe, stack, wipe, stack. The hum of the air conditioning unit fights a losing battle against the humid air that presses in every time someone opens the door.
Nick’s fingers drum against the scarred wood of the table. Once. Twice. He forces them still.
His knuckles are a roadmap of violence—white scar tissue across the second and third knuckles of his right hand where he broke them on someone’s jaw, a jagged line across his left where a silver blade opened the skin to bone. He stopped wearing rings after the exile. Nothing to identify him, nothing to mark him as anything other than what he is now.
A rogue.
The word tastes worse than the whiskey.
Across the room, one of the arguing men pulls out a pack of cigarettes. The rasp of the lighter. The brief flare of flame. The cherry-red ember blooming in the darkness.
Megan’s face, beautiful and twisted with something that might have been love or might have been madness—he never figured out which. The smell of smoke and burnt flesh. Caleb’s blood on the ground.
Nick’s hand clenches around the glass hard enough that he hears it creak. The flashback lasts maybe a minute. Maybe less. But his heart hammers and there’s sweat on his upper lip and the whiskey in his glass ripples from the tremor in his hand.
He breathes. In through his nose, out through his mouth. A technique Elizabeth taught them all, back when she was still alive and the pack was still home. Count to four. Hold. Release.
The cigarette smoke drifts toward him. He lifts the glass and drinks, lets the burn of cheap liquor ground him back in his body. The alcohol does nothing to a werewolf metabolism except provide the ritual of drinking, the familiar weight of a glass in hand, the excuse to sit in dark places and wait.
The woman at the bar stands abruptly, her stool scraping against linoleum. She weaves slightly as she walks to the bathroom, and the bartender watches her go with the flat expression of someone calculating whether she’ll make it or if he’ll be cleaning vomit later.
Nick’s eyes track her movement without thought. Assess, evaluate, dismiss. Not a threat. Not his problem.
When he reaches for his glass again, his jacket pulls tight across his shoulders and he feels it—the ridge of scar tissue that starts at his collarbone and traces down across his ribs in three parallel lines. Claw marks. Megan’s claws, to be specific. She had dipped her claws in silver when she did it, and the wounds took weeks to heal instead of hours. Even now, years later, the scars ache in the cold.
He has others. Worse ones. The burn marks on his wrists from silver chains. The place on his back where she carved her name with a silver knife, making sure he’d carry a reminder of her forever. That one got infected. He nearly died from it, chained in that basement while she brought Caleb there too, while she—
The bartender drops a glass.
The sound of shattering crystal explodes through the quiet bar, sharp and bright and wrong.
The basement door crashing open. Megan dragging Caleb down the stairs, the Alpha unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. Her voice, sweet as poison: “Look what I brought you, Nick. Thought you might be lonely.” The sound of chains. Caleb’s weight hitting the floor across from him. The Alpha’s eyes opening, focusing, the moment he understands what his former Beta has done.
“You helped her.”
“No, I—”
The first blow. Then the second. Megan laughing while Caleb beats him, the Alpha’s fists breaking bones, the betrayal in his eyes worse than the physical pain, and Nick unable to explain because she did something to him, some kind of magic or compulsion or maybe just the mate bond making him weak when he should have been strong.
Nick is on his feet before he consciously decides to move, his chair scraping back, his hand going to his hip where he used to carry a knife before he learned that weapons draw attention he can’t afford.
The bartender stares at him. So do the two men at the back table.
“Sorry.” The bartender’s voice comes out carefully neutral. “Slipped.”
Nick forces himself to sit back down and his heart rate to slow. The bartender is already sweeping up the glass, depositing the shards in a bin under the bar, pulling out a new glass to replace it. Nothing to see here. Just a jumpy patron in a dive bar.
Just a broken wolf who can’t handle the sound of breaking glass without seeing his mate—ex-mate, she was never his mate, the bond was a lie—torturing him and trying to mate and mark another wolf infront of him.
He presses his thumb against the scar tissue on his wrist, digs in until it hurts. The pain helps. Makes the present more real than the past.
The humid air settles back over the room like a blanket. Someone tracked in the smell of rain earlier, but it hasn’t started yet. Just the threat of it, heavy and waiting. The distant conversations resume—the football argument, the bartender saying something to the woman as she emerges from the bathroom, the tick of the ancient clock on the wall that’s stuck at 7:43.
Nick’s glass is empty. He should probably slow down, keep his head clear for the meeting. But his hands need something to do, and the ritual of drinking gives him a reason to sit here in this dim corner where the broken overhead lights create more shadow than illumination.
He’s raising his hand to signal for another when the door opens.
The sound hits him like a physical blow—the door slamming back against its frame in the wind.
Caleb hitting the ground, his body crumpling like a puppet. The crack of his skull against stone echoes in the basement. He goes limp instantly, completely unconscious, head lolling to the side. And Megan stands over him, breathing hard, her eyes wide and hungry and wrong. She licks her lips. Drops to her knees beside his unconscious form. Runs her fingers through his hair with a tenderness that makes Nick’s stomach turn, her smile soft and possessive and utterly deranged as she whispers something Nick can’t hear but knows he never wants to.
Nick’s vision swims. His breathing comes too fast, too shallow. The door is just a door. The man walking through it is just a man—expensive suit, nervous eyes, nothing to do with Megan or Caleb or the past that won’t stay buried.
But his body doesn’t believe it. His body is ready to fight or run, adrenaline singing through his veins, every nerve ending alive with the certainty of danger.
He grips the edge of the table. Counts his breaths. Forces himself to stay in the chair even though every instinct screams at him to move.
This is his life now. Flashbacks in dive bars. Jobs that require him to sit still and wait for nervous men with manila envelopes full of other people’s problems. The kind of work that doesn’t ask questions about pack affiliations or why a wolf his age travels alone.
The man in the expensive suit scans the room.
Nick meets his eyes and sees the recognition, the fear. Good. Fear is useful. Fear means the man won’t waste his time with small talk.
He gestures to the empty chair across from him with two fingers. An invitation. An order.
The man starts walking toward him, and Nick pushes the past back down where it belongs. Locks it away. Focuses on the present, on the job, on the simple transaction that will put money in his pocket and gas in his truck and keep him moving.
He reaches for his empty glass and finds it steady in his hand. Small victories. The man is almost to the table now, and Nick arranges his face into something cold and professional and entirely present.
The past can wait.
The man slides into the chair without being told twice. Up close, he smells like money—expensive cologne and starch-pressed cotton and the particular anxiety of someone used to control finding themselves without it. Sweat beads at his hairline despite the bar’s struggling air conditioning. His hands tremble slightly as he places a manila envelope on the scarred table between them.
Nick says nothing. Just watches him with the flat patience of a predator waiting for prey to finish twitching.
The suit is charcoal gray, tailored to fit shoulders that have probably never seen real labor. A Rolex catches the dim light when the man adjusts his cuffs. The cologne is something woody and expensive, cutting through the bar’s ambient smell of stale beer and old cigarettes and floor cleaner. It makes Nick’s nose itch. Everything about the man screams pack wolf with status, which makes his presence in a dive bar on the edge of rogue territory all the more notable.
“You’re Nick?” The man’s voice cracks on the last syllable.
“You’re in my chair.” Nick keeps his tone neutral. “So you already know the answer.”
The man swallows hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobs. He glances over his shoulder at the bartender, who is very deliberately not looking their direction, then back at Nick. “Right. Yes. I was told you...that you handle certain situations. Discreetly.”
“Depends on the situation.”
“It’s a retrieval job.” The words come out in a rush, like he’s been practicing them. “Simple extraction and return. No questions, no complications.”
Nick leans back in his chair, the leather of his jacket creaking. The movement makes the scars across his ribs pull tight, but he doesn’t let it show on his face. “Nothing’s simple. Try again.”
The man’s fingers drum against the envelope—once, twice, then he seems to realize what he’s doing and presses his palms flat against the table instead. “Alpha Ron Sinclair’s daughter. She ran. We need her brought back.”
“Alpha Sinclair can’t track his own daughter?” Nick lets skepticism color his voice. “Interesting.”
“She’s masking her scent.” The man licks his lips. “And she’s in human territory. He needs someone who can...blend in. Someone the humans won’t notice if things get complicated.”
Someone expendable, in other words. Someone whose disappearance wouldn’t cause pack politics to explode. Nick has been that someone for a while now. He pushes the envelope back toward the man with two fingers. “What’s she running from?”
“An arranged mating.” The man’s eyes skitter away from Nick’s. “Alpha Lucien Vale of the Vale pack. It’s a political alliance. The girl is being...irrational.”
The girl. Nick files away the phrasing. Not daughter, not the young woman, not even her name. Just the girl, like she’s property that wandered off. He’s seen enough arranged matings to know how that story goes.
Not his problem.
“Payment?”
Relief washes across the man’s face at the shift to business. He pushes the envelope back toward Nick. “Ten thousand upfront. Another forty when you deliver her to the Vale estate. Cash. Untraceable.”
Fifty thousand. Enough to disappear for a while, maybe even leave the country and go somewhere pack territories are more fluid. It is enough to matter.
Nick picks up the envelope. It’s heavier than he expected—the money is probably already inside with the information. He breaks the seal and slides out the contents. Cash, rubber-banded in neat stacks. A single photograph. A thin file of documents.
The photo shows a young woman in formal pack attire—a white dress that probably costs more than Nick’s truck, her platinum blonde hair styled in elaborate braids, gray eyes staring at the camera with something that might be defiance or might be resignation. She’s beautiful, all sharp cheekbones and pale skin and the kind of grooming that requires professional help. But there’s something in her expression, a tightness around her mouth, that suggests the formal portrait wasn’t her idea.
“Ava Sinclair,” the man says, unnecessarily. “Twenty-two years old. Last seen six weeks ago in Ashford, about six hours north of here. Small human town, college nearby. We tracked her that far, then lost the trail.”
Nick flips through the documents. Details about her previous life—education, pack position, friends who might help her. A description of the car she was driving, since abandoned in a grocery store parking lot. Information about Alpha Vale, the arranged mating, the political importance of the alliance. And at the bottom, contact information for delivery.
“What if she doesn’t want to come?” Nick’s tone is conversational, like he’s asking about the weather.
The man’s jaw tightens. “That’s not your concern. You deliver her to the Vale estate. What happens after is between the Alphas.”
So they want her delivered to her future mate, not even to her father. Interesting. Nick sets the papers down and meets the man’s eyes. “No permanent damage. I’m not a torturer.”
The man’s face goes pale. “Of course not. We just need her...secured. Safely transported. Alpha Vale is expecting his mate, and the delay has already caused significant political strain.”
His mate. The man keeps saying that like it’s an established fact, like her consent is irrelevant. Nick has been on the other side of that equation once—bonded to Megan through mechanisms he still doesn’t fully understand, unable to break free even when every instinct screamed at him that something was wrong. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
But fifty thousand dollars is fifty thousand dollars, and a runaway pack princess is hardly his responsibility to save.
“I’ll need freedom to operate.” Nick’s fingers tap the photo once. “No interference, no check-ins, no pack wolves sniffing around my trail. I work alone.”
“Understood.”
“And if she’s found a new pack, if she’s under another Alpha’s protection, the deal’s off.” He isn’t starting a war over this. He learned that lesson already.
The man nods quickly. “She won’t have. She’s too recognizable, and her father has...significant influence. No Alpha would risk sheltering her.”
Nick doubts that, but he keeps the thought to himself. He gathers the papers and photo, slides them back into the envelope with the cash. “I’ll need seventy-two hours before you expect contact. If I haven’t found her trail by then, you’re wasting your money.”
“Three days.” The man stands abruptly, relief evident in every line of his body. The negotiation is over. He’s done his job. “There’s a phone number in the file. Use it when you have her.”
Nick doesn’t stand. Just watches as the man adjusts his expensive suit jacket, shoots one more nervous glance around the bar, and heads for the door. His gait is too quick, just shy of running. The door opens, letting in a gust of humid air that carries the promise of rain, then closes behind him.
The bartender catches Nick’s eye and raises an eyebrow. Nick shakes his head slightly. Not a problem. Not his business.
He sits alone with the envelope, the weight of it solid against the table. Fifty thousand dollars to hunt down a girl who ran from an arranged mating. Simple job. Clean job. The kind of work that doesn’t require him to think too hard about right and wrong.
The whiskey glass is still empty in front of him. He should probably eat something, get some sleep, start fresh in the morning. But his hands need to move, need something to occupy them before the flashbacks creep back in.
He opens the envelope again and pulls out Ava Sinclair’s photograph.
Ava Sinclair stares up at him from the photograph with eyes that refuse to surrender. Nick has seen that look before—on wolves about to do something stupid and brave, on rebels who’d rather die than submit. It’s the expression of someone who’s made a decision and won’t be talked out of it, consequences be damned.
He tilts the photo toward the dim light. The formal portrait was professionally done—perfect lighting, expensive camera, the kind of setup that pack royalty uses for official announcements. But whoever took it wasn’t able to completely erase the tension in Ava’s jaw, the slight flare of her nostrils, the way her hands are clenched just outside the frame. She sat for this photo because she was told to, but she didn’t like it.
Twenty-two years old. Younger than Nick by almost a decade, though the years feel longer when he factors in everything that happened. She probably grew up sheltered, protected, groomed for exactly this kind of political alliance. The file says she has a degree in art history from some private college in the East. Rich girl problems. Running from an arranged mating like it’s the worst thing that could happen to her.
Nick catches himself before the bitterness can settle in. Her problems aren’t his to judge. He’s being paid to find her, not to fix her life.
He sets the photo aside and picks up the documents. The handwriting is neat, probably typed by some assistant or pack secretary. Last known location: Millbrook, population forty-two thousand, home to a small liberal arts college and not much else. She abandoned her car—a silver Lexus, because of course it was—in a grocery store parking lot three weeks ago. Security footage shows her walking away on foot, heading toward the college campus. After that, nothing.
Smart. College towns are full of transient populations, students coming and going, enough chaos that one more young woman won’t stand out. If she dyed her hair, maybe got colored contacts to hide those distinctive gray eyes, she could blend in easily enough. The question is whether she has help. The file says no known associates in the area, no friends who transferred to the college, but Nick has learned not to trust what files say.
People lie. Documents lie. The only truth is what you can verify yourself.
He memorizes the key details. Ava’s height—five-seven, taller than average. Her build—slender but athletic, probably trained in self-defense like most pack wolves. Distinguishing marks—a small scar on her left eyebrow from a childhood accident, a birthmark on her right shoulder blade. The name of the college—Millbrook Liberal Arts. The file notes she vanished two years ago and resurfaced eight months back, only to slip away again the following day.
When he reaches for the next page, his jacket pulls tight across his shoulders and the scars flare hot. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, forces himself to breathe through it. The claw marks are the worst today—the humidity always makes them ache, like his body remembers the silver even though the wounds closed months ago.
Megan’s parting gift. One of many.
He presses his thumb against the scar on his wrist until the pain sharpens into something manageable, something he can compartmentalize. The past is the past. He has a job now. A purpose. Fifty thousand reasons not to think about basements and silver chains and the sound of Caleb’s fists breaking his bones.
Nick raises his hand, catches the bartender’s eye, points at his empty glass.
The bartender approaches with visible reluctance, bottle of cheap whiskey in hand. He pours without comment, eyes carefully avoiding Nick’s face, and sets the bottle down hard enough that amber liquid sloshes against the sides. “You need anything else?”
“No.”
The bartender retreats quickly, relieved to put distance between them. Nick doesn’t blame him. He’s seen his own reflection recently—the too-sharp angles of someone who isn’t eating enough, the shadows under his eyes, the permanent tension in his jaw. He looks like exactly what he is. Dangerous. Unstable. The kind of wolf you don’t ask questions about.
He sips the whiskey and lets his mind work through the problem of Ava Sinclair.
She ran three weeks ago. Long enough to establish a routine if she’s staying in one place, or long enough to be halfway across the country if she’s smart enough to keep moving. The abandoned car suggests she planned the escape—you don’t just walk away from a Lexus on impulse. She wanted to disappear, which means she probably prepared.
Money would be the first question. Does she have access to accounts her father can’t trace? Credit cards in fake names? Cash stashed somewhere? Rich girls don’t usually think about those practicalities, but the defiance in her eyes suggests she might be smarter than average.
The second question is whether she’ll go to ground or keep running. Millbrook is small enough that staying long-term would be risky. Someone will notice her eventually, make the connection, call her father or Alpha Vale or whoever is offering a reward. But running requires resources and stamina, and three weeks is a long time to stay ahead of professional trackers.
Unless she isn’t alone.
Nick sets down his glass and picks up the photo again. Studies her face, looking for clues he missed. The formal dress, the elaborate hair, the jewelry that probably costs more than most people make in a year. This is a woman who had everything handed to her, who lived in luxury her entire life.
And she walked away from it.
That takes guts. Or desperation. Maybe both.
He wonders briefly what Alpha Lucien Vale is like, what kind of wolf would agree to an arranged mating with someone who clearly doesn’t want him. Then he pushes the thought away. Not his business. Not his problem. He’s being paid to deliver her, not to save her.
The whiskey is half-gone when he finally gathers the papers and slides them back into the envelope. He’s memorized everything that matters. The rest he can reference later, when he’s somewhere with better light and fewer triggers waiting to ambush him.
His body protests when he stands—the scars across his ribs pulling tight, his left knee clicking from an injury that didn’t heal right, the general stiffness of someone who’s been sitting too long in one position. He’s only thirty-one, but he feels older. Broken in ways that won’t show on an X-ray.
Nick pulls cash from his pocket and drops it on the table. Enough to cover his drinks and a tip the bartender hasn’t earned but will appreciate anyway. The envelope goes inside his jacket, pressed against his ribs where he can feel its weight.
Fifty thousand dollars. Three weeks of trail. One runaway princess who doesn’t want to be found.
Simple job. Clean job.
He heads for the door, ignoring the bartender’s relieved expression, ignoring the two men at the back table who stopped pretending not to watch him. The door opens under his hand, and the humid night air hits him like a wall.
The rain still hasn’t started, but it’s close now. Nick can smell it in the air, can feel the pressure building. The parking lot is mostly empty—just his truck, a few beat-up sedans that probably belong to the bar’s regulars, and a motorcycle chained to the bike rack. Sodium lights buzz overhead, casting everything in sickly yellow.
His truck sits in the far corner where he left it. Ford F-150, dark blue paint faded to almost gray, more rust than metal in places. It was old when he bought it six months ago, right after the exile. Now it’s ancient. But it runs, and it doesn’t draw attention, and that’s all that matters.
Nick’s boots crunch on gravel as he crosses the parking lot. The air smells like asphalt and ozone and the particular green scent that comes before a storm. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbles. Not close yet, but getting closer.
He unlocks the truck and slides behind the wheel. The interior smells like him—leather and road dust and the faint wolf-scent he can’t completely mask. The envelope goes into the glove compartment, locked away but accessible. He’ll study the documents again later, map out his route, plan his approach.
For now, he just needs to drive. Put miles between himself and this bar, this town, the ghosts that follow him everywhere he goes. Millbrook is six hours north. He can be there by dawn if he drives straight through, can start fresh when the sun comes up.
Nick turns the key. The engine coughs, sputters, then catches. He lets it warm up for a minute, hands resting on the steering wheel, staring out at the empty parking lot.
Three weeks ago, Ava Sinclair walked away from everything she knew. Chose uncertainty over security, freedom over obligation. Nick understands that impulse better than he wants to admit. The difference is that he was forced into exile. She chose hers.
And now he’s going to drag her back.
He puts the truck in gear and pulls out of the parking lot. The bar disappears in his rearview mirror, swallowed by darkness and distance. The road ahead is empty, just broken yellow lines and the occasional passing car. The storm is building behind him, but if he drives fast enough, maybe he can stay ahead of it.
Maybe.
Nick presses down on the accelerator and heads north. Toward Millbrook. Toward Ava Sinclair. Toward the job that will keep him fed and moving and away from the past that wants to drag him back down.
The first drops of rain hit his windshield as he merges onto the highway. He turns on the wipers and drives into the storm.
