Chapter 4 Chapter 4

The bedroom was larger than any apartment I'd lived in since escaping my pack. The bathroom had marble fixtures that probably cost more than my car. The closet was filled with clothes in my size, in styles that somehow matched my taste perfectly—which meant Alex had researched me more thoroughly than I wanted to think about.

But it was still a cage.

I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my sitting room, looking out at the city stretched below like a promise I could never keep. Night was falling, painting everything in shades of purple and gray. Somewhere out there was my apartment. My job. My carefully constructed life as Mia Nathan, nobody important.

Somewhere out there was Elena, probably wondering why I'd disappeared without a text or call.

The door to my room opened without a knock. Alex, because of course it was. He seemed to move through this house like he owned the air itself.

"You haven't eaten," he said. It wasn't a question.

"Not hungry."

"Eat anyway." He set a tray on the small table near the window. Grilled salmon, roasted vegetables, something that smelled like rosemary. Expensive food, prepared by what was probably an expensive chef. "Your metabolism is accelerated. You need fuel."

I didn't turn away from the window. "How do you know about my metabolism?"

"I know a lot of things about you, Mia." He moved to stand beside me, not touching, but close enough that I could feel his presence like a weight. "I know you skip meals when you're stressed. I know you have a scar on your left shoulder blade from an injury you never had treated properly. I know you wake up screaming some nights, though you muffle the sound with your pillow so nobody hears."

"Stop," I said quietly.

"I know you're wondering whether running is worth dying. Whether one more day of freedom is worth the risk of being caught." He paused. "I know because I've been exactly where you are. Running from something you can't escape. Hiding from something you can't hide from."

I finally turned to look at him. In the dying light from the window, the scar on his face was more pronounced, a thin line of white against darker skin. It made him look like a dangerous poem.

"What are you?" I asked. "And don't tell me you're just some crime boss with too much money and too much time."

His lips curved slightly. "Direct. I appreciate that." He gestured toward the chair. "Sit. Eat. And I'll tell you something true."

I didn't sit. But I did eat, standing by the window, watching the city lights bloom as darkness settled completely over everything. Alex leaned against the window frame, patient in a way that made me deeply suspicious.

"I'm a werewolf," he finally said. "Born and raised in the Bush pack territory, about four hours north of the city. My family is old money, old power. They were supposed to groom me to eventually take leadership. But I made a mistake."

"What kind of mistake?"

"I fell in love with the wrong person. Someone my pack had already bound to another. When I tried to help her escape the forced mating, it became a scandal that threatened pack stability. They gave me a choice: accept the binding to a suitable pack member, or get out." He was quiet for a moment. "I got out."

I could hear the gravity of that decision in his voice. In werewolf packs, rejection of pack law was almost unforgivable.

"So you came to the city," I said.

"I came to the city to disappear. But I'm not good at disappearing quietly. I built an empire instead." He turned to face me fully. "And five years into that empire, I started picking up rumors. Stories about a girl. A broken wolf. Someone who'd killed her parents at sixteen and disappeared into the human world."

My stomach clenched. "You were looking for me."

"Not looking," he corrected. "Listening. Waiting. There are very few of your kind in the world, Mia. Werewolves who can't shift into the traditional form are essentially unheard of. But the stories about a girl with uncontrolled transformation? Those stories reach people who matter. People who collect rare things."

"The Alpha King," I whispered.

"A name for something more complex. A network. An organization. People willing to pay enormous sums of money to study individuals with genetic anomalies. With unusual abilities." He moved closer, and I had to force myself not to step back. "Do you understand what you are?"

"Broken. A freak...

"No," he interrupted, and there was something almost gentle in his voice. "You're valuable. You're rare. There are people in this world who would level cities to get their hands on you. Not because they want to hurt you, but because they want to own you. Study you. Use you for whatever they think they can extract from your unique genetics."

I set down the plate with shaking hands. "How long have they been looking for me?"

"Since the beginning. Your parents' death wasn't random pack violence, Mia. It was a cleanup operation. Someone wanted you, and your parents stood in the way. The pack hunted you because they were told to hunt you. Because someone paid them to."

The room tilted.

My whole life, I'd carried the weight of my parents' deaths as my fault. I'd believed their blood was on my hands, that I'd killed them in some moment of uncontrolled rage. But if it was a cleanup operation, if it was planned...

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because," he said, and now he was close enough to touch, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, "I need you to understand why you can't go back. Why staying hidden isn't an option anymore. And why, if you let me, I can protect you in ways nobody else can."

"At what cost?" I demanded. "What do you want from me?"

"Right now? Just agreement. Say you'll trust me enough to let me keep you safe."

"And later?"

His dark eyes held mine. "Later, we'll see."

I should have said no. Every instinct that had kept me alive for five years screamed at me to refuse, to run, to disappear again. But something in his eyes, some reflection of the same darkness I carried, made me stop.

"Okay," I heard myself say. "I'll stay."

He nodded like I'd confirmed something he already knew. Then he turned and walked toward the door.

"Wait," I called. "What's your actual name? You said you're Alex Bush, but that's the crime boss name. What's your real name?"

He paused at the threshold. For a moment, I thought he wouldn't answer.

"Alex Bush is my real name," he said. "My pack name was something else. But that person is dead. I prefer the version of myself that only exists here, in this city, with no one knowing what I was before."

"Do you like who that version is?"

He looked back at me, and there was something raw in his expression, something that suggested maybe he didn't know the answer to that question himself.

"No," he finally said. "But I'm beginning to think I might."

Then he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him.

I stood alone in the expensive darkness of my new room and felt something shift inside me. Terror, yes. But also something else. Something that felt dangerously close to possibility.