Koen nods.

My heart plummets.

No. He wouldn’t. He would never.

“Koen?” I say. Half question, half plea.

“In my defense, Serena . . .” Koen lifts his shoulders. “It’s always fucking something with you.”

Ice prickles all over my skin. “No. Don’t. Koen, don’t— ”

“I took the liberty to get started,” the Vampyre says, and before I can wonder what he means, his free hand lowers the torn half of my top down my shoulder.

Koen’s eyes linger on my nearly bare chest like I’m no more than a cut of flesh. An offering to be appraised. Something created for him to use. I watch his pupils do an odd dance, sense a shift in his scent before he murmurs, “See, this is how you make a deal. I knew you had it in you, Bob.”

Once again, I beg my body to shift to its wolf form. Once again, I am ignored. With a furious grunt, I begin thrashing in the Vampyre’s grip, desperately trying to break free. But he’s stronger than me, and Koen’s probably stronger than the two of us put together. I can knock out one of them, and I’d still be screwed.

I clutch the rock in my palm, but folded as he has me, I still cannot use it.

Terror rushes through my body. Thumps against my chest.

“She’s all yours, Alpha. Do what you will with her.” The Vampyre lets out a winded, obnoxious laugh. He lowers his blade and pushes me a few inches forward without letting go of my wrists. He stinks like he knows that it’s all over for me— that he’s won. “Maybe she’d even enjoy it?”

Koen considers the matter as he steps closer, near enough that I can feel his heat, and I bare my teeth at him as I squirm in the Vampyre’s clutch. This can’t be for real. Alpha protects, says a calm Were voice that lives inside my bones. Alpha is home. Koen is not like that.

Except, I’m not so sure.

Koen stops in front of me, staring like I’m at his disposal, and yeah. He is exactly like that.

“Would she?” he wonders, voice low and rich, eyes caressing my face and lingering on my bare breast. Closer still, and his presence envelops me like a warm blanket. His scent blooms in my nostrils, safe, grounding, so breathtakingly perfect that for a moment I forget about the Vampyre behind me, the pine needles jabbed into the soles of my feet.

“Please,” I mouth softly, but I don’t think Koen hears me. His hand comes up to my face. Wraps around my cheek, thumb pressing into my lower lip.

“Would you, Serena? Enjoy it?”

Panic bursts anew in my chest. I shake my head violently. No. No.

“Well, then.” His eyes soften, and he lets out a half-resigned, half-amused sigh. “Better make use of that rock in your hand, killer.”

It takes me a beat to understand his meaning, and to realize that the Vampyre’s hold on my wrist has loosened. Twisting my arm free and stabbing the jagged edge of the rock into his stomach takes so little effort, it’s almost anticlimactic.

“What the— ” The Vampyre doubles over. I’m about to hit him again, but he bounces back and slams me to the ground. He lifts his knife above his head, aiming for my throat. “You fucking bitch— ”

He stops with an abrupt gasp, as though in the grip of a sudden illuminating revelation. He stares down at me, eyes bulging, mouth wide open, and I almost expect him to . . . apologize? Then, after coughing up a small rivulet of mulberry-colored blood, he loses his balance. I observe his descent, horrified, as he collapses right by my side, face-first into a patch of moss.

He does not move again.

Neither do I. I don’t know what it says about me, but I’m incapable of not staring as blood gurgles out of the deep claw-shaped parallel wounds on his back, iron blending with the earthy smell of the soil.

It’s a long while before I’m able to glance down at my body— miraculously intact, if mostly naked— and then up at Koen— glibly unimpressed. Anyone else would be helping me up, but not the Alpha of the Northwest pack. Instead, he slowly shakes his head, wiping the hand he just used to kill a man across his flannel. The deep-violet strokes create an oddly pretty painting over the black-and-white canvas.

It takes him a while to remember that I exist. “Evening, Serena.” The intensity of a few moments ago has dissolved, and he sounds indifferent. Maybe he knows that a single ounce of sympathy would knock me over. Maybe he truly does not, and has never, given a fuck about anything. “How’s your night been?”

“Uneventful,” I rasp out.

“Yeah? You look like shit.”

“Do I.” Gelid sweat slides down my temple and between my breasts, which I hurry to cover as best as I can. “Is this the way you talk to your beloved mate?”

A single eyebrow lifts. “I said you were my mate. Not that I loved you.”

I gasp out a single, outraged laugh, but at least I’m not crying. It’s nice to keep what little dignity I have left as Koen gives me a cool, appraising look and crouches next to me.

“We have to go,” he tells me.

“Where?”

“To the Den.” He picks me up with his arms under my back and knees. The chill becomes a distant memory. “Woodland retreat’s over, killer.”

CHAPTER 2

“Absolutely fucking no.”

“If you don’t tell her, Koen, she’ll find out anyway.”

“How? Will she steal my diary? Is she able to read minds?”

Lowe, in his defense, has the grace to look vaguely self-conscious. “I won’t hide it from Misery. And Misery won’t hide it from her.”

“Oh, fuck off. I liked it better when you were lonely and sad and depressed. Listen, I tell Serena, and then what? Nothing could ever come of it, even if she’s interested.”

“If we made it publicly known . . . If she’s the mate of the Alpha of the Northwest, no Were will harm her. Hybrid or not.”

A mix of anger and outrage simmers in the pit of Koen’s stomach. “No Were will harm her, because I’ll be there to fucking kill them.”

“Will you? Misery is here, and Serena wants to be with Misery. You won’t be around.”

“Then I’ll move into the Moreland compound. My pack runs itself.”

But Lowe just looks at him like he did when he was twelve, already way too fucking serious for his age, like the pillars of Earth rest in his clenched sphincter, and Koen has never been able to stand it. Back then, all he wanted was to shield Lowe from the ugliness of being the kind of Weres they are. He still does.

“You’re so fucking annoying.” Koen drags a hand down his face.

“Yup.” Lowe stands. “Had a great role model.”

Four and a half months earlier

Southwest territory

KOEN ALEXANDER’S FIRST WORDS TO ME ARE “IT’S NOT plugged in.”

Memorable stuff, really.

I’m sure it’s the start of every epic love story: a girl, trying to turn on a laptop and jabbing the power button with increasing violence. A very big man in a plaid shirt, leaning cross armed against a doorjamb, staring skeptically at her. The ego-pulverizing embarrassment of making a less-than-excellent first impression on someone your friends love and respect.

Koen appeared in Lowe’s driveway a couple of hours ago, Lowe’s little sister in tow, triggering the family reunion that’s currently going on downstairs. It involves Ana being bubbly, Misery pretending not to adore her, and Lowe pretending not to be awestruck by Misery’s inability to successfully hide her adoration. It’s cute, and it deserves some privacy.

Misery is at her best. I may not be at my worst, but I’m still a definite work in progress.

I spent the last two months imprisoned in Vampyre territory. I was certain that my abduction would end with my spleen being fed to the raccoons, meaning that this is a second chance at life that I don’t yet know what to do with. I’ve been wading through time and space slowly, never fully coherent, constantly overstimulated. After months of silence, whispers are too loud. The cicadas feel single-mindedly focused on rupturing my eardrums. My skin is either boiling hot or a glacier. These days, I enjoy being on my own. So I snuck up to Lowe’s office. Sat on a leather chair. Grabbed a laptop and made the radical choice to check my email.