Chapter 2

• [Sia's POV]
• Vivian's daughter. Stepfather.
• I tried to choke out those words. Those words sounded like rusted blades to me.
• Kaelen's gaze swept over me, and I felt exposed, despite being fully dressed. His gold eyes tracked the mess I was, red-rimmed from crying, messy blonde hair sticking to my sweaty cheeks.
• He looked at me as if I were a forbidden feast. The look in his eyes made my skin crawl and throb all at once.
• Then his eyes dropped to my neck. I could feel the heat where his fingers had gripped me, where his teeth had scraped. I saw his wolf pacing behind his eyes, a mournful, unwilling wail echoing through the bond between us. He didn't want to give up.
• I saw him bite his tongue, hard, until blood coated his lips. He was using the pain to force himself back, inch by inch, breaking the invisible tether holding him to me.
• I knew, with terrifying certainty, that if I hadn't spoken one second sooner, he would have been burying himself inside me right now.
• He stared at me, his face set like a demon crawling back to hell.
• "Get out."
• The voice wasn't human. It was full of such dark promise that I scrambled to open the door, my legs shaking so hard I could barely stand. If I didn't leave right now, I knew he would ignore all ethics, drag me back, and fuck me until I forgot how to say "Stepfather."
• I fled into the night.
• My body was a traitor.
• The taxi hit every pothole in the Valley Pack district, but I didn't care. I was burning alive from the inside out. It wasn't a fever; it was raw desire.
• I clutched the collar of my dress, gasping for air, but every breath was laced with his scent, cedar and gunpowder. It was stuck in my hair, my skin, and deeper, seeped into my very pores.
• He is your stepfather.
• I repeated it like a mantra, trying to douse the fire pooling between my thighs. But the image of his molten gold eyes only made the ache throb harder. I could still feel the phantom weight of his hand kneading my hip, the roughness of his tongue against my neck.
• When I finally stumbled into our small apartment, Mom was home. She was slumped on the worn-out beige sofa, still in her scrubs, face gray with exhaustion. Seeing her like that felt like a slap. She worked herself to death for me, and I had nearly let her fiancé claim me on the floor of a VIP suite.
• "Sia?" Mom sat up, rubbing her temples. "You're back. Was Alpha Kaelen angry?"
• Guilt, heavy and suffocating, lodged in my throat. I couldn't destroy the one good thing she had going for her, a marriage that would secure her safety.
• "He was... a bit scary, Mom," I swallowed the lie. "I just apologized and left."
• I fleeing to my room, locking the door, and stripping off the clothes that smelled of him. But as I crawled under the duvet, the heat inside my core didn't disappear.
• My hand slipped inside my shirt, my fingertips pausing at my breasts. They felt swollen, sensitive. When he had touched me, through the thin fabric, my nipples had hardened like rocks. Just thinking about it now made them throb again.
• Even without him in the room, I wasn't safe. My body was an open invitation, craving the monster, even while my mind screamed at me to stop.
• The next morning, the sound of powerful engines woke the entire neighborhood.
• I dragged myself out of bed, groggy and aching, and looked out the window. My breath stopped.
• The street below was blocked by a line of sleek, black, armored SUVs. They looked like a military convoy. Or a funeral procession.
• And leaning against the hood of the lead car, looking entirely out of place in our crumbling neighborhood, was him.
• Kaelen.
• He was in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than this entire building. He wore sunglasses, hiding those terrifying golden eyes, but I knew the moment I appeared at the window, his gaze snapped to me.
• I could feel it, a possessive, hot weight pressing against my skin through the glass. It was the same look he had in the suite, only colder now, more calculated.
• He wasn't here to visit. He was here to claim. Like an Alpha collecting his property. He looked like a King who had decided the time for negotiations was over; he was just here to occupy the territory.
• "Sia! Get dressed! Alpha Kaelen is here!" Mom's voice was frantic with excitement from the living room.
• I backed away from the window, my heart hammering against my ribs. The trap was closing. And Kaelen Voss had just come to lock the cage door.