Chapter 1 – Carla
CARLA
The cold seeps through the thin mattress beneath me, chilling my bones.
Three weeks.
That’s how long I’ve been in this concrete prison beneath Leon Lennox’s house. Three weeks of wondering if I’ll ever see daylight again. Three weeks of slowly accepting that nobody is coming to help.
Three weeks of regretting my decision to come looking for Beth.
My sister. The traitor who helped a monster escape justice and left me to take the blame.
I curl into myself on the narrow cot, trying to conserve warmth.
The basement walls sweat with dampness, and the single lightbulb casts eerie shadows on the walls.
My father was a beta. I’m a powerful wolf, and I don’t scare easily, but something about this place gives me the creeps.
It’s not just a holding cell. I can almost feel the pain of whoever was in here before me.
My wolf paces inside me, desperate to shift, to run, but Leon made it clear what would happen if I tried to escape. The silver-lined restraints hanging on the wall aren’t just for show. He won’t hesitate to use them if I don’t play nice.
And in my weakened state, trying to outrun a clan of powerful bears, from deep within their territory? I don’t have a chance. So I wait, praying an opportunity will arise.
The door at the top of the stairs creaks open. I tense, every muscle coiled for a fight that I can’t win. But so help me, if Leon attempts to lay a finger on me, like he’s hinted at before, I’ll die fighting.
Light spills down the steps, followed by the woodsy scent that’s become an odd mix of comfort and pain in this messed up situation.
“Brought you dinner.”
The deep voice rumbles from upstairs before he appears, letting me know I don’t need to be scared.
Billy. Leon’s son.
He descends the stairs, a tray balanced in one broad hand. Six-foot-three of pure muscle, with dark hair pulled back in a messy bun and a beard that can’t hide the square jaw beneath. Where Leon is all rough edges, sneering smirks and cruel comments, Billy is... different.
Still dangerous, but in a way that doesn’t make my skin crawl. He’s no risk to me physically, that much I’m confident of, but my heart, and my soul? That’s another story altogether. And he doesn’t even know it.
His eyes meet mine, and something inside me shifts.
I look away quickly. Too quickly.
“Not hungry?” he asks, setting the tray on a small table bolted to the floor. Thick arms folding across his chest, he frowns, watching me carefully as I curl in on myself, trying to hide behind my dirty hair, and tugging the sleeves of my shirt down to cover my torn fingernails.
My stomach drops. I can’t bear for him to see me like this.
Billy pushes the tray closer, imploring me to consider taking a bite. “Please. I promise, it’s good. Made it myself.”
I eye the food, a real sandwich today, not the scraps Leon usually sends down. He’s even put a napkin on the plate. And there’s a bottle of juice instead of the usual questionable drinking water.
“Why do you care?”
I know why I care what he thinks, but bear’s differ from us wolf shifters. When Leila mated Marcus, I couldn’t understand why it had taken them so long to get it together. But he didn’t know. The bear decides and only lets the human side of them know when it’s one hundred percent certain.
“You need to eat.”
He looks genuinely concerned as he takes in my once curvy, full figure, that’s slowly fading away.
I itch to cover myself from his view. His bear must be disgusted by what he sees. Panic and shame rises inside me, and I lash out, wanting him to leave. I need him to stop looking at me.
“So you can feel less guilty? Because you feel sorry for me? No thanks.”
Billy’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t rise to the bait.
Instead, he does something unexpected: he sits on the bottom step, blocking the only exit but making no move to come closer.
His hands clasp together, dangling between his knees as he stares across the room, unseeing as he mulls something over in his head.
I wait, unable to take my eyes off him. My wolf whines inside me, wanting to get closer, to touch him. But I’m too scared to even consider it. After three weeks down here, I’m repulsive. A wash with a bucket of cold water and a rag isn’t enough to keep me smelling of roses.
“My father’s planning something,” he says quietly. “Something big.”
He doesn’t sound happy about it.
I tilt my head, studying him. Whatever is about to happen, it’s weighing heavily on him, and the need to make him feel better rises inside me, but I shove it down. He’s a Lennox, and despite being nicer to me than the rest, he’s still my captor.
“And you’re telling the prisoner this because...?”
He winces when I describe myself that way, reducing myself to an asset, part of a strategy that Leon has that’s unclear to me, but is no doubt despicable.
“Because I don’t agree with it.” His gaze is steady, unapologetic. “I don’t agree with a lot of things.”
A sad little part of me wants him to say that he’s telling me because he needs my help, that he senses something between us, something, anything that would suggest he has any clue about what I’m feeling.
But why would he? Not when I’m in this state.
That’s when it happens. As I look into his dark eyes, something deep in my core ignites, a burning that I know is going to bring with it, a whole load of trouble.
My wolf surges forward, clawing to get closer to him, howling one word over and over.
Mine.
The sandwich suddenly looks like sawdust. I can’t eat, can’t think. All I can feel is the primal urge to breed singing through my blood. It’s what I’ve been afraid of since I got here.
Since my wolf whispered the fateful word, mate.
Billy Lennox is my mate, but has no clue about the connection that struck me like a lightning bolt the first time I picked up his scent. I’m far from home. My captor has a history of breeding as many women as he can to expand his clan and his criminal empire.
And I’m about to go into heat.
The knowledge is as terrifying as it is certain. Wolves only recognize their mates once in life, and the recognition triggers heat, the fertile time when we’re most vulnerable.
If Leon discovers what Billy is to me... if he realizes I’ll go into heat soon...
I force my expression to remain neutral, even as panic floods my system.
Billy can’t know. No one can know.
“You should go,” I manage, my voice thankfully steady. “Thank you for this. I… I’ll try to eat.”
Billy’s brow furrows, unhappy instead of pleased by my agreeableness. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
I cringe, aware of how awful I look. This is not the way I wanted to meet my mate. Not the way I pictured it in my dreams.
“I’ve spent three weeks in a basement with no sunlight and no fresh air. My wolf is going stir crazy. How do you expect me to look?”
He studies me for a moment longer, and I fear he’ll see the truth written all over me. Instead, he just nods and stands, looking suitably chastened.
“I’ll come back tomorrow,” he says, like a promise.
I turn away, pretending indifference, but every cell in my body tracks his movement up the stairs. When the door closes behind him, I bury my face in my knees and squeeze my eyes shut to stop the tears from coming.
Of all the men in the world, my fated mate is the son of the monster who holds me captive. And if I go into heat here, I might never leave this basement alive.