Harper had only made it a block from the school when the first low growl reached her ears. She froze, every survival instinct her childhood had taught her suddenly screaming warnings. The sound was too deep, too menacing to be a loose dog. Her eyes swept the darkened street, noting how few streetlights illuminated this residential area, how empty the sidewalks were with everyone either at the game or safely inside their homes.
Turn around. Get back to the truck. Now.
But as Harper spun to retrace her steps, two massive shapes emerged from the shadows between houses. Wolves. Not the sleek, domesticated animals she'd seen in nature documentaries, but something wild and predatory that made her blood turn to ice.
Their eyes gleamed in the dim light as they padded closer, cutting off her path back to safety. Harper's heart hammered against her ribs as she realized the truth with crystal clarity—she was completely alone, outmatched, and no one knew where she was.
TEN
DORIAN
The last nail bit into the weathered wood with a satisfying thunk as Dorian secured the final shingle on the Sandersons' damaged roof. October darkness had settled over the mountain town like a heavy blanket, and the crisp air carried the promise of an early winter. He straightened, rolling his shoulders to ease the tension that had been building there all day—tension that had nothing to do with physical labor and everything to do with the woman he'd been avoiding since dawn.
Marty had departed hours earlier to shadow Harper and Lila's evening out, and his last report an hour ago reassured normalcy. Lila had been laughing with her friends at the diner while Harper maintained her careful supervision, and then they'd moved on to the basketball game at the school without incident.
See?Dorian told himself as he packed his tools with methodical precision.Harper was right. This is good for Lila.
The thought should have brought relief, but guilt gnawed at his chest instead. For months, he'd kept his sister locked away like some fragile prisoner, convincing himself that isolation meant safety. When had his protection become suffocation?When had his fear transformed into the very cage that was keeping Lila from healing?
His wolf stirred beneath his skin, uninterested in his self-recrimination. The beast's focus had narrowed to a single, driving need that had been clawing at Dorian's control all day.
Mate.
Harper's jasmine and rain scent still clung to his skin, and every hour away from her felt like a physical ache.
She called our perfect kiss a mistake.
The reminder should have been enough to maintain his distance, to keep his professional boundaries intact for her sake. But his wolf growled at the human logic, demanding he claim what belonged to them both.
Dorian shouldered his tool bag, climbed down from the roof, and started walking toward the school, telling himself he was simply making a routine patrol. If Harper caught him lurking in the area, he'd explain that as Alpha, the town's safety was his responsibility. The excuse felt thin even to him, but he needed to see her, needed to confirm with his own eyes that she was safe.
As he walked, the memory of her body pressed against his by the fireplace cycled through his mind like a fever dream—the way she'd melted into him, the soft sound she'd made when their tongues touched, the heat that had blazed between them like something inevitable and right.
He was still three blocks from the school when panic slammed into him like a freight train.
Not his panic. Not Lila's familiar anxiety.
Harper.
Terror, pure and sharp, flooded the mate bond he'd been trying to deny, and Dorian's composure shattered.
He bolted toward the school.
His boots pounded against the asphalt as he sprinted through the poorly lit residential area. Within seconds, theschool parking lot came into view, his black truck sitting empty under a flickering light, and dread coiled in his stomach.
Where is she?
A scream pierced the night air—high, terrified, and achingly familiar. Harper, somewhere beyond the school in the maze of houses where families were tucked away peacefully, unaware that his mate was in mortal danger.
Dorian didn't think. Couldn't think past the roaring demand of his wolf to protect, to harm anything that threatened what was his.
His clothes shredded as the shift took him, bones restructuring and muscles expanding with violent efficiency. Within mere seconds, his massive black wolf emerged, silver threading through his fur like liquid moonlight as he raced toward Harper's scent trail.
What he found when he burst through the shadows between two houses nearly sent him into a feral rage.
Two wolves—large, powerful, and reeking of Ronan's pack—had Harper trapped in a deadly circle. She pressed against a chain-link fence, her green eyes wide with terror as the predators closed in with calculated menace. Dorian recognized their scents immediately. Ronan's Beta and Gamma, the bastards who'd surely helped orchestrate the attack on his territory months ago.
How did they know to target her?
