Chapter 1 Chapter 1
AMINA
The old bell over the door of The Read Thread jingled one last time, a mournful, sharp sound cutting through the silence. My stomach twisted with a relief so sharp it felt like a puncture wound. Finally, the day was over.
“The night is ours, Amina,” Ethan announced, tossing the shop keys in the air with a theatrical flourish. “Enjoy the quiet existential dread. I’m out. Don’t burn the place down.”
“Don’t worry. The only thing I’ll be burning is a hole through this budget report,” I lied, forcing a tired smile that didn’t reach my eyes.
He waved, his easy, human confidence a painful contrast to the knot of anxiety that lived permanently behind my ribs. Ethan was my anchor, my perfect, oblivious connection to the world of normal people who didn't see the shadows move. I needed his simple, warm scent—of soap and ordinary coffee—like a drug to keep me grounded.
As soon as the front office light clicked off and his footsteps faded toward the Lower East Side alley, the bookstore shifted. The comforting smell of old paper and dust turned thick, almost electric.
The air didn't just feel heavy; it felt charged.
For a Lycan-Seer Hybrid, the modern world was a constant barrage of noise. Werewolves, who enforced their ridiculous Shroud of secrecy, were like silent hurricanes, moving with suppressed primal energy—a low-frequency dread I could feel in my teeth. Usually, the thousands of old books in here acted as a muffler, soaking up the static.
But tonight, the books were failing.
The hum wasn’t just the distant packs; it was closer, coarser, like the ozone smell right before lightning strikes. I walked the perimeter, telling myself it was just the old wiring. I’d worked here for three years, suppressing my magic—the Earth Pulse—until it was a numb ache in my bones. I ate, slept, and breathed mediocrity because the alternative was a violent, painful end. The packs had outlawed Hybrids for a reason, and that reason was me.
I reached the back corner, near the cramped, filthy alley where the dumpsters lived. That's where the sound was loudest. It wasn't the cold, majestic power-hum of a high-ranking Alpha. This was low-level, feral, and hungry.
A rogue.
Go back inside. Lock the door. Just hide.
I was halfway to the back door, heart hammering, when a shadow detached itself from the brickwork.
It was a man, large and too quick, wearing cheap leather and smelling overwhelmingly of sweat and unwashed wolf. His eyes were wide, glittering with a greedy, frantic intent. He was a low-level grunt, but his presence here wasn't a coincidence.
"Amina," he growled, his voice a low scrape that made my skin crawl. "Such a sweet little mouse. Did you think the scent of old paper could hide a Sovereign’s Heart forever?"
I froze. My breath hitched. He didn't just call me a hybrid. He used a term I hadn't heard since my mother died, a term that implied my blood wasn't just forbidden; it was a goddamn battery.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered, forcing my voice to shake. Be human, damn it. Be weak.
"Cut the crap. We know you're the one from the Prophecy." He took a desperate step, spittle flying from his lips. "The Council pays well for a heart that never stops beating."
He lunged.
He wasn't fast enough for a true werewolf, but he was far too fast for a human. The moment his hand snapped out—a large, brutal paw aimed at my throat—I didn't think. I reacted.
The suppressed magic exploded out of me, not as fire or wind, but as a pure, localized Kinetic Echo.
It was like a hiccup in time.
The momentum of his hand stopped dead, hitting a sudden, invisible wall. The wolf, Dominic Vance, crashed into the void of his own neutralized force. He slammed into the wall I’d thrown up, and the force didn't just stop him—it shattered the bricks behind him.
He dropped to the floor, stunned, his face a mess of confusion and bone-deep agony.
Shit. Shit. SHIT!
I’d used too much power. The force left my body with a visible, shimmering heat, a silent alarm screaming my location across the Shroud. I had just lit a flare in a dark room full of monsters.
Dominic started to scramble up, but before he could even curse, two shadows dropped from the warehouse roof across the alley, moving with lethal, soundless speed. These weren't rogues. These were the elite.
The first was a woman, sleek and deadly. Kira, Rian Vale's Beta. She pinned Dominic to the pavement with a single, contemptuous boot on his throat.
The second was a man who dwarfed even the massive wolf she had subdued.
He was pure, terrifying stillness.
Alpha Rian Vale.
He wasn't in a suit; he was dressed in dark, expensive tactical gear, smelling faintly of clean ozone and something ancient—a scent that instantly dominated and cleansed the alley of the rogue's stink. He didn't rush; he simply arrived, walking out of the shadows like they were his personal backdrop. He radiated the kind of controlled power that could flatten buildings.
His eyes, the color of cold, polished amber, swept over the alley: the downed rogue, the Beta’s foot, and then, slowly, they landed on me.
My heart didn't just beat; it tried to batter its way out of my chest. I couldn’t look away. I saw the immediate, calculated assessment in his gaze. He knew what I was. The Law demanded he end me immediately to protect the Shroud.
His jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the stubble on his cheek. He took a single, deliberate step toward me.
And then, the world tilted.
As his cold, amber eyes locked with mine, a flicker of something beyond recognition and assessment crossed his face. It was as if an invisible current passed between us, jolting him. His pupils dilated rapidly, the amber turning into a smoldering, primal glow.
The Mate Bond didn't just snap into place; it was an avalanche. I felt a tug in my chest so violent I nearly fell over. It was like an invisible hand reaching into my ribs and twisting. A wave of his heat washed over me, and I could sense the very molecules in the air rearranging themselves to accommodate a connection that was biologically impossible.
A low, feral snarl rumbled from his chest. It wasn't a threat. It was a declaration of ownership that bypassed my brain and spoke directly to my blood.
"Mate," he breathed, the word a rasp of disbelief and hunger.
He stood there, the powerful Alpha and my potential executioner, his hand hovering near the silver blade at his hip. I saw the war in his eyes—the duty to the Council fighting the magnetic, agonizing pull of the Bond.
Slowly, his hand moved. It didn't reach for the blade.
He reached for me, his fingers trembling with a need that felt like it could swallow the city whole. Against my better judgment, against every survival instinct I had honed for three years, my own hands began to rise to meet his.
But just as our fingertips were an inch apart, a sharp, electronic chirp cut through the silence.
Kira looked at her wrist comm, her face turning ashen. "Alpha... we have a problem. The rogue wasn't alone. And he wasn't working for a rival pack."
Rian didn't look away from me. "Who was he working for, Kira?"
Kira swallowed hard, her eyes darting to me with a look of pure, unadulterated horror.
"The scan of his burner phone just finished," she whispered. "The hit wasn't ordered by the Council, Rian. It was ordered by your father. He knew she was here. He’s been using her to anchor the Shroud for twenty years... and he just sent the order to 'retire' the battery."
The air in the alley went dead cold.
Rian’s hand froze an inch from mine. The man I was destined to be with—the one who was supposed to be my protector—was the son of the man who had been feeding off my life-force in secret since I was a child.
"Amina," Rian whispered, his voice cracking.
I didn't wait for his touch. I stepped back into the darkness of the bookstore, my heart a cold stone. "Don't touch me," I hissed. "You’re not my mate. You’re my jailer."
From the street out front, the screech of tires echoed through the shop. A blacked-out SUV slammed into a halt, and four men in "Sanitation" gear—the Council's cleaners—leaped out, carrying high-frequency neutralizers.
But they weren't looking for Dominic.
They were looking at me. And behind them, a second car door opened, revealing a man who looked exactly like Rian, only thirty years older and with eyes like twin voids.
"Bring me the girl," Rian's father commanded. "And kill my son if he gets in the way. He’s clearly compromised."