Caden's POV
I felt it.
A sudden pull—sharp, visceral, impossible to ignore.
My wolf surged, hackles raised, heart pounding as if it had recognized something personal and vital. I turned abruptly, scanning the office, instincts screaming that something—someone—had just slipped through my grasp.
But there was nothing.
Only glass, steel, and startled humans pretending not to tremble under my gaze.
I forced the feeling down and turned to the receptionist, my patience already threadbare.
"She's not here," the woman stammered. "Miss Swann is out of the country. We don't know when she'll return."
Carrie scoffed beside me. "That's a lie. Someone saw her at a recent event."
The receptionist swallowed hard. "She may have attended briefly. We weren't informed. She––she does that all the time!"
I leaned closer, my voice dropping into a cold growl that made the temperature seem to fall.
"Tell your employer this," I said quietly. "No one refuses Caden Wayne. If she believes herself above consequence, she is gravely mistaken. I will allow her one more chance—to apologize."
Fear flooded the woman's eyes as she nodded frantically.
"Let's go, Carrie," I ordered.
She hesitated, clearly disappointed. She had wanted me to fly off the hinges. A display of cruelty. Proof that I still enjoyed breaking people.
I didn't.
Not anymore.
As we left the building, the restlessness returned—worse than before. It clawed at my chest, sharp and unrelenting, as if something precious had brushed past me and vanished again.
It had started at the mall.
The twins.
The boy with my eyes. My temper. My fucking scent.
I had dismissed it as coincidence. I had been exhausted lately, I started making mistakes.
But now… now my instincts screamed that answers were close. Too close.
Work was the only thing keeping me sane since Adele vanished from my world. Without it, the emptiness threatened to consume me whole.
I didn't know why.
I only knew this—
My heart was restless.
***
Carrie paced my office like a storm given heels. I could sense irritation and madness in her scent, and honestly, it was making me dizzy.
"She lied," she hissed, finally pausing in the middle of the room. "That receptionist bitch lied. The designer is in Paris. I know it."
I didn't look up. Paperwork grounded me; control always had. I simply kept reading. "Leave it. Hire someone else. I don't see the problem here."
Her fury only sharpened. "You promised! I need to hire her! It's my reputation. Do you even realize how humiliating it will be once all the social media talks about me being stood up by Fleur Swann?"
She wrapped herself around me. I removed her arms at once––her mere touch was nauseating now.
"I don't and I don't plan to find out. Do what you want––if you want to hire her, then make it happen." I said coldly. "Don't drag me into it, though. You can have my money, but not my time."
Carrie's eyes glinted with a dangerous glow. "Fine. I'll do what I do best, then. I'll teach her a lesson."
I said nothing. But I should have.
Because when I came home the next day, the door opened to hell.
I saw her on the floor—small, broken, mine—and my wolf tore free. I crossed the room in seconds. The shots were clean. Final. I didn't even realize what I'd done.
"Caden!" Carrie cried out, dropping the horse whip to the floor. "Goddess! What did you do?!"
"My wife," I breathed, the word ripping from my chest like a vow reclaimed. I did not care for Carrie's cries or the sound of her heels retreating.
Adele. My wife. My Luna. She had been tied up, brutally beaten, clawed and tortured.
I dropped beside her, gathered her close, warmth against cold stone. I kissed her as I'd never kissed her before. Because she was there. In my arms. She was there.
The world narrowed to her breath, her pulse, the feelings roaring back into me.
She was alive.
***
Adele's POV
The moment I saw him, the world tilted.
Six years. Six long years of running, rebuilding, and convincing myself that the monster I once loved was nothing more than a nightmare buried beneath distance and time. And yet here he stood—Caden Wayne—as solid and terrifyingly real as the stone walls around us.
My wolf screamed.
His presence hit me like a full moon rising without warning, dragging instincts I had fought tooth and nail to suppress. Power rolled off him in suffocating waves, dominant and ancient, the aura of an Alpha who had never learned how to love without breaking what he claimed.
Before I could gather my scattered thoughts, his arms were around me.
And then his lips—
The kiss wasn't cruel. It wasn't punishing.
It was desperate.
It was raw.
It was everything he had never given me when I was his wife.
My body froze, shock locking my limbs in place as his mouth moved against mine like a promise reclaimed too late. Wolves don't forget their mates, and in that single kiss, I felt it—his grief, his madness, his hunger, his certainty. He kissed me like a man who had died and come back only to find his heart beating outside his chest.
This was not the Caden who used intimacy as a weapon.
This was a wolf who had lost his mate.
He finally pulled back, his hands trembling as they framed my face, his blue eyes—too blue, too bright—burning as they traced every bruise, every cut, every trace of pain Carrie's cruelty had carved into me.
"You're alive," he breathed, voice breaking. "Moon Goddess above… you're alive."
Something inside me snapped.
I shoved at his chest with all the strength I had left. "Get your hands off me!" I screamed, hatred burning through the fear. "I am not your wife!"
The words tasted like blood and betrayal.
I couldn't let him believe it. I wouldn't. If he knew who I was—who I had been—he would cage me again, whether with chains or love or guilt. My children needed me free. Needed me alive. Needed me far away from this Alpha and the ruin he carried with him.
"What are you saying?" Caden whispered, stunned. "Adele… baby—"
Baby?
The endearment made my stomach churn.
He had never called me that before. Not when I bled. Not when I cried. Not when I begged.
And yet now, when I had built a life without him, the word fell from his lips like prayer.
"You are Adele," he said hoarsely, certainty hardening his voice. "My mate. My wife."
Before I could react, he kissed me again—harder, deeper, claiming.
My lips betrayed me, parting as his scent wrapped around me like a forgotten song. Smoke and frost. Alpha and ruin. My wolf whimpered, aching to respond, aching to submit.
I hated myself for how my body remembered him.
Pain still screamed through my ribs, my wrists burned from restraints, but his arms were iron and heat and familiarity. I forced myself still, refusing to return the kiss, refusing to give him even a sliver of hope.
Then—
"Caden!"
Carrie's shrill voice sliced through the air like shattered glass.
He pulled away instantly, his gaze snapping toward her with a growl that vibrated through the dungeon walls.
"What are you doing?" she shrieked. "She's not your wife! She's that interior designer! Have you forgotten your medication again? Are you hallucinating?!"
Medication?
Hallucinating?
Confusion flickered through me, but it vanished the second Caden snarled.
"Shut the fuck up, Carrie." His voice dropped into something feral and lethal. "If you want to keep breathing, leave now—before I kill you for laying a hand on my mate."
Mate.
Carrie's face drained of color. Mine mirrored her shock.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to want her. That was why he had broken me. Why he had erased me.
So why was he choosing me now?
My heart pounded with suspicion. This had to be a trick.
I twisted in his arms again. "Have you lost your mind?" I snapped. "I told you—I am Fleur Swann. An interior designer your fiancée kidnapped and tortured. Untie me and let me go before I call the police."
He stared at me like I'd stabbed him.
"Don't say that," he whispered, voice impossibly gentle. "I'll make her pay. I'll throw her into the dungeon, let her bleed, let her suffer—whatever you want. Just don't look at me like that. Don't deny me."
The words sent ice through my veins.
This was the man I remembered.
"Why would you do that to your precious fiancée?" I scoffed bitterly. "Untie me. Let me leave. I'll forget this ever happened."
His hands moved instantly to my restraints, fingers shaking as he freed my wrists.
"I'm sorry," he muttered. "You're in shock. Trauma does this. I'll take you to a hospital. A doctor will help you remember."
"There is nothing to remember!" I shouted.
"Yeah," he murmured, lifting me effortlessly into his arms, possessive and unyielding. "We'll let a doctor decide."
I struggled, but suddenly, my strength was gone. He carried me out like something precious, something stolen back from death.
Behind us, his men stared in disbelief. Caden Wayne—Alpha, mafia king, executioner—had never cared for anyone.
He stopped once, turning back with eyes like a drawn blade.
"Take care of her," he ordered, gesturing toward Carrie.
Her scream echoed through the halls like a thunderstorm.
"No—Caden! I'm sorry! Please!"
He didn't look back.
As he carried me toward the waiting car, my wolf trembled with the feelings I refused to accept.
No matter how far I ran…
No matter what name I wore…
He still found me.