I knew something was wrong the moment he touched me again.
Not the wrong that came with heat and hunger—those I understood too well—but the wrong that felt like standing at the edge of a cliff and realizing the ground had no intention of giving way.
We were not in a bed this time.
We were standing in the narrow kitchen of my rented apartment, dawn bleeding through the thin curtains, dust motes floating like silent witnesses. I had told him to leave. I remembered saying the words clearly. I remembered meaning them. Yet there he was, close enough that his breath warmed the skin beneath my ear, close enough that my curse stirred and stretched like a beast waking from sleep.
Every man before him had triggered the same sequence.
A tightening in my chest.
A pressure behind my eyes.
The sharp, terrible certainty that death was already counting backward.
But with him—
There was resistance.
I turned abruptly, putting space between us, my heart hammering so violently I thought it might crack my ribs. "Don't," I said. The word came out harsher than intended. "You need to go. Now."
He looked at me the way people do when they don't believe the danger you're warning them about. Calm. Curious. Stubborn. His eyes—those unsettling, too-aware eyes—studied my face as if I were a puzzle he refused to walk away from unfinished.
"You're shaking," he said.
"Because you're still here."
I grabbed my coat from the chair, fingers clumsy, pulse roaring in my ears. "I told you last night was a mistake."
He didn't move. "You didn't look like you thought so."
I laughed, sharp and humorless. "People often confuse silence with consent. And survival with safety."
That got his attention.
He stepped back at last, hands raised in surrender—but the space he gave me felt symbolic rather than real. The air still thrummed between us. My wolf paced inside my bones, unsettled, confused.
This was the moment.
This was always the moment.
Where the curse completed its circle.
I waited for the pain to begin.
It didn't.
Seconds stretched. Then a minute. Then another. I felt it then—a pressure, yes, but not the crushing finality I knew too well. It was like my curse had reached out, found him… and hesitated.
I swallowed hard.
"What are you?" I whispered before I could stop myself.
His brow furrowed. "Human."
The lie slid off him too easily.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to breathe. Don't panic. Panic leads to mistakes. Mistakes lead to bodies.
"I need you to leave," I said again, more quietly. "Please."
He hesitated. Then nodded. "All right."
Relief hit me so fast my knees nearly buckled.
He walked to the door, paused with his hand on the handle, and looked back. "You're afraid of yourself," he said. It wasn't a question. "But you shouldn't be alone."
The door closed behind him before I could answer.
I locked it. Then slid down against it, breathing like I'd just outrun death.
Because I had.
And so had he.
---
I didn't sleep.
I sat on the floor until the sun fully rose, replaying every second of the night and morning in brutal detail. The way his pulse had felt beneath my fingers. The steadiness of his breathing. The unmistakable fact that he was alive.
Alive.
By now, he should have been dead.
I had buried men with less intimacy than that.
My hands began to shake again, this time with something dangerously close to hope.
No. I crushed it immediately.
Hope was a luxury my kind couldn't afford.
By noon, I had convinced myself of a simpler explanation: delayed reaction. Perhaps the curse needed time. Perhaps he would collapse somewhere far from me, and I would never know.
That thought hurt more than it should have.
I left the apartment, pulling my hood low, senses stretched thin. Every sound felt too loud. Every scent too sharp. I half-expected to smell blood on the wind.
Instead, I smelled him.
Alive.
I froze mid-step.
Across the street, leaning against a lamppost like he belonged there, was the man who should not exist.
He straightened when he saw me, a slow smile spreading across his face. "You ran pretty fast this morning."
My vision tunneled. "You shouldn't be here."
"And yet," he said lightly, pushing off the post, "here I am."
He walked toward me, unafraid, each step echoing like a challenge to the laws that governed my life.
I backed up instinctively. "Stay away."
He stopped just out of arm's reach. Close enough that my wolf rose again, bristling—not with hunger, but recognition.
That scared me more than anything.
"I don't know what you think I am," he said, voice low now, serious, "but whatever it is, it didn't kill me."
A sharp pain lanced through my head.
Images flickered—silver light, a moon split by shadow, a roar trapped behind human lungs.
I staggered.
He caught me.
The world tilted, and for one suspended heartbeat, I was pressed against him, fully, undeniably.
Nothing happened.
No scream.
No tearing pain.
No death.
Instead, my curse recoiled.
I gasped, clutching his shirt as the truth slammed into me with terrifying clarity.
He wasn't immune.
He was stronger.
Stronger than the curse that had defined my existence.
Stronger than fate itself.
His arms tightened around me. "You okay?"
I looked up at him, really looked—and saw it then, flickering beneath the surface of his eyes.
The Alpha.
Unawakened.
Unclaimed.
And standing in the exact place where men always died.
Far away, somewhere deep in my bones, I felt the Moon stir.
And I knew—
If I didn't run now, everything would change.
Behind him, shadows shifted.
Someone was watching us.
I pulled away abruptly, heart slamming. "You need to leave the city," I said, panic clawing its way up my throat. "Tonight."
His jaw tightened. "Why?"
Because the moment the pack senses you, I won't be the only one hunting you, I thought.
Before I could answer, a sharp, unmistakable howl split the air.
Not mine.
Not his.
But close.
Too close.
I turned slowly toward the sound, dread flooding my veins.
They had found me.
And now—they had found him too.