Chapter 1My body was found in my Alpha's warehouse.
Dumped between crates of wine worth more than my life ever meant to him.
Edward fixed his leather cuffs, studied my destroyed face, and told his pack enforcers:
"Find out who she is."
I stood three feet from the man who marked me - and he didn't recognize me.
But then again, he never really saw me when I was alive.
The call came at 2 AM. One of Edward's wolves discovered me during a routine perimeter sweep at the Crane pack's import warehouse on the waterfront.
My Alpha - Edward Crane, the most feared wolf in this city - didn't flinch when he saw the blood.
He'd seen worse.
He'd done worse.
Dr. Silas, the pack physician, crouched beside my body, his face grim beneath his mask. His wolf stirred beneath his skin - I could smell his unease.
"She was young. Mid-twenties," he reported, adjusting his gloves. "Cause of death - throat torn open. But that was the mercy."
He paused.
"Before that, she was tortured. Days, at least. Multiple broken bones, burns, ligature marks on both wrists. Whoever did this took their time."
My face was gone.
Destroyed deliberately. Acid, Silas determined. Whoever ordered the hit wanted me unrecognizable.
Edward's jaw tightened - not with grief, but with territorial rage.
A low growl rumbled from his chest.
Someone had dumped a corpse on Crane pack land. An insult. A provocation.
"Any ID?" he asked flatly.
"Nothing. No wallet, no phone. Just this."
Silas held up an evidence bag. Inside was a delicate chain necklace, crusted with dried blood. Hanging from it: a small handcarved olive-wood rosary.
My heart - or whatever ghosts have instead - clenched.
I had carved that rosary with my own hands.
Three weeks of work. My fingers bleeding from the delicate tools, sanding each tiny bead until it was silk-smooth.
When I gave it to Edward, he'd stared at it in silence.
For one breathtaking moment, I thought he was moved.
Then Tiana walked in.
"What is that?" she'd laughed, lifting it with two manicured fingers as if it were something dead. "Edward, darling, please tell me you're not wearing homemade jewelry. You have a reputation."
He'd snatched it from my hands without a word and tossed it on the counter.
His eyes never left Tiana's face.
I found it later in the trash, where Tiana had swept it. I wore it around my own neck instead.
Now Edward glanced at the evidence bag, looked away, and said: "Bag it. Check for prints."
Dr. Silas cleared his throat.
"There's something else, Alpha. The victim was pregnant. Approximately two months."
Silence.
Edward's eyes bled to amber. His wolf surged forward - briefly, violently.
"Someone kills a pregnant wolf and dumps her on Crane territory?" His voice dropped to a snarl. "Find who did this. No one walks away breathing."
I watched him - aching.
Two months pregnant.
Exactly what I'd told him five days ago.
We were in the kitchen. I'd made his favorite - pasta alla norma, his mother's recipe. He hadn't touched it.
"Dom, I'm pregnant. Two months."
He had laughed. Actually laughed.
"We haven't touched each other in months. Whose bastard is it?"
"Yours. That night - two months ago - you came home drunk - "
"Tiana was with me that night. She said you didn't even bother coming home."
Tiana lied.
Like she always did.
I'd been there. I'd carried him to bed, held his head when he was sick. In the dark, barely conscious, he'd reached for me. Called my actual name for once.
But by morning, Tiana had rewritten the story, as she always did.
Now Edward pulled out his phone and typed a message while my blood dried on his warehouse floor.
Sign the dissolution papers by tomorrow, Willa. I'm done waiting.
The text went to a phone that would never buzz again.
Chapter 2
Dr. Silas returned to the examination room at noon, his face drawn with exhaustion and something deeper - pity.
Edward leaned against the wall, arms crossed, watching with the detachment of an Alpha who'd seen a thousand corpses.
But he'd never seen a death like mine.
"The acid on the face was post-mortem - done to prevent identification," Silas explained, his gloved hands moving carefully over me. "But the torture was ante-mortem. She was alive for all of it."
He lifted my left hand.
A long, thin scar ran across my inner wrist. White. Healed.
"Old wound," Silas murmured. "Self-harm?"
Edward glanced over. "Not relevant. Focus on the murder."
Not relevant.
That scar was a six-inch souvenir from the night I saved his life.
Eight months ago. A meeting with the Lockwood pack had gone wrong. Gunfire erupted in the restaurant. Edward's guard Lucas went down first.
I wasn't supposed to be there.
But Tiana had whispered to me that morning - her sugar-sweet poison smile - that tonight would be "dangerous" and I should "say goodbye to Dom, just in case."
The eagerness in her eyes chilled me.
So I followed him.
When the Lockwood wolf aimed at Edward from behind a pillar, nobody else saw.
I grabbed a steak knife and slashed my own wrist, lunging at the gunman and smearing blood across his face - blinding him long enough for Lucas to recover and fire.
The shooter went down.
Edward never knew how close he'd come.
Tiana arrived at the aftermath, breathless and beautiful, clutching Edward's arm. "Oh God, are you hurt? I tried to warn you!"
She'd been the one who tipped off the Lockwoods. I knew it. I could never prove it.
My slashed wrist? I told everyone I'd cut it on broken glass.
Edward never asked more. He was too busy comforting Tiana.
Now, in the examination room, his phone played a familiar Italian love song - Tiana's ringtone, the one she'd programmed herself.
"Hey, sweetheart." His voice softened instantly. Melted. A tone he never once used with me.
"Dom! I heard about the warehouse," Tiana cooed. "Are you okay?"
"Fine. Just a mess to clean up. A body."
"How horrible. Has Willa signed those dissolution papers yet?"
Edward's jaw tightened.
"She's not answering her phone."
Tiana sighed - theatrical, rehearsed. "She's probably sulking, trying to guilt you into staying. You know how she is. The little mouse always runs and hides."
"I know," Edward muttered. "She even claimed she was pregnant."
"Oh, that's so sad." Tiana's voice dripped with manufactured sympathy. "A fake pregnancy? That's a new low, even for her."
I listened to them casually dissect my honesty and my worth - while I lay three rooms away with our dead pup inside me.
After Edward hung up, Silas looked at him carefully.
"The level of torture this wasn't random, Dom. It was personal. A message."
"Security cameras were disabled between 1 and 4 AM," his head of security added. "Professionally done."
"Professionals," Edward repeated. His eyes flickered amber again. "This was a hit."
Yes, Dom.
Ordered by the wolf you just called sweetheart.
As his wolves filed out with evidence bags, Silas gently placed the rosary back in its bag. The tiny olive-wood cross caught the light.
On its back, beneath the dried blood, two carved letters waited to be found.
But no one had looked closely enough yet.
Chapter 3
The phone call came at dawn.
Not Tiana's ringtone. Not his wolves.
A furious voice Edward couldn't ignore - though he'd tried.
"Where the hell is Willa, Alpha?"
Kendra Hunter. My best friend. A bartender at one of his clubs - the only reason she had his direct number.
And the only wolf in this city who wasn't afraid of him.
"Not now, Kendra."
"She missed her ultrasound this morning. She never misses appointments. I've called her thirty-seven times. Voicemail every time."
"She's playing games," Edward said. "Avoiding the dissolution papers."
"Dissolution papers?" Kendra's voice went razor-sharp. "You're dissolving your bond with your pregnant mate?"
"She's not pregnant. It's another manipulation."
"I was at the clinic with her, Edward. I SAW the ultrasound. Two months. A healthy heartbeat. Your pup."
Something flickered across his face. Gone before it could take hold.
"She probably got knocked up by someone else - "
"When was the last time you actually looked at your mate? Talked to her?" Kendra's voice cracked with fury. "Did you even notice she hasn't been home in five days?"
Five days.
Had it really been five days?
The last time he'd seen me was in the kitchen. When I told him about the pup. When he laughed in my face.
After that? Tiana. Always Tiana. Her apartment. Her "treatments." Expensive dinners where she sparkled and I was never invited.
"She's a grown wolf," he said finally. "She can take care of herself."
"Can she? Your precious Tiana spent two years making sure Willa has no friends, no money, and no way out. She's alone, Edward. And now she's missing."
"Don't start - "
"Check your damn cameras!" Kendra screamed. Then, quieter: "Something is wrong. I feel it."
He hung up.
He wasn't going to let Kendra Hunter make him worry about a mate who'd done nothing but burden him since their binding ceremony.
Our binding.
I remembered it differently.
It was a transaction.
My father owed the Crane pack a debt he couldn't repay, and I was the payment. A bride - no, a sacrifice - in exchange for a life.
The ceremony was quick, cold, civil. Tiana sat in the front row wearing white.
"Oh no, I had no idea!" she'd gasped, pressing a delicate hand to her chest. "I would never upstage the binding!"
At the reception, she cornered me in the bathroom.
Her nails dug into my arm as she whispered:
"Don't get comfortable, little mouse. You're warming his den until I'm ready. He'll never love you."
I looked at my reflection - a 22-year-old wolf in a borrowed dress who'd just been bound to a stranger to save her father - and knew she was probably right.
But I tried anyway.
God, how I tried.
Back at the warehouse, the investigation continued without the wolf it was about.
A young enforcer - new, keen-eyed - held the rosary under a magnifying light.
"Alpha, there are initials carved into the back of the cross."
Edward looked up from his phone.
"E.C. Could be the victim's initials - or someone she knew."
E.C. Edward Crane.
My love letter to him, carved into olive wood with bleeding fingers.
He noted it without a flicker. "Run it through the database."
It was right there - his own initials, carved by his mate's hands - and he looked straight through it.
I turned to find old Lucas standing in the doorway, his weathered face frozen. His eyes were locked on the rosary.
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
"Alpha," Lucas whispered. "I need to talk to you. Alone."
