Chapter 1I found my kill list three hours after he fucked me like I was the only thing keeping him alive.
Three hours after his teeth scraped my throat. After he pinned my wrists and growled, "Say you're mine, Natalia," while he moved inside me—slow, deep, making me beg for more.
I'd said it. Goddess, I'd screamed it.
Now I'm standing in his office at 3 AM, hands shaking, staring at a piece of paper that just killed me:
[Natalia Kozlov. Eliminate before the alliance. Non-negotiable.]
The date says tomorrow.
I can still smell him on my skin. There's a bruise on my hip—his fingerprints, from when he gripped me, held me down, made me come so hard I forgot my own name.
The whole time, he'd already signed off on killing me?
My back hits the bookshelf. Can't breathe. The den's dead quiet—guards doing rounds, pack asleep in their rooms.
I'd only snuck in here to leave him a love note.
That's who I was.
An idiot in love with a wolf who'd already decided I was disposable.
Declan Ironpeak, future Alpha of the strongest pack on the East Coast, the guy who'd chased me for two years straight, who showed up at my wildlife center every single night until I finally said yes to dinner, who told me I was the only person who ever made him want to be more than just the beast—
He'd ordered someone to kill me.
My brain scrambled to make it make sense. Maybe it was old. Maybe there was another Natalia. But the date was fresh, the ink barely dry, and under my name was a line that killed every excuse:
[She doesn't know anything. Keep it clean. No pain—I owe her that much.]
He owed me that much.
Footsteps in the hallway. I shoved the paper back in the jacket, my heart beating so loud I swear he'd hear it from outside. The door handle turned.
"Nat?"
Declan stood there, no shirt, hair all messed up from sleep, looking worried. Like a guy who woke up and couldn't find his girlfriend. Like a guy in love.
"What are you doing up?" His voice was soft, warm—the same voice that whispered promises in my ear.
I faked a smile. "Couldn't sleep."
He was across the room in three steps, pulling me into his chest, kissing my forehead. "Come back to bed. You're freezing."
I was shaking, and he thought it was cold.
"Declan," I said into his chest, breathing him in—pine trees, campfire smoke, something wild I couldn't name. "Do you love me?"
His arms tightened around me. "Why would you even ask that?"
"Just answer."
He pulled back, tilted my face up, staring at me with those dark eyes that used to make me feel like I was the center of his whole world.
"You know I do," he said. "More than anything."
More than anything—but not more than the pack.
I let him walk me back to bed. Let him hold me. Lay there in the dark with his arm over my waist, listening to him fall asleep, and planned how to get out.
Because the girl who loved Declan Ironpeak died the second she read that paper.
The woman left behind? She was going to survive.
Chapter 2
I was out of the den by sunrise.
I left everything—the clothes he'd bought me, the jewelry, the phone he could track. I took my passport, the emergency cash I kept hidden in a tampon box (the one place no pack wolf would ever look), and the blood oath itself.
Proof. Insurance. A reminder.
My hands were steady as I drove my beat-up Honda—the one Declan always made fun of, the one I'd refused to trade for the truck he offered—straight to the only person in the world I trusted.
My older sister, Maeve.
She opened the door of her Brooklyn apartment in a bathrobe, took one look at my face, and pulled me inside without a word. That was Maeve. She never needed explanations first.
"How long before he comes looking?" she asked, already heading to the kitchen, grabbing a bag and filling it with stuff.
"A few hours. Maybe less." My voice sounded wrong—flat, dead. "He'll wake up, realize I'm gone, and send Matthias first."
Matthias Stormclaw. Declan's Beta. The guy who smiled at me over pack dinners and who, according to that paper, was supposed to kill me.
"Jesus Christ, Nat." Maeve's hands stopped moving. "Matthias? That bastard ate at my Thanksgiving table."
"They all did."
Maeve grabbed my shoulders. "Tell me everything."
So I did. Not just the blood oath—everything. Two years of Declan chasing me, the rush of it, how he made me feel chosen, protected, seen. How his mother, Cora, welcomed me with open arms and home-cooked meals. How I'd fallen so hard I ignored every warning sign—the late-night pack business, the locked rooms, the conversations that stopped when I walked in.
"I thought he was protecting me from the dangerous parts of pack life," I said, my voice breaking for the first time. "Turns out I was the dangerous part."
"Do you know why?" Maeve asked.
"The alliance." I pressed my hands to my temples. "Ironpeak is joining with the Bloodthorn pack. I heard Declan mention it weeks ago—said it would make them unstoppable. But he never told me details."
"And you think you're what he's trading?"
"My name's on a death order, Maeve. I don't need to guess."
She went quiet for a second, then: "The Bloodthorns have a daughter. Lilith."
The name hit me like a punch. I'd seen her once—at some pack gathering Declan took me to. Tall, black-haired, dressed like money, with the kind of cold beauty that didn't look real. She'd watched Declan all night like she owned him, and when I asked about her, he'd laughed it off.
"She's nobody, babe. Old pack politics."
"He's marrying her," I said. Not a question.
Maeve nodded slowly. "That's how pack alliances work. Blood bonds. And if he's bound to Lilith Bloodthorn—"
"Then the human girlfriend who knows his face, his den, his pack—she's a problem."
The word tasted like acid.
"We need to get you out of the country," Maeve said.
"I have a plan." I pulled out my passport. "Professor Whitmore at Columbia offered me a research position in London last year. I said no because Declan wanted me close."
Maeve's face went dark. "Of course he did."
"I'm emailing Whitmore today. If it's still open, I'm on a plane by Friday."
"And if Declan finds you before Friday?"
I reached into my bag and unfolded the blood oath, smoothing it flat on the kitchen table.
"Then I make sure every Council member, every journalist who covers supernatural crime, and every rival pack gets a copy of this. His handwriting. His order. Let's see how the great Declan Ironpeak explains this to his new in-laws."
Maeve stared at me, and for the first time that morning, she almost smiled.
"There she is," she said.
"Welcome back, little sister."
Chapter 3
By noon, Declan had called eleven times.
Not my phone—that was at the bottom of the East River.
He called Maeve, my mom, even my college roommate Anjali, who I hadn't talked to in months.
Maeve played dumb.
"Haven't heard from her. Maybe she needed some space?"
My mom, who knew nothing about Declan's real life and thought he ran some kind of security company, was confused but useless.
"She didn't say anything to me. Is everything okay?"
By 2 PM, Matthias showed up at Maeve's door.
I was hiding in the bedroom, ear pressed to the wall, holding my breath.
"Maeve, hey." Matthias's voice was casual. "Declan's freaking out about Nat. She took off this morning, no note, phone's off. You know how she gets?"
"I don't, actually," Maeve said, ice-cold. "Natalia doesn't freak out. She goes quiet. Big difference."
"Right, right." A pause. "So you haven't seen her?"
"If I had, I'd tell her to call her boyfriend. But I haven't. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a client call in ten minutes."
Maeve was a pack lawyer. She could stare down an Alpha and had, multiple times.
Matthias didn't leave right away. "Look, between us—Declan's a mess. He really cares about her. If she's somewhere safe, just let us know. No one wants trouble."
The guy supposed to kill me was promising no trouble?
After he left, Maeve locked every deadbolt and came to find me.
"He bought it," she said. "For now."
"He'll come back."
"Then we move faster."
Professor Whitmore answered my email within an hour. The position was still open—two-year research fellowship at King's College London, starting in September.
He remembered my thesis on tracking illegal wildlife trade money and said I was his top pick.
I almost laughed. Financial tracking. The skill that made Declan interested in me in the first place—"My girl's so smart, she could audit the whole damn Council"—was now my way out.
Maeve booked me a flight to London for Thursday under her married name. She'd kept her ex-husband's last name specifically for shit like this, she said, though neither of us was laughing.
Wednesday night, I sat on Maeve's couch, staring at the ceiling, couldn't sleep.
My brain kept going back to the same questions.
When did he decide?
Was it before or after he said he loved me?
Was any of it real?
The worst part—the part that made me want to throw up—was remembering the night before I found the oath.
How he'd held my face in his hands, looked right at me, and said, "When this alliance is done, I'm taking you to Ireland. Just us. I want to show you where the pack came from."
He was planning my death and our trip in the same breath.
My new phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number.
[I don't know what happened, but I know you're scared. Don't go back to him. -Rune]
Rune. Declan's younger cousin, the only Ironpeak wolf who'd ever treated me like an actual person instead of the Alpha's pet human. He must've figured out something was wrong.
I typed back: [I'm safe. Don't tell anyone.]
His answer came fast: [Never. Be careful, Nat. Pack council meets Friday. After that, everything changes.]
So Friday was when they'd realize I was gone for good.
Friday was when they'd start hunting.
My flight left Thursday at 6 AM.
