The morning tasted like metal.
Elena woke to a pale strip of light sliding across the ceiling, the city below still fogged and quiet. For a few blessed seconds her mind offered an old life—sun on the White family garden, her mother humming while watering the roses, her father's laugh rising from the kitchen.
Then memory slammed back: the contract; the vows; the night splitting open to reveal fangs and molten-gold eyes.
Her pulse jolted. She sat up, fingers bunching the silk sheet. The guest room was too perfect, a magazine photograph—no clutter, no warmth, only expensive silence.
A firm knock came. "Elena."
She opened the door to Damian in a charcoal suit, every line precise. No monstrous shimmer haunted his skin. Not a hair out of place. If not for the depthless gray of his eyes, last night could have been a fever dream.
"Breakfast," he said.
"Together?" she managed.
"You're my wife. Appearances matter." He was already moving down the hall, expecting her to follow. His presence bent the air; the building seemed to arrange itself around him.
The dining room was a stretch of polished wood and glass. A long table waited with fruit, eggs, toast. Coffee steamed. Ordinary food set like offerings before a god.
Elena took the chair opposite. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking, so she wrapped them around the mug. "So… nothing happened."
"Nothing the world needs to know." He cut toast with the neatness of a surgeon.
"That's not the same as 'nothing,'" she said.
Damian looked up. The room narrowed to the line of his mouth, the tundra of his eyes. "You saw what I am capable of when the moon pulls. You're alive. That means we pretend."
Her laugh scraped her throat. "Pretend until when? Until I forget claws in the glass?"
"Until you learn the rules."
Of course. Rules. She set the cup down with too much force. "Chains, then."
"Locks," he corrected, unbothered. "Locks that keep you inside when the wolves are outside."
"Plural," she said softly. "There are others."
He didn't answer. It was answer enough.
They ate in silence for a minute—two. Outside, the fog thinned. A helicopter stitched a gray seam across the sky.
Damian rose and crossed to a wall panel she'd assumed was decorative. His palm pressed. A seam dissolved, revealing the steel door she'd seen last night. "Show me your hand."
She hesitated.
"Elena." The name left him like a command.
She went to him and set her palm on the scanner. A tone chimed, bright as a drop of water. "Elena White—authorized," said a neutral voice.
He keyed a number. "This opens the safe room. Reverse your birthday. Change it later if you like. But do not forget it."
"Why would I—"
"Because when panic eats memory, numbers remain." He shut the panel; the wall became smooth again. "Next: your phone."
She checked her robe pocket, absurdly startled to find it there. He took it, added a contact labeled Nora—24/7, another labeled Damian—Direct, and one with no name, just a black crescent. "Only reply to these three. Unknown messages do not exist."
"And if I make new friends?" she asked dryly.
"You won't," he said, "until I say you can."
Anger flared. "Do you own the sky, too?"
"I own what I can keep alive."
The words cooled her faster than ice water.
He handed the phone back and reached into his jacket, producing a thin leather pendant strung on black cord. A circle of dark wood hung from it, carved with lines that made her vision prickle if she stared too long. He laid it on her palm; it felt heavier than its size. Warm.
"What is it?"
"A ward," he said. "It dulls your scent. Makes you harder to find. Wear it under your blouse."
Her skin prickled where the leather touched. "Does it protect me from you?"
"It protects you from things that would smell you through walls." A muscle jumped in his jaw. "Including me, if I'm not careful."
Elena swallowed. The pendant was ugly-beautiful—workmanlike, not decorative. She slipped it over her head; it settled at her sternum like a cool coin.
"Now the rules," he said. "Listen, and repeat them back to me."
She stood straighter despite herself.
"One: if I say go to the safe room, you go. No debate. Two: no strangers in the penthouse. Not staff, not friends, not anyone without Nora's clearance. Three: never open the balcony doors after dusk. Four: if you scent metal and pine together, you leave whatever you're doing and lock yourself in steel."
"Metal and pine," she repeated. "Blood and forest."
"Close enough. Five: if you bleed—even a paper cut—you tell me. Immediately."
Her brows knit. "Because you'll smell it."
"Yes."
"Six?" she prompted, because naming the fear turned it into something she could arrange on a shelf.
"Six," he said, "you do not say words you don't understand. Some names travel even when whispered."
Her fingers tightened around the mug. "Like… Alpha?"
He didn't twitch, but the air did. "Like that."
Her heart stuttered. "Who else knows… what you are?"
"Enough people to be a problem," he said. "Too many to list. Fewer than want to."
"And your family?"
"Dead," he said simply.
The single syllable hung between them. To her surprise, grief wove through the bluntness, a thread of iron in ice. "I'm—"
"Don't be." He straightened his cuffs as if buckling emotion back into place. "We leave in forty minutes. Nora will brief you. Wear something you can run in."
"Run?"
His gaze slid to the window and back. "A figure of speech."
She didn't believe him. But she went to dress anyway—cream blouse, slate skirt, flats like he'd told her yesterday. She caught herself in the mirror fastening the ward beneath her collar and didn't recognize the woman who looked back. Her eyes were clearer. Or colder.
When she returned, Damian was at the bar with a thin stack of papers. "Talking points," he said, passing them over. "Memorize what you can. Smile at what you can't."
Elena skimmed the list: philanthropic initiatives; the merger; her role as "community liaison." The last line was handwritten: Short. Polite. Firm. She glanced up in surprise and found his mouth tilted, almost a smile.
"You learn fast," he said.
"So do you," she said before she could stop herself.
Something moved behind his eyes—amusement, maybe. Approval. He tucked it away before it could become anything dangerous. "Let's go."
They stepped into a private elevator that purred when the doors closed, a creature well fed. As they descended, Elena watched their reflections merge on the mirrored wall—her slight frame and his tall shadow. Husband and wife. Cage and key.
She set her shoulders. If this was a cage, she would learn its locks.
The limousine was a moving aquarium—dark glass, bright flashes. Reporters swelled at the curb like a tide, phones raised, eyes hungry. Security parted them, sculpting a path to the hotel's private entrance.
Damian's hand covered hers as they exited. It looked like support. Felt like a command. "Smile," he murmured.
She did. Her mouth took instruction better than her heart.
Inside, Nora was waiting—sleek bob, immaculate suit, a tablet under one arm like a weapon. "Good morning, Mrs. Black." Her voice could have calmed fire. "Here are your cues." She slid a small card into Elena's palm, bullet points printed in heatless font. "If a question turns personal, pivot to charity. If they press, pivot to safety standards. Keep your answers under seven seconds."
"Seven?" Elena asked.
"Eight invites follow-ups," Nora said, perfectly serious. "Also—if a woman with black hair and green eyes approaches, walk away. Call me. Do not engage."
"Selene," Elena said before she could stop herself.
Nora's lashes didn't flicker. "I see you've been briefed."
"Poorly," Damian said, arriving at Elena's shoulder like a storm front. "We're improving that."
"Delighted to assist," Nora said, which Elena suspected was true. She gave Damian a folder, then Elena a small, matte-black sticker shaped like a crescent. "Put this on the back of your phone. It blocks most proximity sharing. And most people's curiosity."
"Most?" Elena echoed.
"Selene doesn't count as 'most,'" Nora said and smiled a pretty, humorless smile. "Shall we?"
The ballroom was a theater pretending to be a business venue: neutral drape, tasteful lighting, a choir of lenses. Damian took the dais with a knife's confidence. Elena took her seat beside him, hands folded, ward pendant resting cool against her sternum like an extra rib.
The first half hour was muscle memory for him. He spun figures into stories; he fed the room the version of reality he wanted them to swallow. Elena watched the faces—the dazzled, the skeptical, the calculating—and saw mouths begin to mirror his cadence. He was terrifying because he was so good at being human.
Then came the questions.
"Mr. Black," a man called, "your merger promises twenty percent growth in the first year. What safeguards ensure employees aren't the cost?"
Damian answered so smoothly Elena almost clapped. When the next question pivoted to her, she breathed around the tight wire in her throat.
"Mrs. Black, you have limited public experience." The reporter tilted his head. "Some say your marriage is a bailout. Why you?"
Seven seconds. "Rumors aren't spreadsheets," she said. "Judge me by results. Like everyone else."
A murmur rolled through the room. Damian's glance cut to her, sharp, surprised—pleased? It was gone too fast to name.
They made it through six more questions before the interruption arrived. Not a shout. Not a scene. A small, ordinary thing: a gift bag, glossy white, set discreetly at the edge of the stage by a woman Elena didn't recognize.
Nora moved immediately, but Damian was closer. He crouched, lifted the bag, and looked inside. Elena glimpsed it—roses, too black to be real; a coil of silver wire; a card.
His fingers stilled a fraction too long on the wire.
Elena smelled it then—sharp, bright, wrong. Like a coin pressed to the tongue in winter. Metal and pine.
The ward at her sternum warmed.
Damian's face didn't change. He closed the bag, handed it to security, and stood with the ease of a man who had never bled. But as he turned back to the microphone, a pallor licked his mouth. His hand flexed once, twice, like a pianist shaking out a cramp.
"Break," Nora said into her earpiece and was already moving them offstage. Cameras shouted protest; PR smiled them quiet.
In the wings, Elena caught his sleeve. "Are you—"
"Fine," he said. It sounded like a decision, not a condition.
"Silver," she whispered, somehow certain.
His gaze flickered. Approval, unmistakable. "Not much. Enough to sting."
"And the pine?"
"Camouflage." He exhaled through his nose. "They're testing the edges of our stage."
"Our?" she repeated, scandalized that the pronoun warmed her.
"Yours," he corrected, and the warmth froze. "You're the visible risk."
"Great," she said. "I'm a neon target."
"You're also bait that refuses to squeal," Nora said, materializing with bottled water and crisp competence. "I like you."
"I'm flattered?" Elena said weakly.
"Don't be," Nora replied. "It means I'll work you harder."
They finished the press obligations in a tightly choreographed twenty minutes. By the time they slid into the limousine again, Elena's spine ached from holding herself like a statue.
The car door shut. The city's noise flattened. Damian loosened his tie half an inch, an indulgence that would have looked intimate if anyone else were here.
"You did well," he said.
She stared at their reflections in the tinted glass. "I parroted a cue card."
"You didn't flinch," he said. "Most people flinch."
"My mother taught me not to embarrass myself in public." She considered. "She will hate you, by the way."
"I expected as much," he said, almost amused.
They drove. The tower rose to meet them.
As they stepped into the private elevator, Elena's phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number slid across the screen despite the ward-sticker Nora had applied.
Welcome to the week of the moon, little bride. —S
The text was gray, featureless, as if the sender had no country, no company, no rules.
Elena's fingers tightened. She showed Damian.
He read it and smiled without humor. "Delete it."
She did. But the letters had already burned into her bones.
The elevator doors parted onto the private lobby. Quiet. Too quiet. The welcome mat sat perfectly square, no footprint marring its weave. The air smelled of disinfectant and something else—faint, sappy, like pine needles crushed under a wheel.
Elena's ward warmed again.
Damian's head angled, listening to a frequency she couldn't hear. "Inside," he said softly.
The penthouse door opened at his touch. They slipped in. He shut it and threw the bolts in a single smooth motion.
"Safe room?" Elena asked.
"Not yet." He strode to the balcony doors but didn't touch them. "Stay there."
She did, at the edge of the living room rug, feeling like a schoolgirl told to stand behind a line. Her pulse ticked in her throat. The city beyond the glass shone hard and clean, winter-bright. The sky had the look of a blade a moment before it cuts.
Damian's palm hovered about an inch from the glass, not quite touching. Symbols appeared as if breathed up from frost—thin, elegant sigils strung in a crescent. They hadn't been there an hour ago.
"What is that?" she whispered.
"A calling card." His mouth flattened. "Selene was here."
"Here," Elena repeated, nausea rising. "While we were downstairs."
"She enjoys proximity." He turned away from the window and shrugged out of his jacket. "Salt."
"What?"
"Bottom drawer. Kitchen island."
She ran, heart in her mouth, and yanked open drawers until she found a heavy glass jar half full of coarse crystals. She carried it back. He took it, fingers brushing hers—warm, human, startling.
Damian poured a thin line along the track of the balcony doors, then snapped the jar shut. He traced a quick, precise pattern in the salt with one blunt nail: circle, cross, crescent.
"Will that stop her?" Elena asked.
"It will make her think," he said. "Thinking slows hunters down."
"Will it stop you?"
His eyes lifted. "If I lose the thread," he said quietly, "you won't ask that question."
Her mouth went dry. "Then don't lose it."
A sound cut through the apartment—a soft scrape against steel. Not inside. Above. Elena looked up at the crown molding. A new line had been added since this morning, shallow and gleaming. A neat crescent scratched into metal.
"Elevator and lobby are clean," Nora's voice crackled through the intercom by the door, calm as always. "But the camera caught a dark-haired woman on the roof two minutes ago. She smiled at the lens."
"Archive the footage and send it to Victor," Damian said. "Then tell security to check every service hatch within three floors."
"Already done," Nora replied. "Also, your 6 p.m. moved to 6:30."
"Bless you," he said, and the intercom clicked off.
Elena blinked. "You can make jokes right now?"
"I can do several things at once," he said. "Including this." He turned to her, holding out his hand. There was a thin leather bracelet in his palm, matched to the pendant at her chest. "Wear it next to your skin."
"What does this one do?"
"Masks your pulse," he said. "Some of us track by rhythm."
"You say 'us' like it doesn't include you."
"I say 'us' because it does." His gaze searched her face, not kindly or unkindly—curious, as if trying to measure the exact shape of her fear. "I was born to a pack, Elena. I learned to leave it."
"And Selene?"
"She prefers an audience," he said. "And a stage with glass walls."
She slid the bracelet on. It was snug; the leather warmed to her skin. "Teach me something useful," she said abruptly. "If I'm bait, I refuse to be helpless."
Surprise ghosted over his expression. Then he nodded once, businesslike. "All right. Close your eyes."
She did. The room sharpened. "Breathe through your nose," he said. "In. Out. Tell me what you smell."
"Coffee," she said, "salt, leather."
"The city," he prompted.
She focused. Under the obvious, there was something darker, resin-sweet, like sap burned on hot metal. "Pine. And… iron."
"Good. That's threat." His voice was a steady line. "Now listen. What do you hear that isn't the apartment?"
"The elevator," she said. "Cables. Wind."
"Excellent." A pause. "And me?"
She almost said your breathing, but forced herself to notice more: the slight rasp of fabric when he shifted, the thickness in his swallow—leftover from the silver. "You're hurt."
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing if it slows you," she said, opening her eyes.
He was closer than she realized, the city catching in his irises. "Worried?"
"Statistically," she said briskly, "my odds improve if my terrifying husband is at full capacity."
A low sound that could have been a laugh stirred his mouth and vanished. "You are… inconvenient," he said.
"You married me," she said. Then, because she couldn't help it: "Why me?"
His gaze flickered. "Because when we met for the first time, you did not beg."
She frowned. "We met?"
"At a charity auction," he said. "You were speaking to a vendor about late invoices. You did not know who I was. You only said, 'People should be paid for the work they do.'"
She remembered. A winter gala. A button that wouldn't stay closed. A man walking past with a face like a knife. "You were there."
"I was," he said. "And I needed an anchor."
"An alibi," she said, still smarting from breakfast.
"A mirror," he said. "One that told me whether I had crossed a line I couldn't return from."
Before she could answer, the lights flickered. Not the polite dip of a building test. A hard, hungry stutter. The pendant at her chest went briefly hot, then cold.
"Safe room," Damian said.
"What about—"
"Now."
She ran. The wall parted under her palm like a held breath let go. She stepped inside; the door sealed. The room hummed. The screen bloomed to life with feeds: entryway, living room, balcony.
On the balcony camera a shadow slid into place—female shape, hair feathering on wind. Selene. She leaned her cheek to the glass as if it were a lover's palm and fogged it with a breath that wrote a crescent. Her smile was theater-pretty and predator-true.
Damian stood inside, hands loose at his sides, a fixed point in a shifting world. He did not go to the door. He did not acknowledge her at all.
Selene's mouth formed words Elena couldn't hear. She didn't need audio to read them.
Run, little bride.
The apartment went dark. Not just the lamps—the city beyond, as if someone had thrown a shawl over the skyline. The feeds fuzzed. The ward at Elena's sternum thrummed like a second pulse.
A scraping began—slow, deliberate—at the penthouse door. The steel bolts shivered as if something changed its shape on the other side to fit the lock.
Elena's breath left her. "Damian—"
His face turned toward the camera—as if he could see her through it—and he spoke, every word razor-clean.
"Good girl. Do not move. Whatever you hear, do not open that door."
The scraping paused. Then a voice, clear as a bell, flowed through the intercom—female, lilting, amused.
"Let's make a widow before the honeymoon, shall we?"
Claws sketched lightly against steel.
The first bolt slid back.