Isla Grey, the wolfless disappointment her family pretends doesn't exist, has remained invisible for seventeen years. Isla suffers in quiet as she counts down the days until her eighteenth birthday, when she will finally be able to flee, while her ideal sister Celeste shines as the pack's golden child.

However, fate has a nasty sense of humor.
Rowan Blackwood, the future Alpha, her sister's fiancé, and the boy who made her upbringing a living nightmare, is the last person she would ever want to form a mate bond with when her wolf finally appears on her birthday.

Isla makes an instant decision to reject him and flee.
She is no longer the terrified youngster who hid in the dark after five years. As "Grey," a well-known architect in the human world, she is stunning, prosperous, and at last free. However, she learns three things when she is forced to return to Blackwood territory due to a career opportunity:

One: Rowan never came to terms with her rejection. Two: He has spent the last five years looking for her. Three: The most terrifying thing of all is that he's not the harsh boy she remembers.
For Rowan Blackwood wants more than just her return. She is necessary to him. And in order to demonstrate that he is deserving of another opportunity, he will employ every tactic in his toolbox, including coercion, seduction, forced intimacy, and the irresistible pull of a mate link that never really shattered.

Isla, however, has her own secrets. The reasons behind her actual running. secrets about her transformation. And mysteries about the true reason their relationship has the power to either entirely ruin or save the werewolf world.
Rejection, she believed, would liberate them both. She was mistaken.

The coffee cup appears on my desk at exactly 7:00 AM, like magic.


Except it's not magic. It's Rowan Blackwood, standing in the doorway of the construction trailer with that infuriating half-smile that makes my traitorous heart skip.


"Cream, no sugar," he says. "Just how you like it."


I stare at the cup like it might explode. "How do you even remember that?"


"I remember everything about you, Isla." His voice is quiet, serious. "Even the things I should have noticed five years ago but was too much of an idiot to see."


I want to throw the coffee at him. I want to drink it. I want to stop feeling this confusing mess of emotions every time he's near me.


His smile widens like I just gave him a prize.


"Don't get used to it," I mutter, but I'm already taking a sip. It's perfect. Of course it is.


Chapter 9 - The Forced Proximity