Sage's Point of View
I'm pouring beer number forty-seven when my hand starts to shake.
Not from the weight of the pitcher. From something else. Something inside me that's trying to wake up. My wolf. She pushes against the walls I built around her six months ago, desperate and clawing and refusing to stay dead.
I push her back down harder.
The bar is packed tonight. Thursday nights at Rookie's are always like this. Humans packed shoulder to shoulder, sweating and laughing and doing shots they'll regret tomorrow. None of them know I'm not human. None of them know that the quiet bartender girl with the tired eyes used to belong to a world they couldn't even imagine.
I'm dead to that world now anyway.
"Sophie, more whiskey," a customer yells, snapping his fingers like I'm a dog. I pour the drink without looking at his face. I stopped looking at people's faces months ago. It's easier that way. When you don't see them as real, you can't feel bad about ignoring them.
Riley, the other bartender, slides past me with a tray of empty glasses. She's human and beautiful and everything just comes easy to her. She doesn't have a wolf trapped inside her like a bomb waiting to explode. She doesn't go home to a basement apartment with no furniture except a mattress. She doesn't spend three hours every night writing in a journal about how tired she is of breathing.
"You okay, Soph?" Riley asks, and I hate that she cares. Care is dangerous. Care makes you vulnerable. Care gets you hurt.
"Fine," I say. It's a lie. I've become very good at lying.
The truth is that I haven't been fine since I got in that car six months ago. I haven't been fine since the Alpha King of the entire werewolf realm offered me his hand and I was too broken to take it. Instead, I ran away. I always run away. It's what broken things do.
After I left Kael's Fortress that night, I drove for three days straight. I went as far north as I could. I picked a random city on a map. I became Sophie. I got fake papers from someone who didn't ask questions. I found this apartment in the basement of a building that smells like mold and cigarettes. I found this job pouring drinks for people who wouldn't care if I disappeared tomorrow.
I built a life on top of a graveyard.
The rejection from Cohen metastasized inside me like poison. It's not just that he didn't want me anymore. It's that he proved what I always knew. That I'm fundamentally broken. That something inside me is wrong. That nobody will ever want me because I'm not worth wanting.
Even an Alpha King couldn't want me.
When Kael looked at me with those strange silver eyes, I thought maybe he could see something different. I thought maybe the broken parts of me didn't matter to someone like him. But I was lying to myself. He probably just wanted to use me. Everyone wants to use Omegas for something. We're small. We're easy to control. We're good for strategic marriages and pack alliances.
I wasn't going to be anyone's tool again.
So I ran.
For six months I've been running from the life that could have killed me slowly. For six months I've been dead inside and calling it survival. For six months I've been pushing my wolf down so hard that some days I forget she exists.
Except nights like tonight when she wakes up screaming.
I excuse myself to the bathroom and lock the door. I grip the sink and stare at my reflection. The girl looking back at me is a stranger. She's pale because she never goes outside in sunlight. She's thin because she forgets to eat. She's got dark circles under her eyes because she doesn't sleep anymore. She looks like someone who died six months ago and nobody bothered to tell her body.
"Stay down," I whisper to my wolf, to myself, to the girl in the mirror. "Please just stay down."
My wolf whimpers but she listens. She always does.
I go back to work. The night drags on like it always does. Drunk people say stupid things. One guy tries to touch my arm and I move before he can. Another guy leaves a hundred-dollar tip and tells me I should smile more. I don't smile. I don't do anything except exist in the space between alive and dead.
By 2 AM, the bar is clearing out. I'm wiping down the counter when Riley appears with her jacket on.
"I'm heading out," she says. "You good to close?"
"Yeah, fine."
Riley hesitates. She's been my only friend since I got here and she doesn't know the first thing about who I actually am. She doesn't know about pack bonds or fated mates or the fact that I'm a supernatural creature hiding in a human bar. She just knows that I'm running from something and she's chosen not to ask what.
Sometimes I think that's the best kind of friend to have.
"There was a guy in here earlier," Riley says, and something in her tone makes me look up. "Weird looking. Lots of scars. He sat in the back booth for like two hours and didn't order anything. Just watched."
My entire body goes still.
"Watched what?" I ask, and I can hear the fear in my voice.
"Watched you," Riley says. "He had these intense eyes, Soph. Like, really intense. Kind of scary. When I asked if he wanted a drink, he just said no and kept staring at you."
The bar suddenly feels too small. The walls are closing in. My wolf is screaming again and this time I can't push her down. She's breaking through the barriers I built because she knows something I don't want to know.
Someone found me.
"Did he say anything?" I ask, trying to sound casual. Trying not to sound like my heart is trying to escape my chest.
"No, but he left this." Riley pulls out a business card and hands it to me. It's black. Expensive looking. On it is just an address and a phone number. No name. No explanation.
I take the card with shaking hands.
"He said you'd know what it means," Riley adds. "He said tell Sophie that the King is patient but not forever."
The King.
There's only one king in my world. There's only one man who would leave a card like this. There's only one person who could find me in a basement bar in a random human city after six months of hiding.
Kael Blackthorne.
"Riley, I need you to go home," I say quietly. "Don't come back tomorrow. Tell them you're sick."
"What? Soph, what's happening?"
"Please just trust me."
Riley leaves without asking more questions, which tells me how scared I look. After she's gone, I lock the front door and stand alone in the empty bar. I look down at the black card.
My hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold it.
The King is patient but not forever.
He found me. After six months of thinking I was safe, of thinking I could build a life where nobody knew what I was, he found me. And he's letting me know that he's not going to wait much longer for me to decide.
That he's coming for me whether I like it or not.
I could run again. I could grab what little I have and disappear to another city, another identity, another basement apartment where I slowly die inside. I could spend the rest of my life running from the one person who actually saw me as something other than broken.
Or I could finally stop running.
My wolf howls inside me. Not in fear. In something else. In recognition. In the knowledge that the man who marked her as his mate is finally close enough for her to feel him again.
I look at the black card one more time.
Then I pick up my phone and dial the number.
A man answers on the first ring like he was waiting. Like he knew I would call.
"You took long enough," Kael Blackthorne says, and his voice is exactly how I remember it. Low and dangerous and filled with promises of things I'm terrified to want.
"How did you find me?" I ask.
"I never stopped looking," he says simply. "I'm patient, Sage, but I'm not a good man. And I've run out of patience. There's a car waiting outside your apartment building right now. Get in it or I'll come get you myself. Either way, you're coming with me."
The line goes dead.
I'm standing in an empty bar holding a dead phone and a black card, and suddenly I understand that my life as Sophie is over.
The Alpha King just took my choice away.
And the worst part is I'm not sure I mind anymore.