LYRA'S POV
My fingers wouldn't stop shaking.
I sat at my desk in the Alpha's office, staring at the reservation confirmation email that I'd just sent to the private dining room. Tonight at 7 PM. Table for two. One candle. One bottle of wine. Everything perfect for a romantic dinner between the Alpha and the woman he was going to choose over me.
Over a woman he didn't even know existed.
"You okay?"
I jumped. My coworker Sarah was standing in the doorway with a stack of files, looking at me with actual concern. Sarah was one of the few people who sometimes acknowledged my presence, which made this moment even worse.
"Fine," I said automatically. "Just busy."
She nodded and left, and I was alone again with the confirmation email glowing on my screen like a death sentence.
This was it. This was the moment. By tomorrow morning, Zev and Rebecca would have spent an entire evening together. They would have talked about pack matters and strategic alliances. Rebecca would have laughed at his jokes. Rebecca would have made him feel less alone for the first time in his life.
And tomorrow, the entire pack would know that the Alpha was moving forward with Rebecca Cole as his potential mate.
My wolf went insane.
She didn't scream. She didn't howl. She did something worse. She pressed against the inside of my chest so hard I could barely breathe. She clawed at my insides like she was trying to escape from a cage. She knew what was happening. She knew this was the end of everything.
I grabbed my bag and left work without telling anyone where I was going. The compound was already starting to settle into evening mode. Wolves were heading to dinner, to meetings, to their lives that mattered. I moved through them invisible, like always, and nobody even glanced at me.
By the time I reached the forest edge, the sun was just starting to set. The trees were dark and heavy with shadow. The air smelled like pine and earth and something wild that called to the part of me that wasn't human anymore.
I found my favorite clearing about a mile into the woods. It was hidden from the main compound, protected by dense trees on all sides. This was where I came when the weight of being invisible got too heavy to carry. This was where my wolf got to be free.
I stripped off my clothes and left them in a pile against a tree. The shift always hurt a little bit, bones cracking and reforming, skin burning as fur erupted across my body. But it was a good kind of pain. It was the pain of becoming something real instead of something fake.
My wolf form was small compared to other pack wolves. I wasn't an Alpha female. I wasn't even particularly strong in my shifted state. But I was fast, and I was quiet, and I could disappear into the forest like I'd never been there at all.
Kind of like my human form.
I started running.
The first mile felt good. My legs pumped beneath me and my claws dug into the soft forest ground and for just a moment, I could pretend that I was running toward something instead of away from something. I could pretend that this forest was leading me somewhere that made sense instead of just deeper into darkness.
The second mile, my lungs started to burn.
I didn't care. I ran harder. I ran past the border markers that marked Silverwood territory. I ran until the compound was just a distant glow behind me and the world was nothing but trees and night and the sound of my own desperate breathing.
My wolf wanted to keep running forever.
My wolf wanted to run so far away that she forgot what it felt like to want Zev Reeves. Wanted to run so far away that she forgot he existed. Wanted to run so far that the pain in her chest turned into something she could manage.
But my wolf was a liar.
Because no matter how fast I ran, I could feel him. Feel the pull of something that should have connected us but didn't. Feel the bond that existed in my wolf but not in his. Feel the one-sided love that was eating me alive from the inside out.
The third mile, my legs gave out.
I collapsed against an old oak tree and shifted back to human form, gasping for breath. My skin was slick with sweat. My muscles trembled with exhaustion. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might break through my ribs.
Three years. I'd been carrying this for three years. Three years of watching him work. Three years of memorizing the way he took his coffee. Three years of loving someone who didn't know my last name. Three years of my wolf screaming at me that he was ours, that we were meant for each other, that somewhere in the universe's plan was a reason for this connection.
But the universe was wrong.
The universe was broken.
I was broken.
I sat naked against that tree and I cried like I'd never cried before. Not the quiet tears I'd cried in my apartment. Real tears. The kind that came from somewhere deep and broken inside you. The kind that came from giving up hope.
By now, Zev was sitting across from Rebecca. She was laughing at something he said. She was touching his arm. She was looking at him like he was worth the wait, worth the effort, worth believing in.
And he was. He absolutely was worth all of that.
But not to me. Not anymore. Not when it was clear that he would never see me the way I saw him.
I must have sat there for almost an hour. Long enough that the tears dried up and all I felt was numb. Long enough that my breathing slowed down. Long enough that I almost convinced myself I could survive this.
That was when I heard it.
A sound that didn't belong in the forest.
Footsteps. Heavy. Deliberate. Moving through the trees like someone who wasn't trying to hide. My wolf jerked to attention immediately, all that exhaustion forgotten, all that despair pushed aside by something sharper. Danger.
I wasn't alone in the forest anymore.
I scrambled to my feet, every nerve suddenly on high alert. My eyes scanned the darkness between the trees, looking for the source of the sound. Silverwood wolves wouldn't move this way. They wouldn't be this heavy-footed or this careless.
These were outsiders.
These were wolves that didn't belong on pack territory.
I grabbed my clothes but didn't have time to put them on. Instead, I held them to my chest and started backing away from the footsteps, moving deeper into the forest toward the compound. My wolf was fully awake now, her instinct overriding everything else.
Danger. Intruders. Pack territory being violated.
The footsteps got closer. I heard voices now. Low growls. Pack wolves, but not Silverwood wolves. The scent was different. Sharper. Meaner. These were wolves that smelled like violence and intention.
There were at least four of them.
I ran.
Not away from the compound this time. Toward it. My bare feet crashed through the underbrush and my heart was in my throat and for the first time in my life, being invisible might actually save me. Nobody expected me to be out here. Nobody would be looking for me.
The intruders probably didn't even know I existed.
But they were crossing pack territory with purpose. They were moving like they knew exactly where they were going. They were moving like they had a target and a plan.
My wolf howled inside me, and the sound echoed off the trees like a warning.
Someone was coming to Silverwood Pack.
Someone was coming to hurt someone.
And I was running back to the compound as fast as my legs could carry me because somewhere in that darkness behind me, something was hunting, and somewhere in that compound ahead of me, an Alpha was sitting down to dinner with a woman he didn't want while his pack was in danger and nobody knew anything about it.
Except me.
The one person nobody ever listened to.
The one person who might actually be the only thing standing between Silverwood Pack and disaster.