Chapter 1
The flames roared like a living beast, devouring everything in their path. Smoke thickened the air, choking me until every breath felt like swallowing knives. My throat burned raw. My legs buckled. My vision blurred. The heat clawed at my skin like it wanted to tear me apart.
The exit was already sealed off, consumed by fire. The sound of my screams drowned in the crackle of flames and the groan of falling beams.
No one was coming to save me.
Until I heard it.
A low growl, deep and guttural.
The sound of a wolf.
Then, the sharp crack of glass shattering cut through the inferno–and through the smoke burst a tall, broad–shouldered figure. Burn marks streaked his clothes, embers still clung to him, but I recognized those glowing blue eyes instantly.
Alaric.
His wolf surged beneath his skin, alive and raging. His gaze locked on mine, steady and sure.
“I told you I’d find you,” he rasped. His voice was hoarse, but the strength in it hit me like a jolt.
My legs gave out and I collapsed–but he caught me before I hit the floor.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I whispered.
“Watch you die in here?” he snapped, voice trembling. “Not a damn chance.”
He wrapped me in his arms, shielding me with his own body as debris rained down from above.
But the fire was merciless. It swallowed us whole.
I clung to Alaric’s chest, the only warmth that wasn’t trying to kill me, as the last of my strength slipped away and the world began to fade.
And just before darkness claimed me, I heard him whisper against my ear, “I was the first one your wolf recognized. Not Damon.”
But it was too late.
I slipped into the void.
A voice dragged me back.
“Alaric, Mahina made this herself. You have to try it!”
At the dining table, Damon slid a bowl of creamy soup across to his older brother–Alpha Alaric–who had just returned from abroad. His tone was bright, eager, like he was offering up some rare treasure.
I jerked my head up, heart thudding as I looked across the table at Alaric.
He wore a sharp black suit, every line tailored to perfection. Under the crystal chandelier, his chiseled features looked colder than ever–strong, brooding, unreadable.
He wasn’t touching the spoon. Just staring straight at me, dark eyes heavy with something I couldn’t quite name.
That’s when it hit me.
I had been reborn.
In my last life, Damon–infertile from birth–had drugged his own brother and tricked him into spending the night with me.
His plan was simple: get me pregnant fast, and use the child to win favor with his grandfather, the Alpha King, Ulric.
It worked. Once I conceived, he used our unborn child to take control of sixty percent of the Rosethorn Pack’s shares. And once he had what he wanted? He threw me into a basement and treated me like a prisoner. Like trash.
Every day, he came down to take out his rage on me. I never understood how my mate could be so cruel–until the day his mistress, drunk on power and fury, let something slip while whipping me for her amusement.
That’s when everything made sense.
The child I’d carried wasn’t his but was Alaric’s, a truth Damon had orchestrated, only to then turn around and, brand me a disgrace, and call our child a Chapter 1
stain.
Knowing the truth, I used the last of my strength to set that basement on fire, locking Damon and his lover inside.
We all died in that blaze.
Or so I thought.
“Alaric, come on! Don’t let Mahina’s cooking go to waste,” Damon urged again, voice thick with fake cheer. But I caught it now–the twitch of tension in his face, the way greed twisted his features.
I glanced at the soup.
Creamy. Homemade.
I made that soup for Damon, but he was just offering it to his brother like a trophy.
Last time, I thought it was sweet—just brothers being close.
Now I saw it for what it was.
A setup.
‘Oh? Mahina made it herself?” Alaric said, voice low.
“Then I’d better not waste it.”
He looked at me again—deeply, knowingly–then reached for the spoon.
And just like that, I was back in that fire again. His arms around me. His voice in my ear.
“I told you I’d find you.”
This time, I didn’t clutch Damon’s sleeve and beg him for attention.
This time, I smiled gently and said, “Alaric, if you like it, there’s more in the pot.”
Both men looked at me in unison.
Damon’s expression flickered–briefly twisted into something strange–but he said nothing.
