I let the present close back around me.
Suzette trembled at my left. She tugged at Johan’s sleeve like a child. “Fake. All of it. She edited this. She is nobody, cast out by our family. How could she be Sunny?” Her voice climbed into panic and cracked.
Even Johan looked thrown. He had expected a scene. He had not expected receipts. His attention cut to me like a blade. “Is this where you wanted to take it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I want what belongs to me.”
He gave a short humorless sound. “You would be dead without me. I pulled you out of that house. So this is how you pay my kindness?”
He pushed past me to shield Suzette with his body. She clung to his arm like a lifeline.
“Tell me she is lying,” Suzette whispered up at him. “Please.”
“She is not the Alchemist,” he said without pause.
Cold sluiced through me like lake water.
I should have expected it. Still, the bite surprised me. He had been the one warm thing once.
Now he was the one putting me back out in the dark.
Fine. There was one more truth to place on the glass.
The mirrorstone pulsed as if it had a will.
Another scene rolled over the wall. Ten years ago I knelt on a cracked tile floor with my hand in a witch’s.
Dark Spirit Healer was what wolves called her.
He took my soul-bone and left me unable to shift. I did it because Johan lay dying and I could not watch it happen.
That debt had been paid in full before any of this.
The video flowed again. Johan stood at the terrace rail with a phone to his ear. The audio cleaned itself as if the stone wanted everyone to hear. Suzette’s voice drifted through like sugar and smoke.
“Tomorrow is the LunaSkin launch,” she cooed. “Let me be the Alchemist. I want to be remembered for something before I go.”
There was a pause. Then Johan’s voice, quiet and tired. “It is risky.” Another pause. “Fine. I will say it is you.”
The hall sucked in one giant breath. It was almost funny, the sound of a hundred wolves realizing the same thing at once.
Jessica’s POV
“Spying on you?” I let out a small laugh that felt thinner than I wanted. “No, Alpha. I collect memories. I never thought I would need them to protect myself.”
Johan’s jaw locked. He pointed at me like I was something he finally recognized and hated. “I thought you were innocent, Jessica. Behind that face, you’re cruel. You enjoy hurting people. How could I be so blind?”
My chest went tight.
All I did was defend myself, yet somehow I was the villain again. The big bad wolf in their story.
My wolf pacing inside me did not help. She pressed hard against my ribs, restless and furious, wanting to bare her teeth and lunge.
It was then that a soft thud broke the room’s focus.
Suzette crumpled.
Lydia shrieked, rushing over. “My daughter! What happened?” She snapped her head toward me, eyes sharp and wild. “This is your fault. You pushed her too far.”
“Healers, now,” Johan said. His voice had gone cold, all Alpha, no man. He lifted his face and pinned me with a glare that stripped the air from my lungs. “If she gets worse, you’ll answer for it.”
He ran to Suzette.
The medic team slid in around them, checking her pulse, scent, and breath, murmuring low. Lydia cried and stroked Suzette’s hair. I stood there, watching Johan’s back.
Ten years ago, that same back carried me out of Halloway’s cages. I had been half dead, slick with blood and ash, and he was panic in motion. Back then, that figure looked tall enough to hold up the sky.
Now he knelt for someone else.
And I finally saw him as he was. A man with a history. A man with a choice.
And he was not choosing me.
I steadied my breathing, in and out.
My eyes still burned as I watched them.
I thought I was ready to see Johan’s betrayal laid bare, but I stood there frozen.
Because I knew that if I moved now, I might shatter into a million pieces.
“That’s enough torture, lady.”
A mint and cedar scent brushed my shoulder.
I realized someone was settling a suit jacket over me, as though he was dropping a shield over my bare skin.
I looked up.
The man with the icy eyes stood close enough for me to see the small mole under his mouth and the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw.
My wolf stirred. Curious. Unafraid. She did not growl this time. She watched him like she was testing a scent in the wind.
Who was he? Why did he step in for me? How did he got the Halloway footage.
Instead of those questions, I said, “Thank you, sir.”
His pupils widened for a heartbeat. That small change pulled a hitch from my throat I could not hide.
Our scents brushed. His was winter forest and clean smoke. Mine was still tangled with fear, old hurt, and Johan. My wolf pushed toward his scent, wary but intrigued.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said quietly, adjusting the line of his cuff as if brushing off the weight of the room. “It’s a small favor compared to what you’ve already survived in this hell.” He tilted his head, studying my face with cool precision. “After all that, you’re not seriously planning to go back to that man, are you?”
My smile vanished. He was right. Actually, even that night I learned he was already mated, I already wanted to vanish from that villa, my another cage.
Seeing Johan tend to Suzette, a swarm of questions spiralled through my head. How intimate had they been all those years? How many nights had they shared a bed? And when Johan was with me, was he truly there, or had some part of him always been thinking of her?
I swallowed the pain clogging my throat.
The man spoke again, his tone dry. “If looks carried lethal force, those two would already be ash by now.”
I turned to him. My mouth moved faster than my filter. “Can I sleep with you?”
My wolf tilted her head at me, amused and a little impressed. Bold, she murmured, finally.
He blinked, the first crack in his composure. “Come again?”
Heat hit my face like a slap. My wolf rolled her eyes in my chest. What exactly was I thinking.
I pulled up a bitter smile to cover the shame. “You know what, forget it. Maybe scars aren’t your thing. I’ll find someone else.”
I turned to go.
His hand closed around my wrist. The grip was firm, warm, sure. A tug, not yanking, but decisive, and I bumped into his chest. His arm slid around my waist and settled there like it belonged.
Power curled off him, not the loud, showy kind Johan used. This was quieter, colder, more controlled. It brushed over my skin and my wolf lifted her head, alert.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you later,” he said, voice low and rougher now. His scent wrapped around me fully, mint, cedar, smoke, with a thread of winter air that made my lungs sting.
He carried me out of the hall, across the covered walkway, towards the hotel next door.
The elevator hummed upward. My heart beat loud in my ears, too fast, too hard. Part fear, part adrenaline, part something else I did not want to name.
My wolf paced, tail high.
The suite door opened, then shut with a soft click. Gold trim. Dark wood.
City lights painting the floor in silver and blue. His scent thickened in the enclosed space and chased out the last traces of Johan from my lungs.
He pressed me gently to the wall by the entry, not pinning, just placing me.
His palm touched the side of my neck, cool on hot skin, thumb resting over my pulse.
He was testing how fast my heart was running. He would not need a stethoscope. Wolves never did.
“You can still change your mind,” he said. The roughness in his voice was more obvious now, like his wolf was close to the surface.
I rose on my toes and brushed my mouth against his throat. My teeth grazed his skin in a light warning, a test bite. Instinct, pure and simple.
My wolf wanted to taste him anyway. I didn’t know why.
His fingers slid from my neck to my wrist and lifted it above my head, palm flattened to the wall.
“This is your last chance to stop, little wolf,” he murmured, mouth close to my ear. His breath was warm and smelled faintly of mint.
I did not stop.
“I am tired of being afraid,” I whispered instead. “And I am very tired of men who pretend to save me while breaking me in quieter ways.”
My voice shook, but I said it.
He went still for a heartbeat. My wolf felt his wolf pause, listening.
“I went to that event to back you up,” he said at last, his voice lower and more deliberate. “I certainly didn’t expect you to end up in my bed tonight… or that I’d be this reluctant to let you leave it.” His thumb traced the line of my pulse, lazy and precise. “Tell me, Jessica-was this your contingency plan all along, or are you always this dangerous when you’re hurt?”
I swallowed, meeting his eyes. “I don’t have any plans other than leaving him for good.”
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