I stared after the retreating woman, every muscle in my body screaming at me to follow her. But I ken that look on her face – it was a look that said she needed to escape. I ken that feeling well.

I just wish like hell she didn’t want to escape me.

My body burned with desire for her. It was more than just lust, although there was plenty of that. And no wonder – Willow Summers was fucking gorgeous. It was more than the fact that she ken what I was, because I still hadn’t quite got to the bottom of how that could be. It was way more than the fact I wanted to find out who’d taken her leg so I could rip their throat out.

A surge of burning energy rolled through my veins, and I knew exactly what that meant. Every werewolf did. It was the biological connection tying me to my fated mate.

Willow was the one I’d been waiting for, the partner I would love and protect for the rest of my life. And everything I ken about her so far told me I was one lucky guy.

Finding one’s fated mate was pretty rare. In my own pack, the Bairds, there were only five mated pairs, and only two were what we called fated – possessing that unique connection that meant they were perfectly in sync. Weirdly, the Lowe pack whom I was supporting in Crookshollow contained six fated pairs. That was almost unheard of – but then, everything about the Lowe pack was unconventional.

I rubbed my arm, where the heat still surged in my veins. Willow’s intoxicating scent swirled around me. Not even the sickly scent of the primrose bushes on the edge of the forest could extinguish it. My fated mate, right here in Crookshollow.

Now that I ken she existed, I had to figure out what, if anything, I was going to do about it.

The timing could not have been worse. Of course I had to find my mate now, right on the cusp of the most important task I would ever complete in my entire life. The whole reason I’d come down to Crookshollow and aligned with Caleb Lowe’s unorthodox pack was because we were planning to reveal the existence of shifters to the world. My whole life I’ve fought against the idea that our kind had to live in the shadows, without options or opportunities, all because of some misguided ancient belief that we couldn’t openly coexist with humans. It was an earth-shattering, worldview imploding course we’d undertaken together, one I believed in with every hair on my wolfish body, and I couldn’t afford any distractions.

Even if they were earth-shatteringly beautiful brunettes who bit their lip and hid a world of hurt behind their dark eyes.

I sucked in a deep breath, drawing in the scent and taste of her. My cock stirred against my leg, telling me just what he thought about Willow’s sudden appearance in my life.

Down boy. I exhaled, pushing out Willow’s taste, expelling her. Time to get serious. Even if Willow Summers wanted me, which she clearly doesn’t, I can’t be with her and do my duty. Fated mate or not, the plan is more important.

Besides, I should be more on guard. I was too distracted by her pretty face to even ask her how she ken I was a werewolf. That just doesn’t make any sense, unless there’s more she’s not telling me. Is it a coincidence she’s turned up now, right when Caleb’s reputation is starting to grow? Maybe not. She could be dangerous.

Oh, she’s dangerous all right. I licked my lips, relishing the lingering taste of her.

Time to stop dreaming and get back to that party. I’ve got bigger things to worry about than one human, even if she is the most interesting person I’ve met since I arrived.

I took one last, lingering look at the path down which Willow had fled. Half of me wished she was waiting there, the moonlight dancing off her silky brown hair, biting her lip in that way that made her utterly irresistible. But she wasn’t. Of course not. If I’d been through what she had, I’d never get involved with a werewolf, either – fated mates or not.

Willow Summers, if only things could have been different, I would've given you everything your heart desired.

---

When I re-entered Primrose House, Caleb ran up to meet me, his usually jovial features set hard. Caleb Lowe was the alpha male of the Lowe pack, and my ally, and he didn’t need to speak to tell me he was spitting tacks over Robbie’s accidental shift.

Caleb and I had actually grown up near each other in the forests near Aberdeen, in rival wolf packs. Caleb’s stepfather, Douglas Maclean, ran A-class drugs through the city and across most of Scotland. My father – Jonas Baird, alpha of our pack – was his biggest rival, until the day he was shot by a gamekeeper while taking a shortcut to deliver a shipment. After I took over as alpha of our pack, I got out of the drug trade, but that meant conceding a lot of power to the Macleans. Caleb and I had come up against each other in turf wars between our packs, but it was always clear to me that neither he nor his stepbrother Robbie really wanted to commit the crimes Douglas forced them into. They were trapped by circumstance, just like me.

When I heard that Caleb had left his stepfather to return to Crookshollow to take back his birth father’s ancestral lands, I ken that he would become a worthy alpha. At the same time, his mother came to me with the story of the Benedict Ring, an ancient Lowe-family artefact that contained unmentionable power. She wanted the same thing I did – freedom for all shifters. She convinced Caleb and I to form an alliance and find the ring, so that we could use its power to free all shifters.

Even though we’d spent most of our lives as rivals, Caleb and I made a good team. We were both tired of living in the shadows, of being forced into the sidelines of society, of having shifter crimes go unpunished and shifter victims ignored under the banner of secrecy. We wanted freedom for our people, and I ken as soon as I saw his face that Caleb believed Robbie had just blown our chance.

“I’m going to kill him,” Caleb growled, his usual jovial features twisted into a nasty scowl. He balled his hands into fists at his sides. “This is the single stupidest thing he’s ever done, which is saying a lot. He’s cost us everything.”

“It was idiotic,” I agreed. “But I think there might have been mitigating circumstances.” I doubted the image of Bianca and Willow kissing would leave Robbie any time soon. It was definitely permanently burned into my memory, but for entirely different reasons.

As I recalled the image of Willow’s lips pressed against Bianca’s, my cock stirred to life. No. Don’t think of Willow now. You have to forget about her. Caleb’s right. We have a huge problem on our hands.

“I don’t care how upset he was. This could destroy everything, and we don’t even have the ring yet.”

At the mention of the Benedict Ring, Caleb’s scowl deepened. He’d entrusted the hunt for the ring to Robbie, and I knew he was regretting that decision. After several weeks of research, we were no closer to having the ring, which meant all our plans were currently stalled until we had it in our possession.

While I agreed with Caleb that we needed the ring sooner rather than later, I also needed to diffuse him before we had a second agitated wolf shifting tonight.

“You Lowes, so dramatic.” I picked up an open bottle of champagne from the sideboard and took a swig. The sickly sweet alcohol did little to calm the fire rushing through my veins. “We can fix this. We just need to control the story—” I glanced up, just as a man in a tiger costume rushed by, waving his smartphone at a friend of his who wore a capelet covered in black feathers. An idea leapt into my head. “It’s easy. We need to make everyone believe this was some kind of performance art. If anyone’s gonnae buy that, it’s this crowd.”

Caleb clapped me on the shoulder, his face lighting up with excitement. “That’s perfect. It’s exactly how Ryan got away with fighting Isengrim in the middle of his exhibition opening. I knew there’s a reason I let you hang out with us.”

I grinned. “I thought it was my rugged good looks.”

“I’ll get the pack to spread the word that it was just a publicity stunt.” Caleb leaned against the heavy banister, some of the tension in his face dissipating. “Of course, I can’t find Robbie or Bianca anywhere. We’ll need them to confirm this if we’re going to pull this off.”

“Maybe they’re making up,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

Caleb shook his head. “I don’t even want to know. For Robbie’s sake, I hope not. I warned him this fake-marriage was a bad idea, and you know how much I hate being right all the time. By the way, where did you go off to? I saw you run outside. I could've done with this revelation of yours twenty minutes ago.”

Had it only been twenty minutes since Robbie changed? I rubbed my arm, where the heat from my connection with Willow still burned against my skin. It was what your fated mate did to you – burned you inside and out. I already felt as though I’d known Willow for days, for weeks … that kiss alone seemed to last for hours. Or maybe that was just my own wistful thinking. “I went after Willow. You ken, the wedding planner? She was a bit freaked out.”

“What did you say to her?”

I paused. I should tell Caleb that Willow ken about the existence of werewolves, and that she was my fated mate. But he was already so agitated, it would just give him one more thing to worry about. And besides, I didn’t want to go telling Willow’s secrets. I couldn’t tell Caleb what had happened without mentioning her prosthetic leg, and that was not my story to tell. Instead, I shrugged. “I told her it was a publicity stunt, to promote Bianca’s art house. That’s where I got the idea.”

“She bought it?”

“Oh, yeah.” I thought of Willow biting her lip. “She bought it hard.”

“Good. Let’s find the others. We need to get this sorted.”

I followed Caleb back inside the ballroom. This time, I saw it in a completely new light. When I’d first entered the room at the beginning of the night and seen the skull decorations everywhere and scantily-clad aerialists hanging from silk ribbons secured to the chandeliers, I’d thought it was classic Bianca. Now, I realised Willow’s hand was everywhere – she’d taken Bianca’s crazy ideas and pulled the whole thing together in no time at all. The creativity and organisation required to pull an event on this scale off … my mate really was something special.

Stop thinking about her. You’re getting distracted. This is exactly why you cannot have her, even if she wanted you.

I trailed behind Caleb as he approached each group of huddled guests and informed them in his affable manner that what they’d just seen was another of Bianca’s stunts. I marvelled as one by one, the guests all bought the story. They laughed and slapped each other’s backs and held up their phones so we could see the pictures and videos they’d caught.

Caleb grinned and shook their hands and admired their social media posts. He could spin a good tale when he needed to. The last time I’d had to cover up a shifter sighing, it had been much less amicable.

At the thought of it, a sharp pain twisted in my gut. The edges of my vision blurred, and the familiar darkness started to settle over my heart.

No, not now. You can’t afford to think about it now. There’s nothing you can do to change what happened. You need to focus on what you’re doing in the here and now to change the future.

But it was no good. I was so unnerved and horny from meeting Willow that I couldn’t guard my own mind. The memory crept back and pressed against my skull. I shoved it back, but I couldn’t completely rid myself of the rage it induced.

I managed to drive the blackness away, but my chest tightened, forcing out the heat of Willow’s bond. The party raged on, with every last drunken guest easily convinced they’d just seen an impressive performance art piece. Eric’s band started playing again, blasting out a raging guitar-and-violin riff, and people gathered around the stage, gyrating to the pounding music. Not one of them had any idea of the secret world of shifters that lived amongst them, suffering and dying so they could party on in ignorance.

Enjoy it now, you lucky bastards, because it’s all about to change.

The walls leaned in, the dark wood suddenly oppressive, like a cage crashing down around me. Laughing faces leered at me. Sticky alcohol splashed my clothes. The rage drew up my inner wolf, who clawed against my skin, desperate for freedom. I realised I was only moments away from losing control and repeating Robbie’s performance.

Gritting my teeth as I forced the wolf back down, I backed out of the ballroom and pushed my way to the front door. Willow’s face flashed before my eyes, and once again I faced that terrified look she’d given me just before she’d fled.

I know what you are, she’d said. Perhaps she truly did. Perhaps she was the only one who did.

I raced down the front steps and darted into the trees. My wolf took over as soon as I crashed through the hedge and into the woods, my bones cracking and grey fur poking through my skin. I pitched forward, my knees hitting the hard dirt. My fingers dug into the earth, transforming into paws with long, curved claws.

Claws that would never be clean. Claws that had drawn the blood of an innocent man.

When Willow had looked at me in the trees, she saw the monster. She was reminded of the creature that took her leg. She didn’t realise that he had nothing on me.

I threw back my head, soaking in the cold glow of the waxing moon, and howled.

You made the right choice, Willow. You should run as far as you can from me. I am exactly the monster you fear.