The Alpha Who Refused to Let Me Go

The knock at my door cuts through the winter silence like a blade.

I freeze at my desk, fingers still poised over my laptop keyboard, the quarterly report I'd been working on forgotten. The sound echoes through my small apartment—sharp, deliberate, demanding. Not the hesitant tap of a neighbor or the quick rap of a delivery driver. This knock carries weight, authority.

Then the scent hits me.

Pine. Leather. Something wild and distinctly male that makes my wolf stir restlessly beneath my skin for the first time in three years. My heart slams against my ribs as recognition crashes over me like a tidal wave.

No. It can't be. How did he find me?

-

I push back from my desk so violently that my chair crashes into the wall behind me. My hands shake as I press them against my chest, trying to calm the sudden riot of my pulse. The mate bond, dormant for so long, roars to life with a vengeance. Every nerve ending in my body lights up, responding to his proximity with an intensity that steals my breath.

Another knock, more insistent this time.

I wrap my arms around myself, backing away from the door as if it might burst into flames. Three years. Three years I've hidden in this human city, built a life where werewolves are nothing more than movie monsters and pack politics are someone else's nightmare. Three years of telling myself I was free.

The scent grows stronger, seeping under the door like smoke. My wolf whines, pressing against my consciousness with a desperate hunger I'd forgotten existed. She recognizes her mate, and she doesn't understand why we're not running to him.

Because he destroyed us, I remind her silently. Because he left us broken and bleeding and alone.

But my feet betray me, carrying me toward the door even as my mind screams warnings. My hand hovers over the deadbolt, trembling. Part of me—the part that still dreams of him on lonely nights—wants to fling it open. The larger part, the part that remembers the cold indifference in his eyes during those final months, wants to pretend I'm not home.

The knocking stops.

"Primrose." His voice penetrates the wood like it's paper, deep and commanding and achingly familiar. "I know you're in there."

The sound of my name on his lips after three years of silence makes my knees weak. I lean against the door, my forehead pressed to the cool wood, and close my eyes. How did he find me? I'd been so careful, covering my tracks, using human documentation, staying far from any werewolf territories.

"Open the door."

It's not a request. It never was with Gabriele. Even in our happiest moments, he'd carried that Alpha authority like a second skin, the expectation that the world would bend to his will. And for three blissful months, I'd been happy to let it.

Until he'd decided I wasn't worth his attention anymore.

"Go away," I whisper, but the words