THE BIKER ALPHA WHO BECAME MY SECOND CHANCE MATE

“You’re just like a sister to me.”

Those were the actual words that broke the camel’s back.

Not after what just happened.

Not after the hot, breathless, soul-shaking night we spent tangled in each other’s arms.

I knew from the beginning that Tristan Maverick was a line I shouldn’t cross.

He wasn’t just anyone, he was my brother’s best friend. The man I spent years secretly wanting.

But that night… we were broken. We had just buried our parents. And the grief was too heavy, too real.... so I begged him to touch me.

To make me forget. To fill the silence that death left behind.

And he did. He held me like I was something fragile.

Kissed me like I was the only thing he needed to breathe.

Then left me bleeding with six words that burned deeper than rejection ever could.

So, I ran. Away from everything that cost me pain.

Now, five years later, I’m back.

Fresh from rejecting the mate who abused me. Still carrying the scars of a pup I never got to hold.

And the man waiting for me at the airport isn’t my brother.

It’s Tristan.

And he's not the guy I left behind.

He's a biker.

An Alpha.

And when he looked at me, I knew there was no where else to run to.

Prologue

Athena

I can't breathe.

Tristan moves inside me, slow and deep, and I'm drowning in the sensation. Each thrust sends heat spiraling through my body, filling all the hollow spaces that grief carved out today.

His hands find their way beneath my thigh, lifting it carefully... gently, like I might shatter—before he pushes forward, filling me again. I gasp, arching my back off the bed, fingers tangled in the sheets, desperate to hold onto something solid, anything.

But it's all so overwhelming. So intoxicating.

The moonlight streaming through his bedroom window catches the sweat on his chest, the way his dark hair sticks to his forehead. His hands grip my thighs, holding me steady as I fall apart beneath him.

This is wrong. So wrong.

We just laid our parents to rest this morning. All four of them—my mom and dad, his mom and dad. Lowered into the ground side by side, just like they would have wanted. Our fathers had been best friends since childhood, Alphas of neighboring packs who refused to let territory lines divide them.

They'd died together on vacation, their car wrapping around a tree on some mountain road. My mother had held on for three days in the hospital, her wolf fighting until the very end, but even she couldn't survive what that crash had done to her.

I still can't wrap my brain around how we got here. One minute we were holding hands at their graveside as we watched them lower their bodies, and the next... we're here, wrapped in each other's arms.

I should be grieving. I should be home, surrounded by my brother and pack, letting them comfort