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- Herausgeber: BookRix
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
She ran from the Alpha King once. This time, she’s not running alone.
Five years ago, Mikayla Edwards fled the fog-drenched hills outside San Francisco with blood on her skin and a silence in her chest where a mate bond should’ve been. Adrian Duarte—the ruthless Alpha King who awakened something fierce inside her—rejected her with a single, final verdict: human… and not his.
Now Mikayla is back, older, sharper, and determined to stay invisible. She has a career built on control, a past she refuses to reopen… and a secret she’ll die to protect: her son, Kynlee.
But the moment Adrian catches her scent again, the city shifts. The bond that went quiet begins to stir. Adrian’s wolf recognizes what his crown can’t afford—his mate is standing in his territory, and she didn’t return empty-handed.
With enemies watching bloodlines, a power-hungry king circling, and pack law closing in like a noose, Mikayla and Adrian are forced into the one thing neither of them is ready for: the truth. Because the bond didn’t break—it was sealed. And when it reawakens, it demands a choice that will either bind them together… or sever them forever.
In a world where love is leverage and loyalty is weaponized, Mikayla must decide if she can trust the man who once let her go—while Adrian faces the one battle his crown can’t win with force: proving he won’t choose power over them again.
Tropes & vibes: rejected mate • second chance • secret baby • Alpha King • fated bond • high-stakes pack politics • protective hero • fierce heroine • hidden legacy • enemies closing in
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026
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LAURA DUTTON
Copyright© 2026, LAURA DUTTON
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information
storage and retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by: LAURA DUTTON
DISCLAIMER
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, settings, organizations, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events is entirely coincidental.
It contains themes of passion, power, supernatural conflict, and emotional intensity that may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised.
The opinions, emotions, and actions of the characters are purely fictional and do not represent the beliefs or perspectives of the author.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Prologue
She ran as the ground tore at her bare feet and the fog swallowed the sound of her breath.
The hills outside San Francisco rose in uneven shadows, their slopes slick with damp earth and the copper tang of spilled blood. Mikayla Edwards didn’t look back. She couldn’t. Every instinct screamed that turning her head would slow her, and slowing meant hands on her shoulders, teeth at her throat, a verdict delivered without mercy.
Her lungs burned. Her heart battered her ribs as if trying to escape first.
Branches whipped her arms and face as she broke through a stand of scrub oak, pain flaring sharp and brief before adrenaline drowned it out. Somewhere behind her, voices cut through the night—low, urgent, carrying authority she recognized too well. Wolves. Not in shape, not yet, but close enough that she felt them in her bones.
She stumbled, caught herself, kept going.
The memory hit harder than the terrain.
Adrian’s voice—controlled, measured, final.
This is a mistake.
Not shouted. Not cruel. Worse than either.
She had stood there under the cold lights of the pack compound, the smell of iron thick in the air, her skin still warm from his hands. She hadn’t known what she was then, hadn’t known why the world had sharpened around him, why his presence had pulled at her like gravity.
She had only known the way his eyes changed when he looked at her. The way something fierce and unyielding had surfaced—and then vanished.
You’re human, he’d said, as if stating a fact could undo what her body already understood. You don’t belong here.
The rejection hadn’t been loud. It hadn’t needed to be.
Now it chased her through the dark.
Mikayla vaulted a fallen log and slid down a steep embankment, landing hard on her side. Air burst from her lungs in a sharp cry she couldn’t stop. She rolled, pushed herself up on trembling arms, and forced her legs to obey.
The fog thickened, wet against her skin, clinging to her hair and lashes. Her senses felt wrong—too bright, too close. Every sound echoed inside her skull: the rasp of her breath, the distant rush of traffic from the city below, the faint but unmistakable cadence of pursuit.
They were gaining.
Her foot struck a stone hidden beneath leaves, and she went down again, this time unable to stop the cry that tore free. Pain lanced up her ankle, hot and blinding. She clawed at the ground, fingers sinking into cold mud, and dragged herself forward.
A wave of nausea rolled through her, sudden and violent. She pressed a hand to her mouth, swallowing hard, and the world tilted.
Something inside her twisted.
Not fear. Not pain.
Loss.
It came without warning, a tearing sensation deep in her chest, as if an invisible thread had been pulled taut and then cut. Her breath hitched. She froze, dropping to her knees as the night pressed in around her.
The pull—always there since the moment Adrian had touched her—went silent.
Mikayla gasped, clutching at her sternum. The ache was immediate and crushing, spreading through her ribs, down her spine, into her limbs. Her vision blurred. She rocked forward, forehead nearly touching the ground, trying to breathe through the sudden hollowness.
Something was gone.
Not fading. Not weakening.
Gone.
A sound tore from her throat, raw and unguarded. She wrapped her arms around herself as if she could hold whatever had just been taken, as if pressure could force it back into place.
The fog shifted.
She felt it before she saw anything—a presence that wasn’t footsteps or breath. The air grew heavier, charged, pressing against her skin with quiet insistence. Her pulse thundered in her ears, each beat uneven, wrong.
“Please,” she whispered, though she didn’t know who she was pleading with. “I’m leaving.”
Her stomach cramped suddenly, sharp enough to fold her forward. She cried out, fingers digging into the earth as another wave hit, stronger than the first. Heat bloomed low in her abdomen, unfamiliar and frightening.
Her body reacted before her mind could keep up.
She curled inward, one hand sliding instinctively to her belly.
The ache there was different. Protective. Anchoring.
Footsteps sounded closer now, boots crunching through brush. A shape moved at the edge of the fog, tall and unmistakable. Mikayla forced herself to her feet, ignoring the pain screaming through her ankle, and staggered backward.
“No,” she breathed.
The presence in the air surged.
Something unseen pressed against her chest, not with force but with finality. The pain sharpened, focused, and then—just as suddenly—it eased.
The silence where the bond had been settled into place.
Mikayla collapsed.
She hit the ground on her side, breath knocked from her lungs, limbs refusing to respond. The fog closed around her like a curtain. Sounds dulled, stretched thin. The world narrowed to the slow rise and fall of her chest and the steady thud of her heart.
Hands hovered near her but never touched.
Voices murmured, indistinct. A command was given. Then another. The presence receded, pulling back like a tide.
She lay there long after they were gone.
When sensation returned, it did so in fragments: the chill seeping into her clothes, the ache in her ankle, the faint metallic taste at the back of her throat. She pushed herself up inch by inch, gritting her teeth against the pain, until she was sitting upright.
Her chest still hurt, but differently now. Dull. Contained.
She pressed her palm flat against her sternum and felt nothing in return. No answering pull. No awareness beyond herself.
Tears slid down her cheeks, silent and unstoppable.
With shaking hands, she shifted, drawing her knees close. Another cramp rolled through her abdomen, softer this time but unmistakable. She sucked in a breath, eyes widening as she rested her hand there again.
Warmth greeted her touch.
A steadiness beneath the fear.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered to the night, to the fog, to whatever force had just altered her life beyond recognition. “I swear I didn’t know.”
The city lights glimmered faintly in the distance, indifferent and impossibly far away.
Mikayla forced herself to stand.
Each step hurt, but she moved anyway, favoring her injured ankle, one hand never leaving her belly. She followed the slope downward, toward the road, toward anonymity, toward a life she would have to rebuild from fragments.
Behind her, on the other side of the hills, Adrian Duarte stopped mid-step.
The world tilted.
He pressed a hand to his chest as a sharp, disorienting emptiness struck, stealing his breath. His wolf surged in alarm, snapping and pacing, confused by the sudden absence it could not name.
Adrian scanned the dark, senses stretched thin, heart pounding.
The connection he had denied—contained, resisted, buried—had vanished.
Gone, not broken.
For the first time in years, fear edged through his control.
Somewhere beyond his reach, something irreversible had already begun.
Chapter 1
Fog Over Familiar Streets
She stepped out of the rideshare and into a city that remembered her.
The first breath Mikayla Edwards drew tasted of salt, exhaust, and damp concrete, a combination so familiar it tightened her chest before she could stop it. San Francisco loomed around her in layers—steel, glass, and drifting fog that slid between buildings as if it had intention. The sound of traffic rolled through the streets, constant and impatient, but beneath it lay something else, a low current she felt more than heard.
Her shoulders squared on instinct.
Five years, she told herself. Five years since she’d run from these hills with blood on her skin and fear lodged so deep it had rewritten her life. She had built distance brick by brick, city by city, until this place became a memory she could keep neatly boxed away. Now a single phone call and a consulting contract had pulled her back.
Just work. In and out.
Mikayla adjusted the strap of her bag and started toward the hotel, heels clicking against the pavement in a rhythm that felt too loud. The fog curled around her calves, cool and insistent, and her skin prickled beneath her coat. The sensation wasn’t fear. It was awareness, sharp and unwelcome, like the city itself had turned its attention on her.
Don’t be dramatic, she thought, tightening her grip on the handle of her suitcase. You’re tired. That’s all.
Still, her pulse refused to settle.
