“Take the deal off the seat.”
Dorian said it like he was asking me to pass the salt.
Outside the car, somebody slammed into the rear door hard enough to rock the whole sedan. My shoulder hit the window. The lock clicked down by itself.
I stared at the contract between us.
Thirty pages. Thick cream paper. His name was printed at the bottom in black ink. Mine was waiting beside it.
“You want me to sign that now?” I asked.
“I want you alive at sunrise.”
Another hit. This one dragged down the side of the car with a metal screech.
The driver didn’t flinch. Huge guy, shaved head, hands steady on the wheel as he cut through traffic. The city lights kept flashing across Dorian’s face. Gold eye. Black hair. Blood at the corner of his mouth where somebody had caught him earlier.
He looked too calm.
That was the problem.
“You said you knew where my mother is.” My fingers stayed off the contract. “Start talking.”
Dorian’s jaw tightened.
“That wasn’t our agreement.”
“Funny. I don’t remember agreeing to marry a man who turns into a damn wolf in traffic.”
“I didn’t turn into a wolf.”
I gave him a look.
His mouth twitched once. Not a smile. More like he was annoyed I’d made a fair point.
“Fine,” he said. “Not exactly a wolf.”
“Oh, great. That clears it right up.”
A silver blade punched through the rear windshield.
The driver cursed and jerked the car left. Glass sprayed over my lap. I ducked, arms over my head.
Dorian moved before I saw him move.
One second he was across from me. The next, he had the blade in his hand.
Smoke curled off his palm.
The smell hit me. Burned meat. Hot pennies. Something sharp enough to make my eyes water.
He snapped the blade in half.
The hand holding it outside the car vanished.
A scream followed us down Bell Street.
My stomach tried to crawl up my throat.
Dorian dropped the broken silver onto the floor mat. His palm was red and blistered, but the skin was already knitting back together.
“You have about ten minutes before they stop playing with your route and start burning buildings,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means they know your apartment. They know the diner where you pick up your night orders. They know the pharmacy on Tenth where you charge your phone because the owner feels sorry for you.”
My face went cold.
“You had someone follow me?”
“No.” He looked at me. “They did.”
“Then why the hell are you telling me like it’s my fault?”
“Because you need to understand what’s happening.”
“I understand enough. Some freaks in masks want me. You know why. You won’t tell me. And your solution is to put a ring on me?”
His gaze dropped to my left hand.
The crescent mark in my palm had stopped glowing, but it still felt wrong. Like a bruise under my skin. Like it was listening.
“Yes,” he said.
I laughed once. It came out thin and ugly.
“You are insane.”
“Probably.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the most honest one you’ll get from me tonight.”
The car cut through an iron gate before I had time to see the name on it. The gates swung shut behind us. A black SUV followed close, then another.
We drove into a private garage under a building that looked like every expensive downtown tower I’d delivered food to and gotten yelled at for touching the wrong elevator button.
No logo. No doorman. Just gray stone, security cameras, and enough armed people in dark suits to start a small war.
The sedan stopped.
Dorian reached for the contract.
I grabbed it first.
“Don’t.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You want me to read it? I’m reading it.”
“I don’t have time for you to read thirty pages.”
“Then you shouldn’t have made it thirty pages.”
For a second, nobody spoke.
The driver got out. A security guy opened my door, then stopped when Dorian lifted one hand.
Dorian leaned closer. Not touching me. He didn’t need to. The heat coming off him filled the backseat anyway.
“Read page six,” he said.
That surprised me enough that I did.
Most of it was legal garbage. Protection. Residence. Confidentiality. Medical access. No leaving the secured property without an escort.
Then I found it.
Clause fourteen.
Information provided in good faith regarding Elara Voss, including all verified records held by Ash Meridian and its private archive.
I read it twice.
Then I looked up.
“You have records on my mom.”
“Yes.”
“Pictures too?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
His face shut down so fast it pissed me off.
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I know where she was twelve years ago. I know who took her. I know what she did before she disappeared.”
My throat tightened.
“What did she do?”
Dorian looked away first.
That scared me more than the silver blade.
“I’ll tell you after you sign.”
I slapped the contract onto the seat between us.
“No.”
His gold eyes flashed.
The lights in the garage flickered once.
“Don’t test me, Mara.”
“Don’t threaten me, Dorian.”
“I’m trying to keep you breathing.”
“And I’m trying not to sell myself to the first monster with a good car.”
The words landed hard.
The whole garage went silent.
Even the men outside the car looked like they forgot how to move.
Dorian’s expression didn’t change. But the skin over his knuckles pulled tight.
“Get out,” he said.
I blinked.
“What?”
“Out of the car.”
The door opened.
I climbed out because sitting in a locked car with an angry not-wolf suddenly felt like a bad choice.
My legs almost gave under me. Adrenaline had been holding me up all night, and apparently it had decided to clock out.
Dorian came around the back of the sedan. He took off his suit jacket and held it out.
I stared at it.
“What, now you’re being polite?”
“You’re bleeding.”
I looked down.
A slice of glass had cut through my jeans near my knee. Nothing deep. Blood ran in a thin line down my shin.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re leaving blood all over my garage.”
There he was.
I snatched the jacket anyway and tied it around my waist. It smelled like expensive soap, smoke, and that strange cold metal scent that seemed to follow him.
He led me toward an elevator with two guards behind us.
“Are they coming upstairs too?” I asked.
“No.”
“Good. I’m already having a terrible night. I don’t need an audience.”
One of the guards coughed into his fist. Maybe hiding a laugh.
Dorian didn’t look back. “You find this funny?”
“No, sir.”
The elevator doors shut.
Now it was just us.
And the contract in my hand.
The elevator rose so smoothly I barely felt it. Numbers blinked over the door. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.
“You knew my mother,” I said.
“Yes.”
“What was she to you?”
Dorian stared at the numbers.
“Complicated.”
“Oh, screw you.”
“It was.”
“She was scared in that photo.”
His throat moved.
“I know.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer.
I stepped in front of him when the elevator passed thirty.
“Why was she scared?”
He looked down at me. Up close, his eyes weren’t fully gold anymore. They were dark around the edges. Human enough that it made me want to trust him for half a second.
I hated that half second.
“Because people were hunting her,” he said.
“Like they’re hunting me?”
“Yes.”
“Did you help her?”
His silence said too much.
The elevator chimed.
The doors opened onto a private floor that was bigger than my whole apartment building’s lobby. Black marble. Warm lamps. A wall of glass overlooking the city. There was art everywhere, but none of it looked like the kind people actually enjoyed. It looked like rich-person furniture. Expensive and vaguely threatening.
Dorian walked past all of it.
“Come on.”
“I’m not done asking.”
“No. You’re not.”
He said it quietly.
That made me follow him.
We went through a set of double doors into what had to be his office. Dark wood. Low shelves. A desk the size of a delivery van. On one wall, a fire burned behind glass with no logs under it.
Dorian opened a locked drawer and took out an old tape recorder.
Not a phone. Not a laptop.
A real tape recorder. Gray plastic. Scuffed corners.
My breath caught.
“What is that?”
He set it on the desk.
“Your mother left it with me.”
I didn’t move.
The room got very small.
“You said you didn’t know where she was.”
“I don’t.”
“You have a tape from her.”
“It’s old.”
“How old?”
He pressed his thumb against the recorder but didn’t hit play.
“Twelve years.”
My knees felt weak again.
Twelve years ago, Mom had left me with Mrs. Alvarez downstairs and said she was going to work.
She’d kissed my forehead twice.
She’d forgotten her coat.
She never came back for it.
“Play it,” I said.
Dorian’s eyes stayed on mine.
“Mara—”
“Play it.”
He pressed the button.
Static poured into the room.
Then a woman breathed in.
I knew that breath.
I hadn’t heard her voice in years. Not really. I had old birthday videos, a voicemail where she reminded me to take chicken out of the freezer, one recording of her laughing too hard at something off-camera.
But this was different.
This was her scared.
“Elara,” Dorian said on the tape.
My mother made a rough little sound. Like she’d been crying and hated herself for it.
“You don’t get to use my name like that.”
The voice coming from the recorder wasn’t exactly Dorian’s. Younger, maybe. Less controlled. Still him.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll live.”
“You don’t know that.”
A chair scraped on the tape. Then Mom spoke again, lower now.
“If they find Mara, don’t let them take her through the Gate.”
My fingers locked around the edge of the desk.
Dorian watched me, not the recorder.
“What gate?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer.
Tape-Dorian said, “You need to tell me what you did.”
For a few seconds there was only static.
Then Mom inhaled, shaky and sharp.
“Don’t tell Mara what I did.”
The recorder clicked off.
I stared at it.
That was it.
That was all he gave me.
My chest hurt so bad I pressed a hand to it.
“What did she do?”
Dorian looked tired for the first time since I met him.
“She made a choice.”
“That means nothing.”
“It means I don’t know if she saved you or damned you.”
I laughed, but my eyes burned.
“Wow. Great. Super helpful.”
“Mara.”
“No. Don’t.” I backed away from the desk. “You’ve been sitting on that for twelve years? You heard her say my name. You knew she had a kid. And you just what? Forgot to check if I was alive?”
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“You’re a billionaire with wolf eyes and a private army.”
“I wasn’t this man twelve years ago.”
“Then who were you?”
His phone buzzed on the desk.
He ignored it.
I wanted to throw the tape recorder at his head.
Instead, I grabbed the contract.
“Page six says you give me everything you have on her.”
“Yes.”
“Every file. Every recording. Every name.”
“Yes.”
“And if I sign, you tell me what the Gate is.”
His pause was small.
Too small.
But I saw it.
“I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s what I can promise.”
His phone buzzed again.
This time, the screen lit up between us.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
Dorian’s face changed.
Not much. Just a hard line in his mouth.
He answered without taking his eyes off me.
“What?”
A woman’s voice crackled through the speaker. Fast. Professional. Scared underneath it.
“Mr. Ash, the perimeter just lost cameras on the east side. We found a mark on the outer wall.”
Dorian went still.
“What kind of mark?”
“No visible paint. It’s under the stone. Our people are saying it’s—”
The call cut out.
The fire behind the glass wall snapped blue.
Dorian swore under his breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
He turned toward a locked cabinet near the window.
“Sign the contract.”
“Oh my God, seriously?”
“Mara, sign it.”
“You tell me what’s happening first.”
The lights went out.
Not dimmed. Out.
The office dropped into blackness except for the blue fire and the city glow behind the windows.
Somewhere below us, an alarm started screaming.
Dorian moved to the cabinet. I heard metal click. A drawer opened.
Then he came back holding a small black box.
“No more time,” he said.
“You keep saying that like it makes this normal.”
“It doesn’t.”
He opened the box.
Inside sat a ring.
Not huge. Not flashy. A thin silver band with a dark stone set in the center. The stone looked black until it caught the firelight, and then I saw a pale crescent floating inside it.
My palm started burning.
I gasped and nearly dropped the contract.
Dorian grabbed my wrist.
His hand was hot. Mine was hotter.
The moon mark in my palm glowed through my fingers.
“Let go,” I snapped.
“If I let go, it’ll call them.”
“It’s already calling them!”
“Then give me your hand.”
“You are not putting that thing on me.”
The alarm outside cut off all at once.
That was worse.
Dorian’s grip tightened. Not enough to hurt. Enough that I knew I couldn’t pull free.
His voice dropped.
“Thirty days. You get the files. You get the truth I can give you. You get my protection. After that, you walk away.”
“And if I don’t?”
His eyes went gold again.
“Then they’ll take you before midnight.”
I looked at the ring.
Then at the tape recorder.
Mom’s voice still sat in my head. Don’t tell Mara what I did.
Like she’d known I would hate her for it.
Like she’d known I’d come looking.
“Thirty days,” I said.
Dorian didn’t blink.
“Thirty.”
“And no touching me unless I say so.”
His mouth tightened. “Agreed.”
“And you don’t lie.”
“I won’t lie.”
“That wording sucks.”
“It’s the truth.”
Of course it was.
I snatched the pen off his desk, flipped to the last page, and signed my name so hard the tip ripped the paper a little.
Mara Voss.
My hand shook after.
Dorian took the contract. He signed beneath me.
Then he lifted the ring.
“Give me your hand.”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
I held out my left hand.
The second the ring slid over my knuckle, pain shot up my arm.
I screamed.
The silver band tightened like it had teeth.
Light burst from the stone. White. Cold. It wrapped around my wrist in a thin line, then sank under my skin.
Dorian caught me when my knees buckled.
His arms closed around me.
For one awful second, I could hear his heartbeat.
Slow.
Heavy.
Not human.
Then the office windows exploded inward.
Glass blasted across the floor.
Dorian shoved me behind him, half turning into something huge and dark before my eyes could focus.
And from somewhere outside the broken window, out on the balcony thirty stories above the street, my mother’s voice screamed my name.
“Run, Mara.”