Liam moved faster than physics should allow—
A blur.
A crack.
A wet, horrible ripping sound.
He took the hit.
The claws tore into his shoulder.
“Liam!”
He didn’t fall.
He roared, grabbed the wolf, and threw it like it weighed nothing. When he faced me again, his eyes blazed amber—pupil narrowed into a predatory slit.
“Sophia,” he growled, voice warped, “now you know.”
Then the world shattered.
More wolves charged. Five. Maybe six. They surrounded us like a death sentence.
Liam stepped forward. His spine arched. Bones cracked. His skin rippled as something beneath it pushed to surface.
“Liam?” I whispered, trembling.
He looked back once—
Apology in his eyes.
Pain.
Resolve.
Then he changed.
Fur surged over skin. Muscle bulged. His face elongated. His hands became claws.
And suddenly, a massive black wolf stood between me and the monsters—eyes the same gray-green I knew better than my own reflection.
The fight was brutal. Fast. Terrifying.
Liam moved like a shadow come alive—striking, dodging, never killing even when he could.
When it ended, the invaders limped back into the woods, defeated.
The black wolf turned to me, chest heaving, muzzle stained with blood.
I should’ve run.
Screamed.
Collapsed.
Instead, I stepped closer.
“Liam?” I whispered.
He lowered his head, inching toward me.
Heat radiated from him.
Pine. Wildness. Him.
My trembling hand reached out—
Touched his fur.
He whimpered. Softly. Brokenly.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Liam jerked upright, ears alert. He gave me one last look—full of emotions too tangled to name—then vanished into the trees.
I collapsed.
The silver necklace dug into my palm.
A joke.
A lie.
Jessica screeched her car to a halt. “Soph?! Oh my God—are you okay? What happened?”
I should’ve told the truth.
Instead:
“Wild dogs,” I whispered. “We scared them off.”
Another lie.
I was getting good at them.
But my eyes stayed locked on the forest.
On the shadow under the oak tree.
On the pair of gray-green eyes watching over me.
He was still protecting me.
Even after everything.
Three days passed without a sign.
I stared at his name on my phone until the screen dimmed. What would I say?
“Sorry you got shredded saving my life—your wolf form is hot?”
Jessica thought I was losing it.
“You need the cops! Those wild dogs might come back!”
But all I saw was the agony in Liam’s wolf eyes.
On the fourth night, rain hammered the windows. I stood there, watching it blur the world into gray streaks—until a familiar silhouette appeared beneath the streetlamp.
He didn’t have an umbrella.
Rain soaked him to the bone.
His white shirt clung to every line of him.
I was out the door before my brain caught up.
“You’re hurt,” I blurted the moment I reached him, staring at his shoulder. “Is it… is it healing?”
He glanced down. A faint outline of bandage showed beneath the wet fabric.
“Mostly.”
We just… stood there.
Rain pouring over us.
Breathing the same shaky breaths.
His eyes burned hotter than the summer heat.
“You lied to me,” I whispered.
“You investigated me,” he murmured back.
“I had the right to know the truth!”
“What truth, Sophia?” He stepped closer. Rain streaked down his face like tears. “That I’m a monster? That every full moon I turn into something even I don’t fully understand? That my family has been hunted for a century?” His voice cracked. “Is that what you want?”
“I want you to trust me!”
Silence crashed over us.
I took him home.
When he pulled off his soaked shirt, I sucked in a breath—not just at the sculpted lines of his torso, but the scars. Old ones, new ones. A map of pain.
“This is me,” he said bitterly. “A walking museum of damage.”
I reached out, fingers shaking, and touched the skin near his newest wound. It was warm.
“Tell me everything, Liam. Please.”
So he did.
He told me about 1902.
About the hunt.
About Ezra Black watching his parents die.
About survival.
About curses.
“The Purge,” I whispered, remembering the documents. “Organized by Thomas Green and Charles Green.”
He nodded, eyes dark. “My family’s executioners. And you—”
He stopped, as if the words cut him somewhere deep.
A chill swept through me.
“And I’m… a Green.”
“I knew,” he said softly. “From the beginning.”
My voice cracked. “Then why come near me?”
“Because I was stupid enough to believe,” he cupped my cheek gently, “that I could outrun fate. That I could… love you without history destroying us.”
Love.
The word hung between us, heavy and dangerous.
My phone rang.
Jessica.
But it wasn’t her voice on the line.
“Miss Green? You should come to the hospital. Your friend’s been in an accident.”
Hospital lights were too bright, too cold.
Jessica lay on the bed, leg in a cast, face bruised.
“Some psychos,” she whispered, trembling, “they forced my car off the road. And they left something for you.”
She handed me a folded note.
A wolf’s head, stabbed through with a dagger.
Below it:
“You’re next, wolf whore.”
My blood froze. “What did they look like?”
“Hoods,” she whispered. “Three men. But the leader… Sophie, he wore a necklace. The same one as yours.”
I touched the silver wolf at my throat.
“No,” I whispered. “Liam was with me. He couldn’t—”
“Who?” Jessica blinked. “The photographer? Sophie, listen—police showed me the surveillance footage. The man leading the attack… he looks exactly like him.”
I ran.
Stormed into my apartment.
Liam was in the kitchen, making coffee.
He looked up with a cautious, hopeful smile.
“Your friend—is she alri—”
I slapped him. Hard.
The paper crumpled against his chest as I shoved it at him.
“You lied to me!” I screamed, voice breaking. “Your people attacked Jessica!”