London rain has never been gentle.
It hits my black coat like cold needles—exactly the same way it did the day we buried Leo three months ago.
“Bella, are you sure about this?”
Master James looks at me with trembling tweezers in his hand. “The Blackwood ball… that’s not a place we belong.”
“It’s just a commission, Master,” I lie—too smoothly, even for myself. “Lord Caleb wants a white peacock mounted for his hall.”
We both know that’s not why I’m going.
The Blackwood family.
The Alpha werewolf family.
The family of the monster who killed Leo.
I pull my gloves tighter, making sure they hide the hunter’s mark on my wrist. In the mirror, my skin looks too pale, my dark circles too deep. Leo used to say my eyes looked like silver coins under moonlight—now they only hold the cold hunger for revenge.
The Blackwood manor is all gold and grandeur, but underneath the shine there’s a pulse of danger. The air smells like cedar, whiskey, and something unmistakably feral. I clutch my drink, scanning the room.
Then I see him.
Caleb Blackwood stands at the top of the staircase like a dark king surveying his kingdom. He’s too tall, too still, his muscles straining against an expensive suit. But it’s his eyes that steal my breath—gray-blue, stormy and violent.
The second he looks at me, everything freezes.
His glass slips from his hand, shattering on marble.
The whole ballroom falls silent.
“Lizzie…” he breathes, voice low and rough like distant thunder.
He moves through the crowd with single-minded intensity, people stepping aside instinctively. His hand closes around my wrist, and heat shoots up my arm like fire.
“You came back,” he whispers, his gaze devouring my face.
“Sir, you’re mistaken.” I tug my arm, but his grip is inhumanly strong.
“No.” His fingers tighten. “This face… I could never mistake it.”
A red-haired woman rushes over, voice soft. “Caleb, this is Miss Green—the taxidermist. Not Lizzie.”
It’s like someone dumped ice water over him. The wild look fades, but he still doesn’t let go.
“A taxidermist?”
“Isabella Green,” I say evenly. “I’m here about the white peacock you ordered.”
He studies me like he’s trying to solve a puzzle carved from grief.
“Stay,” he says. “Finish the ball.”
“That’s inappropriate—”
“Everything is appropriate if I say it is.”
He releases my wrist, but his fingertips drag across my palm in a slow, burning glide.
“Her eyes were blue,” he murmurs. “Yours are silver.”
Like I wasn’t even enough of a ghost to match his dead lover.
I should leave. Every instinct screams danger.
But when Caleb Blackwood looks at me, I see something in his eyes—something as broken as I am.
He finds me on the terrace, offering me whiskey.
“To our meeting,” he says.
“To the dead,” I whisper, clinking his glass.
His gaze darkens. “You’re grieving someone.”
“My fiancé. He died three years ago.”
“A coincidence,” he replies, finishing his drink.
“My love died three years ago too.”
The moon slips through clouds, casting its pale glow over him.
In that light, I see it clearly: the faint ring of gold around his pupils.
The sign of a wolf.
“They say you have a gift for calming beasts,” he says suddenly, watching my hands.
“I’m a taxidermist.”
“No.”
He steps closer, cedar and wildness wrapping around me.
“You’re something else. I can feel the quiet in you.”
And that’s when the worst thing happens—
my heart stutters.
Not from fear.
But from being seen.
“Marry me,” he says.
I almost laugh. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Maybe.”
His fingers trace my cheekbone, the touch devastatingly gentle.
“But when you’re near me… my blood settles. For the first time in three years, the full moon doesn’t feel like a curse.”
“So you want to marry me because I resemble your dead wife?”
“Yes.”
His honesty hits like a slap.
“And you, Miss Green—you have the same emptiness in your eyes that I do. We’re both trying to fill it. Maybe we can… use each other.”
A perfect chance.
To get close.
To find proof.
To put a silver bullet through his heart on the next full moon.
“I have conditions,” I say.
“I keep my job. And I don’t want your money.”
“As long as you stay,” he says, bitter smile twisting his mouth,
“you can have anything.”
By the time I return to my formalin-scented workshop, dawn is breaking. My fingers tremble—not with fear, but with the thrill of the hunt.
But when I open the door, all the blood drains from my body.
---