I grew up learning how to disappear. My father taught me to fight so I could protect the people I love — and to run when fighting wasn't enough. The night Alpha Marek Thorne looked at me like something he already owned, we burned our old lives to the ground and drove into the dark, praying my late mother's pack would take us in. We found more than shelter at the Emberline border. We found Rhys Bannon — a mountain of a man with a broken heart and a bloodline that made him stronger than any Alpha I'd ever seen. The moment our eyes met, something in my chest recognized something in his. He felt it too. I watched him feel it and watched him bury it, because a man who has been destroyed once will do anything to keep from being destroyed again. He never said the word "mate." He didn't have to reject me to break me — silence did that well enough. So when the worst misunderstanding of my life tore us apart, I did what I have always done. I left. I built a life out of nothing. I raised our daughter alone, and I never told him she existed. Six years later, he found out. Now there's a little girl with his eyes standing between two people who never stopped loving each other and never learned how to say it. He wants a second chance. I want to believe people can change. And Marek Thorne, the man we ran from, still hasn't stopped hunting us. Some debts get called in. Some hearts get a second chance. Mine is about to get both.