Claimed by the Alpha I Hate – Episode 12
Nolan returned to the command room with Daisy’s accusation following him. She believed he had killed Vera Storm, yet the official reports described Vera’s death only as an unresolved incident during the takeover. That answer had once seemed regrettable but sufficient. It no longer did.
He called Elias before the Beta could retire for the night. “Reopen the investigation into Vera Storm’s death.” The order drew a pause at the other end of the line.
“Now?” Elias asked. Blackwood had inherited months of damaged records and conflicting testimony from Eastwind. Revisiting one death would require interviews, patrol logs, and evidence that might already have disappeared.
“Her daughter thinks I’m responsible,” Nolan said. That was not the only reason, but it was the one he was prepared to admit. “Find out exactly what happened.”
After ending the call, Nolan left the building and walked the settlement perimeter. Curfew had emptied the paths, allowing him to hear each guard change and every movement beyond the houses. He told himself the inspection was routine.
His route nevertheless took him toward Daisy’s street. He had preserved his anonymity during their walk because her honesty gave him information no subject would offer an Alpha. Now the deception sat poorly with him, especially after she had called him kind.
A door opened ahead. Daisy stepped into the night alone, moving quickly as though trying to escape the walls of her house. Nolan crossed the path before she could turn toward the trees.
“You?” Daisy stopped. Recognition softened her surprise for an instant, then she remembered the restrictions. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” Nolan countered. “What are you doing here? It’s past curfew.” He expected defiance and received it immediately.
“But you were just at my house.” Daisy folded her arms. If he belonged to Blackwood, enforcing the Alpha’s rules might be part of his duty, but she refused to accept a lecture from someone who had broken the same boundary.
Nolan stepped closer, ready to insist she return inside. Then the night shifted. A scent reached him—darkly sweet, warm, and impossible to confuse with anything he had encountered before.
His wolf surged forward with such force that Nolan’s control nearly fractured. The pull he had felt at the solstice and again that afternoon became a living bond, burning through every uncertainty. Daisy was not merely intriguing. She was the person the Moon Goddess had made for him.
Daisy’s anger faded as she inhaled. The air around the stranger carried cedar, winter wind, and something that called to an instinct deeper than thought. Her body recognized him before her mind could defend itself.
She had felt a mate bond once before, but this was not the weakened connection Scott had hidden and resented. This force was immediate, overwhelming, and threaded with the dangerous hunger that had awakened inside her earlier.
Nolan watched bewilderment widen her eyes. The darkness altered them again, only briefly, but he was too consumed by the bond to understand what he had seen. Every protective instinct he possessed focused on her.
“She smells like…” His voice dropped as he closed the final space between them. Daisy should have stepped away. Instead, she lifted her face toward him, caught by the same invisible gravity.
The word rose from Nolan’s wolf and left his lips as a certainty. “Mate.” Daisy’s breath caught. After Scott’s rejection, she had believed that word had been taken from her forever.
Under the moonlit trees, they stared at one another with the new bond alive between them. Daisy still did not know the stranger’s name, and Nolan had not told her that he was the man she blamed for her mother’s death. Before either truth could intervene, instinct pulled them closer.