The Lycan's Hidden Mate by Nina Soelian
The Lycan's Hidden Mate
Description
Eighteen years old. No wolf. A stepbrother who tries her door every night and a mother who pretends not to hear. Aurora Marrock has spent six years being small, quiet, and survivable. Then her first heat hits at the Alpha's gala, the wrong man corners her in a hallway, and the most powerful wolf in the territory breaks him in half. Jared Grimclaw is three hundred years old and running out of time. A silver bullet is killing him slowly. His hands shake, his legs give out in public, and every wolf in the pack is counting the days until someone younger takes what's his. He needs someone to care for his son. She needs somewhere no one can find her. It should stay professional. Then she touches him and the thing that's been destroying him from the inside goes silent. His hands are steady. His pain disappears. And whatever is happening between them is either the answer to everything, or the last mistake either of them gets to make. Because the people she escaped are already at the door.
Chapter 1
Jul 2, 2026
Isadora's POV
"Aren't you ashamed to show up looking like that?"
Noah's fingers find the back of my dress and tug — my stepbrother's signature move, right between possessive and degrading. He does this every time — finds fabric, tugs it, waits for me to flinch.
If I do, he smiles. If I don't, he tugs harder until I do.
My shoulders lock and I want to grab his wrist and snap it backward. But he heals fast and Edward, my stepfather, hits harder.
"I mean, really." Noah smooths the dress fabric back down. "This is an Alpha's gala, not a charity drive for the tragically unfashionable whores."
His eyes flick to something behind me, and his smirk sharpens. I feel Edward before I see him.
"She tried," my stepfather chimes in, adjusting his cufflinks. "Some bitches just don't have the bone structure for formal wear."
Bone structure. Of fucking course.
I chose this dress because it has boning in the bodice to keep the fabric from pressing against the bruise he left on my ribs two weeks ago. It's still purple at the center, green at the edges, yellow where it's healing. Three layers of concealer on the parts the neckline doesn't cover.
I got good at color correction this year. Foundation over purple, peach over green, powder to set the lie.
Over Noah's shoulder, I see my mother is crossing the foyer toward us. Heels clicking, chin up, silk dress moving. Martha stops behind Noah, her eyes find me and run a full-body scan. "The concealer you picked does nothing for those marks on your neck."
Nice to see you too, Mom.
She leans in and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear hard enough to scrape my scalp.
"Try not to embarrass us more than you already have by existing." She steps back and gives my shoulder a little squeeze.
To anyone watching, it might actually look like affection.
"The celebration starts in ten minutes." She doesn't look at any of us when she says it. "For Goddess's sake, Isadora, stay behind me."
Her hand clamps around my wrist and she pulls me through the entrance hall, past a cluster of men who look old money, and into the ballroom that opens up like a cathedral with a bar tab.
Hundreds of wolves in formalwear, circling, networking, performing. My mother navigates us through the crowd as I hear a man near the ice sculpture leans toward his wife.
"Three hundred and three years old and the bastard still fights at Underground Claw every month. My son went last week — said Grimclaw broke a challenger's jaw in the first round and didn't even shift."
His wife shakes her head. "Someone needs to tell these boys to stop trying."
My mother releases my wrist, finally found someone worth talking to, and I flatten myself against the nearest wall. Thankfully, Edward and Noah follow her. But when the murmur near the entrance changes pitch, I look up.
Jared Grimclaw, the Alpha of our pack, is crossing the ballroom floor.
Silver hair, scarred shoulders, a walk that doesn't hurry. His shirt is open one button too many and I can see the edge of something — a scar, a tattoo, I don't know — running along his collarbone.
He's been alive for centuries, living long and aging slowly as all lycans do, but he looks… forty. And — okay, I'll say it — he's absurdly attractive. His suit looks like it's hanging on for dear life.
I know him only as my late father's old friend and colleague in the boxer club he used to work at. Dad spoke about him with a reverence he gave nobody else.
My hand tightens around the glass while my face heats for no reason. I look away, look back, look away again. Classic, very subtle, Isadora. Nobody has ever been caught staring less gracefully in the history of staring.
When Alpha Jared turns his head toward someone speaking to him and the angle puts his profile in the light, something in my lower stomach pulls tight like a rope being wound. My body detonates from the inside.
My skin prickles. My legs dissolve.
What the… I've never… This has never…
My vision tips and the rest of the room blurs. Every male head within twenty feet rotates toward me like I've activated a biological dinner bell.
The look in their eyes… I know that look. I live with it every day.
Hell, no. No no no no no. This cannot be my first heat. Not right now!
A cramp rips through my abdomen and I feel my thighs shake violently as a few drops of something slick run down it. Sweat beads along my spine and my dress sticks to skin that feels like it's running a fever from the inside out.
I need to leave. Now. Yesterday. Last week.
I push off the wall and the crowd becomes an obstacle course. My heel twists. My hip catches a table edge. A woman pulls her clutch out of my path like I'm contagious.
I'm zigzagging toward the restrooms, vision narrowing, sweat running down my neck, and then the crowd parts for half a second when I see him.
Alpha Jared is standing with two men near the far pillar, and he's… watching me.
His hand, wrapped around a glass, has gone white at the knuckles. Our eyes meet and a wave rolls through my core, wet and even more violent, completely humiliating. My legs nearly fold on the spot when he takes a step toward me, but I don't wait to find out why exactly.
The restroom door appears on my right and I throw myself through it, slam the lock and crumble against it. I dig my heels into the tile and press my spine against the door while the world can't stop shaking.
When the door jumps against my back once, I grit my teeth and push back. But when it jumps again, harder and more persistent this time, my heels slide an inch on the tile.
I can't let anyone near me, not now.
"I can smell you through the door, little sister." Noah's voice is a purr. "You're soaking, aren't you? Don't worry, I'll help you to make it stop. I'll make it feel so good you'll forget you ever said no."
No… Please, Goddess. Not him. Anyone but him!
I grab the handle with both hands, and for two seconds I hold. The third hit splinters the lock and sends me sprawling across the floor as Noah steps in.
He kicks the door shut, his nostrils are wide, pupils gone black, and a grin assembling across his face triggers every alarm my body has ever wired.
"There you are…" He breathes in deep and crouches to my level. "How come I didn't know you had a smell?"
Because I made sure you didn't know, asshole!
Edward had been making advances on me since I was sixteen, so I have been taking aconite pills specifically so degenerates like him and Noah can never scent me or claim me.
"Get out." My voice arrives paper-thin.
"Or what?" His head tilts. "You'll scream? Go ahead. You think anyone out there is coming for the family embarrassment?"
My scalp screams when he grabs a fistful of my hair and pulls me up. He hooks his arm under my ribs and carries me the rest of the way. The sink edge catches my hipbones when he bends me over it, pressing down one hand flat between my shoulder blades.
I twist, kick backward and when my heel catches his shin, he hisses. For one second his grip loosens and I lunge for the edge of the counter, but he slams me back down so hard the faucet splits my lip.
I can't fight. I can't run. I can barely keep my lungs in the game.
When his other hand goes for the hem of my dress, the door ceases to exist.
One heartbeat Noah is against me. The next he's airborne, hitting the tile wall with a crack that rearranges porcelain. He crumples and the second he looks up, every drop of blood vacates his face.
Alpha Jared stands in what used to be a doorframe. His hands vibrate as he is fighting his transformation with sheer, terrifying willpower. Furious eyes strobe between brown and gold so fast I can't clock which color's in charge.
When Noah runs with no parting shot, Alpha Jared turns to me, and I press harder into the sink.
He's terrifying and I'm not ready to take a chance with him.
He stays in the doorway and asks, "Can you walk?"
I try but my knees quit on the first step and his arm is there — one arm, steady around my waist. He lifts me like I weigh nothing.
"No one else can handle your scent right now," he says, voice shredded by the shift he's strangling. "You are coming with me."
The Lycan's Hidden Mate
30 Chapters
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