~Third person POV~
If a man could look like sin incarnate, Kade Strathmore was the original.
Tall, scarred, and sharp as shattered glass, he moved through the world with the ruthless certainty of a storm ready to break. His eyes, cold steel-gray, held the kind of chill that could freeze fire itself. Wherever he went, the air seemed to bend to his will, as if the very night answered to him.
Then, across the crowded club, he saw her.
Elara.
Something ancient stirred within him an echo of something deeper than desire or fury. It wasn't lust. It wasn't rage.
It was recognition.
His wolf, silent and fierce, whispered one word: Mate.
But this bond wasn't clean. It wasn't the silver-threaded destiny sung of in legends.
It was black. Twisted. Bound in old blood, old curses, and betrayal.
Because Elara wasn't just the woman fate had marked.
She was the daughter of the witch who cursed his bloodline.
And Kade faced a brutal choice: Claim her... or kill her.
~Elara's POV ~
The club throbbed with music and shadows, a world away from the quiet life I'd tried to carve out for myself. Yet here I was, caught in a storm I couldn't escape.
I saw him before I knew who he was.
Tall, dark and impossibly dangerous, like a predator stalking through a sea of faceless bodies. His gaze cut through the crowd, locking onto me like I was the only thing that mattered in the room.
I should have been afraid.
But instead, my blood sang with a strange, wild rhythm, something old, something fierce.
There was a pull beneath my skin, a trembling thread connecting me to something I didn't understand.
When his eyes met mine, I felt the weight of a thousand unspoken stories, the promise of pain and power tangled together.
Kade Strathmore.
The name was a whisper in my mind before the world could catch up.
I didn't know then that he was my mate, bound by a darkness that clawed through generations.
I didn't know that his bloodline carried a curse and that my mother had woven that curse with spite and fear.
All I knew was the way my heart clenched in that moment, like it was both a warning and a promise.
And I knew my life was about to change forever.