Chapter 1

Fiona's POV

"Fiona, what are you staring off into space for! Have you finished setting up all the equipment we need?"

"How many times do I have to remind you—the seminar today is important, and the guests attending are all people of considerable influence. There cannot be a single mistake."

"Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that Duke Sterling is her uncle, who would ever put up with this foolish girl dragging us down here in our own library?"

"See? This is what comes of werewolves and humans marrying so carelessly. Sure, there's a one-in-ten-thousand chance a mixed-blood child turns out to be some prodigy, but most of them are just useless nobodies. They inherit neither the refined intellect of humans nor the raw strength of the wolves."

"I never imagined Professor Thorne would actually agree to the engagement. Seems the Grey Wolf clan isn't as strict about bloodlines as everyone thought."

"He had little choice. Rumor has it the Thorne family is set to become key cabinet members of the next Coexistence Council for Humans and Werewolves. Choosing a half-blood fiancée is their pledge of political correctness—their calling card, so to speak. And besides, Duke Sterling has promised a generous dowry."

I stood there clutching a thick stack of lecture handouts while these colleagues, who were supposed to be arranging the venue, ordered me about, shoving and jostling me from every side.

Right in front of me, they gossiped freely about my family, my origins, my fiancé, the birth parents who'd vanished years ago, and my dull red hair and my glasses, whose lenses were thick as the bottom of a liquor bottle.

"Watch out, Fiona."

I turned and stumbled straight into a man's chest.

He frowned and lowered his head with a hint of impatience, clearly worried I might wrinkle his clothes.

It was my fiancé, Caleb Thorne.

He was dressed with unusual care today—a charcoal-gray three-piece suit, tailored to perfection, tracing the lines of his tall, slender frame. At his collar hung a dark red velvet tie, the signature color of the Sterling family.

That trademark pair of gold-rimmed glasses sat on the bridge of his nose, and behind the lenses, his narrow eyes always carried a look of condescending scrutiny.

To outsiders, he was the youngest associate professor of literature at St. Mary's University, a gentleman of refinement and learning, the shining star of the Grey Wolf clan's newest generation.

But I knew what a rotten soul lay hidden beneath that handsome shell.

"I'm sorry, Caleb," I murmured, while one hand quietly slipped something into my pocket.

"Listen. In a setting like this, you're to call me Professor Thorne. And here—take this book back. I don't need it anymore."

Caleb didn't reach out to steady me right away. He simply let me stagger against him for a few seconds.

Only after confirming that none of the guests had noticed the awkward scene did he extend a hand and, with the pretense of a gentleman, straighten the heavy glasses on my nose.

At the same time, he pressed into my hands the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover he had borrowed just that morning from the front desk of the library where I worked.

His fingers were long and cold, and the instant they brushed my cheek, I caught a scent—a mingling of musk, sweat, and some cheap strawberry-scented hand cream.

The scent that belonged to Emily alone.

I knew that at this very moment she was hiding behind the curtained door just beyond us.

Finishing their little tryst, then emerging one right after the other, was their unspoken routine.

Thud!

For a moment I lost focus, and the book slammed hard against the floor.

"Fiona, when exactly are you going to learn to be a little sharper?"

Caleb bent down to retrieve the book, reminding me once more with that impatient edge in his voice.

"Go check the projector. I need to make sure the presentation goes off without a hitch."

"Yes, Professor Thorne."

Clutching the handouts, I retreated silently to the control console.

Caleb turned and strode toward the podium.

There was something subtly stiff about the way he walked—his right leg took a slightly shorter stride than usual.

My gaze settled on that dark red velvet tie of his.

The knot was loose, plainly retied in a hurry. And there, at the shirt collar beneath the tie, a small dark red mark peeked out.

It wasn't a lipstick stain.

It was a scratch.

A deep one, deep enough to have drawn a bead of blood.

I pushed up my glasses and shifted my gaze.

Sure enough, I saw Emily's figure slipping out from behind the curtain, like a startled gray squirrel.

Having once again escaped her predator's jaws, she flashed her smug little front teeth.

I looked down at the copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover in my arms. The corner of one page bore a telltale crease.

I opened it. Line after line was circled in pencil.

This was a Klingon translation.

Strung together, the sentence read—

Your prey awaits you in the usual place, and the wet body beneath the flesh lies open for you.

The page number was the time of the rendezvous.

Right under my nose, they had been passing these romantic little signals back and forth, constantly swapping out different translated editions. Every time, one of them would return a book, and the other would come along right after to borrow it.

And it seemed they had never once suspected—that I, this country bumpkin who'd only ever attended community college, could be fluent in more than a dozen languages.

The time for the presentation had come, and Caleb was already in position at the podium.

He first glanced down at his pocket watch, then looked toward a cluster of empty seats in the front row with something like anxiety.

The event's host walked over and said something to him.

I strained my ears to listen—it seemed some important guest, due to a small complication, had been unable to attend for the time being.

"Nothing to be done. We'll have to start without waiting."

Caleb blew into the microphone and pressed the controller for the large projection screen.

No response?

He turned his eyes toward me, full of reproach, clearly demanding to know why, after all his repeated warnings, something had gone wrong anyway.

But what he didn't know was that the remote switch for the entire multimedia console had been in my pocket the whole time.

"Apologies, everyone. It seems our multimedia equipment is having a small problem. Please bear with us a moment."

Caleb kept shooting me glances, signaling for me to come up and fix it as quickly as possible.

But in that very instant, the screen suddenly lit up.

And what appeared before everyone's eyes was a high-definition video.

The footage was a little shaky, plainly filmed in some cramped and secluded space. The lighting was dim, with only a few threads of sunlight slipping through the gaps in the blinds, casting dappled patterns across the floor.

Then a man's figure appeared on screen.

He wore a white shirt, his tie yanked askew, his gold-rimmed glasses hanging at the tip of his nose—an image at once scholarly and obscene.

It was Caleb.

He had the woman pinned against a desk, his movements rough and urgent.

"Ah! Caleb… I'm going to come! Faster, faster!"

The woman's cloying moans, carried through the conference room's top-tier sound system, rang out clearly into every corner.

She wore a red knit sweater, its collar already torn open to reveal a broad expanse of snow-white skin. Her hair fell loose and tangled over her shoulders, and her face wore an expression caught between pain and pleasure.

She was none other than Emily, a third-year literature student at Caleb's college.

At that moment, she was writhing like a bitch in heat, her legs wrapped around Caleb's waist, meeting his every thrust.

"Say it!" Caleb's voice in the video came low and lewd. "Tell me out loud—whose woman are you!"

"I'm yours… I'm your gamekeeper… I'm the little ewe you shepherd."

Emily sobbed the words, her voice brimming with the ecstasy of surrender.

The audience below was utterly stunned.

Some sat with their mouths hanging open, some covered their eyes, and a few had even taken out their phones and begun recording.

"Damn it! What the hell is going on!"

Caleb slammed frantically at the console, but every button seemed to have been deliberately welded in place, refusing to budge.

"You bastards! Kill the power!"

The instant the main switch was thrown, the whole room fell into darkness.

Yet the backup battery I had tampered with beforehand kept right on running at full tilt.

With the lights off, the image from the projector only appeared all the sharper.

"It's no use, Professor Thorne."

I walked slowly up to the front of the stage, a black remote in hand and a cold smile curling at the corner of my mouth.

"Even if you cut the power to the entire library, it will all be for nothing."

I had been planning this moment for more than a month.

I meant to tear away his hypocritical, contemptible mask—and lay his true face bare before everyone!