PROLOGUE
Five Years Ago – The Night of the Rut
It began like most endings do: with silence disguised as celebration.
Outside, the city pulsed with the echo of college graduation. Music, champagne, laughter. Inside, Alec Reyes stood at the edge of a rooftop bar, sleeves rolled, collar loose, eyes fixed on nothing.
His drink had gone warm. He hadn't touched it.
He didn't feel like celebrating the future when the present already felt like a quiet kind of failure.
He was a beta — stable, average, invisible. No scent. No cycle. No spark that turned heads when he walked in the room. People liked him. No one remembered him.
So he slipped away after the group photos and half-hearted speeches, climbed to the rooftop, and waited for the night to pass.
He didn't expect anyone else to find him up here.
He especially didn't expect him.
The elevator chimed. Rain licked the edge of the building. And then — a presence.
It wasn't the sound of footsteps that made Alec turn. It was scent.
Spice and smoke. Pine, lightning, heat.
His heart tripped in his chest.
A man stood in the shadowed doorway. Drenched in rain, suit jacket unbuttoned, black dress shirt plastered to a lean frame. He looked young — maybe twenty-something — but there was something ageless about him. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. And eyes—
Alec froze.
Purple.
Not violet. Not contacts. Not metaphor.
Purple — glowing faintly under the rooftop lights.
A dominant alpha.
Alec's throat tightened. His body reacted before his mind could catch up — skin humming, breath catching, instincts flaring with warning and wonder. Dominant alphas were more than rare. They were myth. Most people went their whole lives without seeing one.
And now one stood before him — golden-eyed, rain-slicked, staring like Alec was the only steady thing in a collapsing world.
"You smell like something I lost," the alpha said softly.
Alec blinked. "I'm a beta. I don't smell like anything."
"I know." The alpha's voice cracked. "But you do."
He stepped closer. One pace. Then another.
The scent thickened. The air warped around them. Alec backed up until the edge of the concrete bit into his spine. The man stopped just inches away, shoulders trembling.
Then Alec saw it: the glow in his eyes deepening. Purple turning gold.
No.
He wasn't just a dominant alpha.
He was going into rut.
Panic caught Alec by the ribs. "You need to— You're not thinking clearly—"
"I am thinking," the alpha rasped. "For the first time in months."
Alec should have run. Should have shoved him away. Should have screamed for help.
Instead, he stood there — heart thudding, body betraying him, frozen in something that felt less like danger and more like inevitability.
They didn't speak again.
What happened next came in flashes. A kiss that scorched. Fingers tearing fabric. Skin against skin. The sharp gasp of need turned voiceless. Alec remembered trembling. Pressure. Heat. His own voice, a whisper: don't stop.
And then—
Dark.
Not sleep. Not unconsciousness.
Just… nothing.
—
When Alec woke, he was alone.
No scent. No name. No note.
Only aching muscles. A heartbeat that didn't feel like his. And the echo of gold eyes watching him like a promise no one ever made.
He never saw him again.
Not until five years later—
When their son started asking who his father was.
And the man from that night stepped onto a stage with violet eyes, a world-famous name…
And no memory of Alec at all.