The Scent of a Son
The coffee shop smelled of burnt espresso and rain-soaked concrete, a grimy amalgam that clung to the back of Lyra Prescott’s throat. She sat wedged into a corner booth with a view of the plate-glass window, the kind of strategic position that let her watch the revolving doors of Voss Tower across the street while pretending to scroll through her phone. The forged temp-booking badge hung from a lanyard around her neck, its plastic casing already worn at the edges from her thumb rubbing against it.
Eight years of running had tuned her instincts to a razor’s edge. She catalogued exits without thinking—the service door behind the counter, the fire exit beside the restrooms, the front entrance that led directly into the flow of midday foot traffic. Her pulse stayed steady, practiced. But her knuckles were white around her cold brew.
“Mom. You’re doing the thing again.”
Lyra looked down. Eli sat across from her, his small hands wrapped around a hot chocolate that had gone lukewarm. He had his father’s eyes. Not the color—those were hers, a muddy hazel that shifted with the light—but the shape. The way his brow bones arched when he was studying something too carefully. The way his mouth pressed into a flat, unreadable line when he was counting the exits herself.
“I’m not doing anything,” she said.
“You’re doing the thing where you pretend you’re not looking at the door.” Eli glanced at the entrance himself, a quick, darting movement. “It’s fine. I’m doing it too.”
Lyra’s chest tightened. She hated that he knew her tells. She hated that he had them at all. Eight years old, and he already scanned rooms like a soldier’s son, even though he’d never met his father, even though he had no idea what he was.
The bell above the door chimed.
Lyra’s gaze snapped up—a reflex she couldn’t kill—and her entire body went cold.
Killian Voss walked in like he owned the space. He did, technically. The coffee shop sat in the ground floor of Voss Tower, part of the company’s sprawling corporate plaza. But Killian didn’t walk like an owner. He walked like something that had been let off a leash. Broad shoulders in a charcoal suit that fit him like a second skin, dark hair swept back from a face that belonged on magazine covers and wanted posters in equal measure. He wasn’t alone. Two men flanked him—security, Lyra recognized the build—and a woman in a sharp blazer followed with a tablet, talking rapid-fire numbers.
Killian wasn’t listening. His head was tilted slightly, like he was tracking something in the air. His strides slowed.
Lyra forced herself to breathe.
She’d known this was a risk. Voss Industries was the one contract in the city that would get her the documents she needed to disappear again, and the temp-booking badge was her only way through the front doors. She’d come to scout the building three times this week, each time telling herself the odds were low. Killian ran the company. He wasn’t going to be in a coffee shop at 2:47 on a Thursday.
He was.
And he was looking at her.
No. Not at her. Through her. His nose flared, barely perceptible, and something in his posture shifted. The casual arrogance of a man who owned the room bled into something sharper. More predatory.
Lyra’s hand moved beneath the table. Eli’s fingers found hers without looking, his small grip surprisingly firm. He was still staring at his hot chocolate, but she could feel him go still. Watchful.
She kept her eyes on the window. Voss Tower’s glass facade threw the late afternoon sun back in blinding angles. She counted the floors. Forty-one. Forty-two. Her reflection was pale, trapped in the glass, a ghost hovering over her own shoulder.
“Mom,” Eli whispered. “He’s coming over.”
Her stomach dropped. She hadn’t heard footsteps.
“Don’t look up,” she murmured. “Just finish your drink.”
Eli obeyed, lifting his cup to his lips with a steady hand. He’d learned early. She’d hated that too.
The footsteps stopped at the edge of their booth.
“You’re burning,” a deep voice said. Not loud. It didn’t need to be. The air around them seemed to compress, the ambient noise of the café fading to a dull roar. “The jackfruit you’re pretending to eat. It’s burning your tongue.”
Lyra lifted her head.
Killian Voss stood over them, silhouetted against the light from the window. He was tall—taller than she remembered, though she’d never actually met him. She’d only seen his face in newsphotos, in financial magazines she’d leafed through in airport lounges while waiting for a connecting flight she never intended to board. In person, he was worse. Much worse. Up close, she could see the faint silver threading through his dark hair, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. He looked like a man in his early thirties, but she knew from her research he was almost forty. Werewolf aging. The sort of detail that would have made her laugh once, back when the world was normal.
“I’m not hungry,” she said, her voice flat.
Killian smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Liar.”
Eli set down his cup. The sound was small, final. Killian’s attention flicked to him—just for a second, just a glance—and then back to Lyra. But she saw the pause. The almost imperceptible hitch in his breathing.
She felt the room tilt.
“You have a child,” Killian said slowly, like he was testing the words. “Interesting.”
Lyra’s hand tightened around Eli’s fingers. “We’re leaving.”
She started to rise, every muscle in her body screaming at her to move, to run, to get Eli away from this man and the gravitational pull of his presence. But Killian shifted his weight, and suddenly he was blocking the exit, his broad frame filling the gap between the booth and the adjacent table.
“Stay,” he said. It was a command, not a request. The air around them thickened like storm clouds, pressure building against her skin. Her wolf—her dormant, hidden, half-wild wolf—stirred in her chest for the first time in years.
She did not stay.
Lyra shoved Eli behind her, stepping sideways into the narrow aisle. “I don’t know who you think you are.”
“I think I’m Killian Voss,” he said. “And I think you’re walking into my building with a forged badge, looking like a woman who doesn’t know she’s carrying my scent.”
The words hit like a slap.
Lyra’s blood went ice cold. “You’re mistaken.”
“Am I?” Killian’s head tilted again, his nostrils flaring deliberately this time, drawing in the air around them. His eyes darkened, the irises bleeding toward something amber. “I’d recognize that scent anywhere. Star anise and wintergreen. You think I haven’t been looking for that for the past nine years?”
“Eight,” Lyra corrected before she could stop herself.
The moment the word left her mouth, she knew she’d made a mistake.
Killian’s expression went very still. “Eight years,” he repeated. His gaze dropped to Eli, who was pressed against her hip, his small face pale but his jaw set in a determined line. “He’s eight years old.”
Lyra’s throat closed. She couldn’t breathe.
“Get away from us,” she said, her voice cracking. “Get away from my son.”
“Your son.” Killian’s voice was flat, but beneath the surface she could hear something trembling—fury, shock, a terrible fragile hope. “Tell me his name.”
“No.”
“Tell me his name.”
The pressure in the air intensified. Lyra’s wolf clawed harder at her chest, responding to the dominance in his tone, the primal demand that made her bones hum. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted copper.
“Eli,” she said, because lying felt dangerous. Because he would know. He would smell it on her, the stink of deception, and then everything would be worse. “His name is Eli.”
Killian made a sound. Low, guttural, almost pained. He took a step closer, and Lyra instinctively pressed back, pulling Eli with her until she hit the wall. The window behind them was cold through her thin jacket. Outside, the city shimmered in the late afternoon light, oblivious to the catastrophe unfolding in a corner booth of a corporate coffee shop.
“Eli,” Killian repeated. He said it like a prayer. His eyes locked onto the boy with an intensity that made Lyra want to shatter the glass and throw them both into the street. “Look at me, Eli.”
Eli didn’t look.
“He doesn’t take orders from strangers,” Lyra snapped.
Killian’s jaw worked, a muscle jumping beneath his skin. But he didn’t push. He just stood there, staring at the child who wouldn’t lift his head, and something in his posture crumbled.
“Let me see his eyes,” Killian said. The command was gone. In its place was something rawer, more human. “Please.”
Lyra’s heart was a drum in her ears. She thought about running—really running, crashing through the service door, disappearing into the alleys behind the plaza with Eli’s hand in hers. She’d done it before. She could do it again.
But Killian was standing between her and every exit. And even if she got him to move, his security team was still by the door, their gazes sharp and professional. She couldn’t outrun them. She couldn’t outrun him. But the men by the door, she could feel their eyes were on her, and they were Killian’s men. The CEO of Voss Industries had four guns in this room at least, and she had nothing but a forged badge and a boy who was just learning to keep his secrets.
Eli chose that moment to look up.
It was quick—a flicker of hazel under the overhead lights, a flash of gold around the iris like a struck match. The color came and went in less than a heartbeat, but Killian saw it.
Lyra watched his face change.
The composure cracked. The careful mask of a businessman shattered, and beneath it was the raw face of a wolf who had just caught the scent of his own bloodline. His hands clenched at his sides, and a tremor ran through him, shaking his shoulders with a violence born of restraint.
“He’s mine,” Killian said. Not a question. A statement, low and certain, the words scraping out of him like gravel. “He’s my son.”
Lyra’s eyes burned. “You don’t know that.”
“I know,” Killian said. “I know the way his eyes just flashed gold. I know the way your scent clings to him like you’ve been carrying him in your skin his whole life.” His voice cracked. “I know he’s eight, Lyra. I know.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Then tell me who I should call you.” Killian’s voice sharpened. “Because I’ve been searching for you for eight years. No name. No trail. Just the ghost of a woman who smelled like star anise and wintergreen and disappeared without a trace after one night in my bed.”
The words hit her like a physical blow. One night. One reckless, impossible night eight years ago, when she’d been young and desperate and had stumbled into a bar she should have never entered. She’d known what he was the moment he’d looked at her. Wolf. Alpha. Something that could ruin her if she let him close.
She hadn’t let him close. She’d let him take her to his penthouse, let him touch her like she was the most precious thing he’d ever held, and then she’d slipped out before dawn. She hadn’t known about Eli until three months later, when the morning sickness started.
She’d never told him. She’d never planned to tell him.
“You should have stayed away,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Killian’s face twisted. “I’ve been trying to. For eight years.” He took another step forward, and Lyra’s back hit the window with a dull thud. He was close enough now that she could see the gold bleeding into his eyes, the wolf pressing against the surface of his skin. “Tell me one thing, Lyra—whose son is he?”
Lyra’s throat was closed. Her fingers were wrapped around Eli’s, gripping them tight enough to hurt, but he didn’t pull away.
The sunlight through the window caught the edge of Killian’s jaw, and for one terrible, crystalline moment, she saw Eli in his face. The same stubborn set of the mouth. The same dangerous light in the eyes.
She opened her mouth to lie.
Nothing came out.
Killian says, “Tell me one thing, Lyra—whose son is he?”