Mikalina It was a spur of the moment, maybe reckless, definitely a shock to everyone I knew when I decided to take a trip across the ocean to a foreign country and stay for an undetermined amount of time. Renting out a cottage in a tiny European village whose residents barely spoke English was the perfect escape from overbearing parents, fake friends, and a future that seemed bleak. And helping out an elderly woman with her shopping to earn some extra cash seemed easy enough. Mindless, hour-long walks through the thick woods that surrounded said village also sounded ideal. No Internet. No television. And just the bare basics to get me by. Perfection. Stress-free. Exactly what I needed. Or maybe I was wrong about it all. I felt someone or something watching me from the darkened, dangerous woods. I felt someone—something—stalking me. I didn’t know what or who it was, but I knew with certainty it wasn’t human… and that it wanted me. Ren I wasn’t human, not completely. A Lycan—a centuries-old wolf-like creature that was feared by all, stronger than anything on the planet, and who was only ever after one thing. My mate. For over three hundred years, I had one purpose in life. Find her, the one female born to be mine. My female who’d cause the Linking Instinct—that supernatural connection that told me she was mine and I hers—to finally take root and make me whole. And for hundreds of years, I’d been alone, saving myself for my mate, never stopping the search. Until I scented her, saw her, finally felt my heartbeat and the blood rush through my veins with hope and anticipation. Mine. She didn’t see me, but she sensed me. And she ran. She couldn’t possibly know how much the chase turned me on. I didn’t know how I’d make her understand I could never let her go, that nothing and no one would stop me from making her mine. Because once a Lycan found his mate… nothing in this world, nothing supernatural or human, could keep him from her.