The Alpha’s Forbidden Heir

Prologue

New York pretends to be ordinary at night. It flashes its lights and hums its familiar noise, but beneath all that glitter, there is something else breathing. Something that watches. Something that waits. People feel it without knowing why. A second of cold on the back of the neck. A sudden urgency to walk faster. A reflex to avoid eye contact with alleys that seem a little too still.

Aurora Blake has lived her whole life pretending she does not notice the strange corners of the world. Pretending the quick shiver under her skin is nothing more than exhaustion. She tells herself she has no time for fear or imagination. Her mother is fading. Bills stack up like threats. She works until her eyes burn, and she tells herself that the strange tug at her senses is just stress.

Only tonight the city feels different. Every sound seems sharper. Every shadow seems thicker. And when she glances behind her on the walk to the subway, she could swear something slips out of sight too quickly to be human.

High above her, the tallest tower in the city stands like a blade cutting into the sky. Inside it,Damian Blackwood watches the night as if it is a warning meant only for him. Power drapes over him like a second skin, but beneath it, there is a pressure he cannot ignore anymore. The beast inside him is restless. The prophecy he has outrun for years is tugging at its chains. And for the first time in a long time, he feels as if fate is circling closer.

He has spent his life locking doors inside himself. He has built walls out of control and coldness. He has buried instinct so deep it should never rise again. Yet something in the air tonight has those instincts clawing upward as if sensing a shift he cannot see.

He does not know the shift has already begun. He does not know a girl who feels too much and knows too little is walking straight toward the moment that will unravel the world he has tried to hide.

Soon Aurora will step into a room she was never meant to find. Soon Damian will see her eyes and the bond he swore he would never accept will snap into place with violent certainty.

And in that heartbeat everything will change.

The city knows it. The shadows know it. Even the air seems to tremble as if bracing for impact.

This is the moment before the fall. The moment where destiny draws its first deliberate breath. A quiet fragile second that holds the promise of danger desire and destruction all at once.

Chapter One

Shadow Pulse

Aurora Blake realized too late that she was the last person left on the twenty eighth floor.

It hit her only when the office lights flickered and hummed back to life in that uneven pulse that always made the hallway feel haunted. She straightened slowly from her desk, blinking at the shadows stretching long across the glass walls. Blackstone Corp looked different when empty. It breathed differently. The hum of the servers deepened. The air felt too cold. And the silence wrapped itself so completely around her that she could hear her own heartbeat thudding in her ears.

She checked the time on her laptop. Almost midnight.

Perfect. Another night swallowed whole by a job that barely held her life together.

Her eyes burned. Her shoulders ached. Her mind throbbed with the stress of bills she could not pay and a mother she could not lose. Stillshe told herself the same thing she always did. One more hour. One more spreadsheet. One more desperate push to stay afloat.

She saved her work and locked her screen but she stayed still for a moment, palms pressed to the cool glass of her desk. She tried to breathe. Tried to ground herself. Tried to ignore that odd flutter beneath her skin. The one she had been trying to outrun for months. It was there again tonight, faint but insistent, a warm pulse that did not feel normal at all.

She closed her eyes hoping the sensation would fade.

It did not.

The air in the hallway shifted. A small thing. Barely noticeable. But she felt it. Like someone had walked through a room she was not in and tugged the temperature with them.

Her eyes snapped open.

She told herself it was exhaustion. Nothing more. Everyone left hours ago. Security would come by soon for their usual rounds. There was no reason to be afraid.

But the part of her that lived inside instinct, the part she never talked about, whispered that something was wrong tonight.

Aurora grabbed her bag anyway, forcing her thoughts into order. She moved down the hallway with brisk steps that felt steadier than she actually felt. Her heels clicked on the tile. The echo bounced off the walls like another set of footsteps following her.

She told herself not to look behind her.

She looked anyway.

Nothing.

Just the glass conference room stretching into shadows and the closed door of the CEO’s private suite at the end of the hall. Aurora had only seen Damian Blackwood once in person,and that had been enough to convince her that the rumors about him being carved from stone were not exaggerations. He never came down to this floor. He had no reason to be anywhere near her department.

Still, something in the air tonight felt tethered to the idea of him. Like the mood of the building was wearing his expression. Cold. Controlled. Dangerous.

Aurora pressed the elevator button and waited.

The sensation inside her chest pulsed again. Harder this time. Not painful. Just wrong. As if something inside her recognized something outside her. And that something was getting closer.

The elevator stayed stubbornly still on a floor far above her.

She rubbed her arms. “Come on.”

The lights flickered again. A soft jitter. Then the hallway plunged into complete darkness for three heartbeats before the emergency lights snapped on, casting everything in a red-soakedglow.

Aurora’s breath seized.

The building never did this. Never.

She stepped back from the elevator and instinct guided her feet toward the stairwell instead. The metal door was heavy and cold under her palm,but she pushed through it with trembling fingers and slipped into the stairwell.

The air here was cooler. Sharper. And it carried a scent she did not recognize. Something faint. Metallic. Alive.

She froze.

Up above her, the sound of movement echoed through the concrete shaft. Not footsteps. Something too controlled for footsteps. Something too fast.

Her heart lurched.

She backed away from the stairs and turned instead to the small landing that connected to another hallway. It was dim but familiar, and she hurried along it until she reached a door she had never seen open in all her months working here.

Restricted Access. Executives Only.

Normally, that alone would have made her turn around. She had zero interest in getting fired. But something deeper tugged at her. A strange magnetic pull she could not explain. Her hand reached for the handle before she even processed the impulse.

Her fingers brushed the metal.

A sound drifted from the other side.

A voice.

Low. Rough. As if scraped from the bottom of a storm.

And then something heavier. A thud. Then a second one. Then the unmistakable sound of someone trying very hard not to lose control.

She should walk away. She should not be here. She knew that. But the pulse inside her chest surged so fiercely that it knocked the breath out of her.

She opened the door.

The room beyond was dark except for the faint white strip of emergency lighting along the wall. Shadows twisted in the corners. A sleek table stood overturned. Glass glittered across the floor. And in the center of the chaos was a silhouette she recognized instantly, even though she had only ever seen him from a distance.

Damian Blackwood.

His back was to her. His shoulders were heaving. One hand was braced against the wall as if he were holding himself up. The other hand curled and uncurled like he was fighting something inside his own skin. His shirt was torn at the shoulder. Something golden flickered across his spine. Light. Movement. Heat.

Aurora’s breath hitched.

She should leave.

She could not move.

Damian’s head snapped up. His whole body went rigid. And then he turned.

For one impossible second, their eyes met.

Golden.

Not human. Not even close.

Her pulse exploded.

He did too.

The world crashed into silence so complete she could hear the blood rushing through her own veins.

He stared at her as if she were the last person he expected. Or the last person he wanted.

Something slammed through the space between them.

Instant. Violent. Alive.

Aurora staggered back a step, clutching the door frame. What was that? What did she just feel?Why did her chest burn like something ancient had just woken up inside her bones?

Damian’s expression changed. Hardened. And something like horror crossed his face before he crushed it with cold precision.

“Get out.”

His voice was wrong. Lower. Rougher. As if another voice lived beneath it.

Aurora shook her head because she could not make sense of anything. “I did not mean to come in. The lights. The stairs. I heard something, and I thought someone was hurt, and I just…” She swallowed. “Are you bleeding. Are you okay?”

His jaw clenched. Hard. “Leave.”

“But you're back. It looked like something was…”

“Leave now.” The command snapped through the air like a whip. Something invisible cracked against her instincts, and every muscle in her body flinched in response.

She stumbled backward.

Damian stepped toward her, and for a moment she thought he would grab her. Not gently. Not kindly. But the moment he reached the edge of the emergency light, he froze again as if crossing that thin line between shadow and brightness would unleash something he was barely holding back.

Aurora’s breath shook.

Damian’s eyes shifted. Gold fading. Human returning. Barely.

He whispered something under his breath like a curse against fate itself.

Then he said it louder.

“You should not exist.”

Aurora froze. “What?”

His voice dropped to a lethal softness. “Go before I become something you should never see.”

Her stomach twisted.

She turned. She ran.

She did not stop until she burst into the night air outside the building, lungs burning, heart racing, skin still tingling with that strange wrong heat.

And as she stood on the sidewalk gripping the strap of her bag like a lifeline, the city around her seemed to hold its breath with her.

She had stepped into something tonight.

Something she did not understand.

Something that felt like a warning.

And somewhere high above her, in the tallest tower of Blackstone City, Damian Blackwood stood alone in a dark room staring at the place where she had stood and whispered into the space.

“Not her.” 

“Not her.”

“Anyone but her.”

Aurora did not sleep.

She tried. She truly did. She curled beneath her thin blanket in her tiny apartment. Closed her eyes. Counted slow breaths and told herself that what she had seen in Blackstone Tower was just adrenaline and exhaustion playing cruel tricks on a tired mind. But every time she drifted close to sleep, she felt again the weight of those golden eyes locking onto hers. Felt the heat that burst through her chest as if something ancient reached out from him and answered something buried inside her.

By three in the morning, her body gave up. She sat on the edge of her bed with her head in her hands and waited for dawn like someone waiting for judgment.

When the alarm finally screamed, she moved through her morning routine on instinct. Shower. Clothes. Hair pulled back. Coffee that tasted like burnt hope. She checked her phone for messages from the hospital. None. A relief and a fresh ache at the same time. Her mother had been unstable fo