Chapter 1

They found me in the dumpster behind the hospital.

My newborn daughter was gone. My stomach was still freshly cut open. And the man I carried her for didn't even know I was dead.

The janitor who discovered me screamed so loudly that security came running. They took one look at my body — the surgical wound still raw, the blood dried black against the garbage bags — and called the police.

They also called Dominic.

Dominic Ashford. The billionaire CEO of Ashford Pharmaceuticals. The most powerful Alpha in the Silver Crest Pack. And the man who had hired me to carry his child.

I was nobody — a Rogue with no pack, no family, no wolf form strong enough to matter. When Dominic's people found me waitressing at a diner with a PAST DUE notice in my pocket, they offered me a contract.

Carry the Alpha's heir. Receive $5 million upon delivery. No contact with the child. No claim. No identity.

I signed it because I had nothing.

What I didn't know was that his fiancée, Vivian, had been the one to select me — specifically because I had no one. No family to ask questions. No pack to investigate. No one who would come looking if I vanished.

Dominic arrived at the hospital not for me, but because Vivian had called him, sobbing hysterically.

"Dominic, something terrible happened! The surrogate — she ran off! She took the baby and disappeared! I tried to stop her, but she shoved me and — oh God, I think she's selling our baby!"

I watched Dominic's face harden into stone as he listened. That jaw I'd memorized during months of carrying his daughter — I'd seen it clench in boardrooms, in pack meetings, in the one moment he'd accidentally touched my belly and felt her kick.

He'd pulled his hand away like I'd burned him.

"Find her," he ordered his guards, his voice cold enough to freeze blood. "Find the surrogate and get my daughter back. I don't care what it takes."

They were looking for me, alright.

But they were looking for a kidnapper, not a corpse.

Meanwhile, Vivian cradled my daughter — my daughter — in a private room upstairs, cooing softly as she fed her a bottle.

"Your mommy won't be a problem anymore, sweet girl," she whispered. "From now on, I'm your mommy."

She looked up at the door, and smiled.

The nurse who had helped Vivian cut me open and steal my baby stood there, pale and trembling.

Vivian's smile didn't waver. "Relax. No one's going to find her. Rogues disappear all the time."

I wanted to scream.

But the dead don't make sounds.