Alexandra Vance. The Beast’s Attraction. Book 1. Wolf

A note from the author

This story wasn't originally written in English — it's been translated with the assistance of AI tools, into British English. I've gone through it as carefully as I can, but some nuances may not have carried over perfectly. If anything reads oddly, I hope it won't pull you out of the story too much.

Prologue

I woke at three in the morning, heart pounding, the back of my neck drenched in sweat.

The dream was already dissolving — the way nightmares do when you can't quite hold onto them, leaving only something sticky and unpleasant behind, like cobwebs brushing your face. Something dark. Something huge. Something that had watched me from the dark without moving. The details slipped away. The feeling stayed.

I sat up and stared at the ceiling.

Silence.

A flat without Lexa was a different flat entirely. Not a worse one, no. Just... loud, in that particular way silence gets loud — the kind you only notice once you've grown used to someone else's breathing across the room. An arm or a leg thrown over yours in the night. Lexa was my sister. She'd gone back to our parents in Manchester for a couple of days, leaving me on my own again. She'd always needed someone close. Or warmth. Perhaps both.

I got up and went to the kitchen.

The kettle. My favourite mug — the one my sister had given me last birthday, reading "To my big sister, from your favourite and only sister." An Earl Grey teabag, because Mum was right about one thing at least: coffee at three in the morning was practically a diagnosis.

"Proper girls drink tea," her voice surfaced in my head, word-perfect, tone and all. Stern. Immovable. "Not that filthy coffi of yours."

Coffi. Twenty years old, and I could still hear it in exactly that voice — a leftover from Nan's side of the family, one of the handful of Welsh words that had survived three generations of English weddings and still slipped out whenever Mum wanted to make a point.

I wrapped both hands round the mug and leaned against the windowsill. Outside was Exeter in August — quiet, faintly drowsy, even by the standards of a small university city. Streetlamps. Wet tarmac after the evening rain. Not a soul in sight.

The tea had gone cold while I stared out of the window. I took a sip and pulled a face.

Drinking cold tea in the middle of the night, alone, watching an empty street — this, apparently, was adulthood. Well done, Alexandra Vance. You made it.

Somewhere down underneath, something else had woken with the nightmare and wasn't in a hurry to leave.

Not fear. Not cold.

More like... tension. Familiar and irritating, like a stone in your shoe — one you feel with every step but can't stop to shake out. I pushed it down where I usually kept such things and set the mug aside.

On nights like this I'd usually ring Jess. Or she'd ring me. Whoever's nightmare had been worse, or whoever's supply of filthy stories hadn't run dry yet. Jess could chase off any darkness — loud, shameless, with a laugh that woke the neighbours, and the confidence of a bull in a china shop. But Jess was somewhere in the north of Scotland just now, judging by her last Instagram story — with some ginger bloke, looking thoroughly pleased with herself.

I wasn't jealous.

Much.

Instead of Jess, I opened my messages with Lexa and read back over the last one, sent while I'd been asleep.

"Sash they're on about the farm placement again. SASHA. THERE ARE COWS. I don't want cows. Why can't we just have normal parents who want their kids to be lawyers or something."

I smiled. Couldn't help it.

The Vance family and normal had never had much to do with each other. Dad — a vet. Grandad — a vet. Great-grandad, if the family stories were to be believed, had been in livestock too, one way or another, though which way changed every Christmas depending on how much had been drunk. Horses, cows, sheep, endless fields, and the smell of a farm — a smell I'd hated from the moment I'd learned to recognise it.

Mum had decided the tradition ought to continue. Through the daughters, naturally.

And here we were: the eldest named Alexandra and packed off to study veterinary medicine. The younger one, Alexia, had just been offered a place on the same course. Sometimes I think our parents approached names the same way they approached choosing their children's careers — minimum imagination, maximum stubbornness. Naming the eldest Alexandra and the younger Alexia — genius. Originality in everything. Which was probably why, from the start, everyone in the family just used the short forms — the way Nan always had, back when it was Sasha and Lexa or nothing. And we liked it that way.

Lexa had sent one more message, about an hour ago:

"want to come to you"

followed by three sad little faces.

"I want you here too, little one," I said quietly into the empty flat. "Just — it's not any better here."

I put the phone away and looked out at the window again.

The empty street hadn't gone anywhere. The tea was properly cold now. I didn't feel like sleep at all — or rather, I did, but not enough to go back into the dark of that dream. The usual contradiction of August insomnia.

The decision took about thirty seconds, which is generally how long it takes when it's already been made and is just waiting for official permission.

A drive. Just a drive.

I'd passed my test six months ago — third attempt, which I preferred not to advertise — and spent nearly everything I'd saved from my grant and my summer placement on an old '99 Hyundai Coupé. Tired, a bit battered, plenty of character. The bloke who'd sold it to me hadn't been able to hide his scepticism — a girl buying a coupé clearly didn't fit anywhere in his picture of the world. I'd handed over almost every penny I had. Never once regretted it.

I was still a bit nervy behind the wheel, if I was honest — too many idiots on the roads, too many situations no manual ever prepared you for. But the roads were empty at night. Everything was simpler at night.

Back in the bedroom, I flicked the light on and squinted against the dim glow of the lamp. My thin silk nightdress landed on the bed. Before getting changed, I stopped in front of the wardrobe mirror for a moment, taking in my own reflection — pale, dishevelled, caught off guard by insomnia.

Twenty years old, and I looked... all right, if I was honest, though I rarely let myself look for long. Tall — five foot nine — long-legged, with fine, slender collarbones standing out sharply in the half-light. My skin had always been pale, which made my dark chestnut hair, thick and wavy and nearly black, look even darker where it fell heavy over my shoulders.

My gaze dropped lower. A neat B-plus cup, high and firm. Against my pale skin, the wide, dusky pink-brown of my areolas stood out clearly — not my favourite thing about myself — nipples drawn tight in the cool air. Below that, a narrow, girlish waist, a flat stomach, and then hips and a smooth, bare cleft I kept carefully trimmed.

Looking at myself like that — naked, unguarded in the silence of an empty flat — I felt that same low, dull ache stir again. A sexuality I usually kept hidden behind the front of a diligent student seemed, tonight, to want out. I sighed and looked away. Enough of that for one evening.

The chest of drawers opened under my hand. First, simple cotton underwear from Marks & Spencer — plain black thong, a soft, wireless bra that fit close and familiar. No lace, nothing for show. Just comfort for a night drive.

Then jeans. A dark navy roll-neck from the drawer, soft and gone slightly baggy at the elbows, which hid both my neck and the shape of my chest without trying. Last, my favourite black leather jacket slid off its hook by the door — it always gave me that odd, half-conscious feeling of armour.

Keys, in my pocket.

One step out into the August night.

Chapter 1. Collision

The road out of town seemed like an endless black ribbon, hemmed in on both sides by ancient, dense fir trees. At night, in the fitful light of a moon that kept slipping in and out of cloud, they looked almost sinister, their sharp crowns rising over the road like silent sentinels. Mist crept up from the low ground, settling over the tarmac in ragged, half-transparent shreds, so that my old Hyundai's headlights drowned in a pale, milky haze.

I gripped the wheel until my knuckles went white. Six months on the outskirts of Exeter with a fresh licence in my pocket, of which I'd actually driven for maybe a month — not exactly a wealth of experience for night driving out in the sticks. A sleepy city with its empty streets was one thing. This — the wilds on the way up to the top of the hill — was something else entirely.

And what possessed you to come out to this godforsaken place, Sasha? my inner voice of reason grumbled half-heartedly, sounding suspiciously like Claire.

Claire, like Jess, was another close friend from school — sensible, sound to the bone, a future lawyer who couldn't stand chaos, spontaneous idiocy, or dubious late-night adventures. In our friendship she'd always been the "older, wiser" one, even though we were the same age. Claire genuinely worried about me, still thinking of me as the good girl from the respectable Vance family, and right now her mental avatar in my head was, predictably, delivering a lecture on road safety.

But there was no turning back — I was nearly at the long bend leading up to the viewpoint by the big pine. I slowed, peering into the fog, and that was exactly when everything went to hell. A huge grey shape shot out of the roadside undergrowth, straight under my wheels.

"Shit!" I screamed, slamming my foot down on the brake without thinking.

The tyres shrieked, leaving a black mark on the tarmac I couldn't see in the dark, and the car fishtailed on the wet road. There was a dull, sickening thud against something heavy. The car jerked and stopped dead, wrapped in the smell of burnt rubber.

For a second I just sat there, hands locked on the wheel, unable to breathe, my heart hammering somewhere up in my throat. Raw, primal terror had me frozen — but the sight through the windscreen brought me back fast enough: a few feet from the bonnet, caught in the wavering headlights, a large, furred shape lay motionless on the verge.

I threw the door open and scrambled out, forgetting to lock it. The cold night air sobered me up in an instant, and hot, traitorous tears started spilling on their own.

"God, no, no, please not this—" I was whispering as I ran to it.

I dropped to my knees straight into the dirt and dust at the roadside, not caring in the least that I was ruining my jeans. There was an animal lying in front of me. Far too big for a stray dog. A powerful, dense-muscled shoulder, thick dark-grey fur, heavy legs. A wolf.

Realising that should have sent me straight back to the car. Instead, the vet I'd spent so long refusing to become — same as my sister — took over. I couldn't just leave an injured living creature. Even if it was a wild predator perfectly capable of tearing me apart.

My hands were shaking badly as I reached, timid, towards the thick fur at its scruff, checking for breath. The animal wasn't whimpering or moving, apparently deep in shock from the impact — or worse.

"Come on, open your eyes, sweetheart, please... look at me," I begged, edging closer, carefully laying my palm against its muzzle. "I didn't mean it, I promise, you jumped right out in front of me, you daft thing..."

As if in answer to my voice, hoarse with crying, the animal's heavy eyelids twitched. It opened its eyes, and I choked with shock.

Two unnaturally bright, amber-yellow eyes were staring straight at me. In the darkness, lit by the moon and the unfocused glow of the headlights, they seemed to burn from within with their own phosphorescent light. There was no dull animal aggression in that gaze, no panic. It was looking at me with a clarity that was frightening.

I flinched and yanked my hand back.

"Sweetheart, try to get up..." I mumbled, edging backwards on my hands and knees, not taking my eyes off it. "I couldn't brake in time, I swear... just don't bite me, I won't hurt you. Come on, up you get, love!"

The wolf made no move to attack. It stayed where it was, drawing in loud, deep breaths through its nose, as if soaking up my scent, studying me molecule by molecule. Those yellow eyes scanned my face, and under that fixed attention a strange shiver ran across my skin — entirely out of place for the moment.

I needed to assess its injuries. I got to my feet, hurried back to the car and grabbed a bottle of water and my phone from the back seat. Switching on the torch, I turned round, ready to search for wounds and blood — but the clearing was already empty.

The wolf had got up. Limping on its front leg, it was making its slow, laboured way towards the safety of the treeline.

"Hey! Wait!" Fresh tears of pity and helplessness sprang to my eyes. "Where are you going? I want to help you!"

At the sound of my loud sobbing, the animal froze. It looked back over its shoulder. Something almost human — an inner struggle — crossed its face, as though it were weighing up some decision.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, please," I said, completely coming apart, and slumped back against the car's wing, burying my face in my hands, sobbing silently.

The grass rustled in the dark. Before I could even register fear, I felt something large, warm and damp press against my knee through the thick denim.

I flinched and opened my eyes. The wolf had come back. It stood pressed right up against me, its heavy head resting on my leg. There was something so strange, so almost deliberate about that comfort, that it took my breath away. Uncertain, my heart in my throat, I lowered my hand onto its broad head, fingers sinking into fur that smelled of pine and something wild.

Tears were still running down my cheeks when I slowly crouched in front of it. The wolf leaned in and stretched its neck, carefully licking the salt off my cheek. Its tongue was hot, rough, strong. I flinched instinctively, then smiled weakly despite myself.

"Thank you, sweetheart..." I whispered, still stroking its neck. "Are you really all right? Maybe... maybe you could come with me? I'm nearly a vet, I could find some way to get you looked at."

I was mostly saying it to steady the shake in my voice, groping for any kind of contact. But what happened next made the hair on my arms stand up.

The wolf shook its head, slowly and deliberately, side to side. A perfect, unmistakably human gesture of refusal: No.

Everything inside me went cold. It was too eerie. Animals didn't behave like that.

"Y-you... you understand me?" I breathed, stammering.

The animal held still, keeping its heavy gaze fixed on my brown eyes, then nodded, slow and certain.

A fresh wave of shivers ran through me, but it wasn't fear of a predator any more — it was the shock of colliding with the impossible. My mind scrambled for some rational explanation as the wolf gave my chin another quick lick, as if to reassure me: easy, you're not losing your mind.

"All right... let's say I'm just dreaming," I laughed nervously, forcing myself to swallow. "Are you thirsty? I brought water."

It stepped back and nodded again.

Gripping the plastic bottle between my knees, I unscrewed the cap and poured some into my cupped hands. The wolf came closer. I could feel its hot, quick breath against my skin. It drank everything, greedily, with a soft lapping sound. I poured more. When the bottle was empty, its hot tongue swept across my palms, gathering the last drops, and that intimate, ticklish contact stirred something strange and warm somewhere in my chest.

The animal lifted its head again, looking straight at me.

"Well, that's that, then," my voice was still a little shaky. "I've got you a drink at least... Is your home far from here? You do live in the woods, don't you?"

The wolf rolled its amber eyes theatrically, thoroughly human about it, then shook its head no, and immediately nodded yes.

"Oh... I asked two questions in one," I worked out, feeling the sheer absurdity of the situation start to shade into something almost giddy. "So — you live in the woods, and not far from here. Good. But you're definitely all right?"

It paused for a moment, as if listening to its own body, then nodded firmly.

I smiled, feeling the enormous tension of the last few minutes finally start to drain away. Imagine that: Alexandra Vance, five minutes from being a qualified vet, sitting on a night-time road having a chat with a fairy-tale wolf.

The idyllic quiet of the August night was shattered by a sound that turned my blood to ice.

From deep in the woods came a long, high-pitched howl. A second voice picked it up, then a third — much closer now, barely a couple of hundred metres off. The sound rolled towards us in waves, vibrating in the air, going straight to the bone.

I scrambled up, startled, glancing back at the dark wall of trees, which suddenly looked alive and threatening.

"Are they... looking for you? Your family?" I asked, my hands curling into fists.

The wolf's whole manner changed at once. It nodded furiously, then came and started shoving its muzzle roughly, insistently, against my thigh, all but herding me back towards the open car door.

"Am I in danger if I stay?" I asked quickly, panic closing over my head again. "I'm worried about you too, you know!"

The animal gave a short, warning nod, shoved me again, and let out a low, threatening growl. There was no intent to harm in that growl — it was an order. A demand that I clear off immediately, for my own safety.

"All right, all right, I'm going!" I shouted, jumping into the driver's seat but leaving the door open for the moment.

Leaning back out over the sill, I spoke quickly, terrified that this extraordinary connection would be lost forever:

"Listen to me. I'm going up to the hill. There's a viewpoint up there, with a big pine tree. I'll be there for the next hour, all right? Come and find me! If you can't make it today — I'll come back tomorrow, just earlier. I... I want to see you again, sweetheart."

It was stupid, reckless, and completely mad. I was asking a wild predator on a date. But something had already tied itself into a tight knot inside me — an irresistible pull towards this extraordinary creature that understood every word I said. Besides, as a future medic, I knew injuries from a car impact didn't always show straight away, and I owed it to myself to be sure it would survive.

The wolf went very still, looked straight into me with those burning eyes, and gave a firm nod.

"See you soon. Be careful," I breathed, running my hand once more over its rough fur, and shut the door.

I turned the key, put the car into gear, and pulled away fast. In the rear-view mirror I caught the huge grey shape in the middle of the road, throwing its head back towards the full moon.

The forest behind me erupted into a deafening, mournful wolf-howl. It went straight through me, right down into whatever lives beneath conscious thought, raising huge goosebumps across my skin. For one mad second I wanted nothing more than to turn around, drive home, and hide under the duvet in my own safe flat.

But I'd made a promise. And Alexandra Vance always kept her word. Cutting off my own retreat, I pointed the Hyundai up the slope, towards the dark summit of the hill.

It took about ten minutes to reach the viewpoint. The Hyundai crunched softly over gravel and rolled to a stop under the sprawling, ancient pine crowning the hilltop. I killed the engine, switched off the headlights, and simply sat for a few minutes in the pitch darkness, staring at the black wall of trees closing in around the clearing. Quiet. Only the cooling radiator ticked faintly in the silence.

Realising there was no point straining my eyes into the dark forever, I decided to make myself think about something else. After all, it had all ended well. The wolf was alive, it had walked off under its own power, and around me... around me was some genuinely unreal, breathtaking beauty it would have been stupid to miss.

I poured hot, bergamot-scented tea from the flask into my favourite mug and stepped outside. Leaning my elbows on the cool roof of the coupé, I lost myself in the view for a moment and completely forgot how to breathe.

Below me, stretching to the horizon, lay the vast expanse of Devon's forests. In the silver light of the full moon the treetops looked frosted, faintly glowing as though phosphorescent. Down in the hollows the fog lay in thick, heavy layers — it looked alive, lit from within, drifting slowly between the hills like a ghost river. And far to the south, amid all that living silver, a small forest lake sat frozen like a dark mirror, a single sharp, unbroken line of moonlight drawn straight across its surface.

Outside, it was a genuinely warm August night — one of those rare English nights when the night air doesn't bite but settles softly against the skin. Lulled by the view and the hot tea, I hadn't even noticed myself relaxing. My thoughts slowed down, and my fingers, finally, stopped their small trembling. Only the occasional whine of a midge near my ear reminded me that I was still out in the wild.

When the midges got too persistent, I finished my tea and climbed back into the car, leaving the window cracked open.

The promised hour was nearly up. I kept glancing at my phone, feeling a small, almost childish sting of disappointment that my strange new night-time acquaintance hadn't turned up. Perhaps his family had taken him off. Or perhaps I was simply a mad, sleep-deprived student whose imagination had run away with her. Still, I decided I'd come back tomorrow as well. The view from the viewpoint was too good not to see again.

I'd already reached for the ignition key when something at the edge of my vision caught a strange movement at the treeline.

My heart missed a beat. There, between two tall firs, a shape had flickered. But it wasn't a wolf. The shadow was too tall, too elongated — frighteningly like the outline of a broad-shouldered, upright man. It stood absolutely still, merging into the dark, and I could have sworn I physically felt the weight of its stare on me.

My fingers shaking, I turned the key and yanked the full-beam lever all the way down. A powerful sheet of yellow light cut through the fog, striking the trees dead on.

There was no one there. Only empty fern and swaying fir branches.

I didn't dare get out and check whether I'd imagined the whole thing. The panic that had been dozing at the bottom of my chest flared up again. I threw the car into reverse, spun round on the gravel, and drove off down the hill at full speed, away from it.

The drive back passed in a blur. I didn't meet another car, not another living thing, apart from a couple of stray dogs on the outskirts of Exeter. But by then neither the sleepy pedestrians under the streetlights nor the strays interested me in the slightest. My mind was full of nothing but him — the enormous, impossibly clever wolf with the glowing amber eyes who had understood every word I'd said.

Back in the empty flat, I stripped off my dirty clothes on autopilot, stood under a hot shower trying to wash off the clammy fear of the night, and collapsed straight into bed.

But sleep brought no relief. The moment I closed my eyes, my mind sank straight back into thick, exhausting nightmares. I dreamed of that same dark, endless English forest. Black tree-shapes closed in overhead, and out of the mist, one after another, huge wolves rose silently, their eyes burning. They circled me, tightening the ring, cutting off every way out. In the dream I ran, gasping with terror, breaking my nails against bark, tripping over roots, falling into cold mud.

I woke in a cold sweat, gasping for air, listening to the silence of the flat, and each time I sank back into heavy sleep, it started all over again. The forest, the wolves, the chase, and that heavy breathing chasing me from behind. The wild — the very thing I'd tried so hard to shut out of my cosy, human little world — was demanding its due, forcing its way in through my dreams.

Chapter 2. I'll Call You Grey!

My morning started closer to midday — and that was one of the sweetest perks of living away from your parents. No standing interrogations at the door about where I'd been gallivanting till dawn, no morning kitchen bustle that, back home, always managed to wake me at the worst possible moment. No "A proper girl doesn't wander the house in her nightdress!" and no "You can't sleep till noon!" Ha — Mum still didn't know that Lexa and I used to wander the flat, as Nan liked to put it, "in our birthday suits."

Not that I'd actually managed a proper night's sleep anyway, what with the nightmares creeping back in towards dawn, and some restless, waiting sort of feeling underneath it all. I spent the whole day essentially living inside my own head, thinking about the evening ahead. Somewhere inside, a mad, desperate little hope kept flickering — that last night's incident on the road hadn't been some overactive figment of my imagination. That the wolf really had understood everything. He'd promised to come. I wanted, right down to a trembling in my knees, to see him again — and, more to the point, as a future vet, I needed to make sure that hard knock from the bumper hadn't left him with some hidden, dangerous injury.

Getting ready for this mad little outing, I even nipped into the local vet's pharmacy and bought a decent pack of complex vitamins for large dogs. At home, I sliced up some good ham and made sandwiches, so there'd be something to offer my furry friend if he actually turned up for our "date."

Having done all that, I spent the rest of the day glued to my phone: messaging Lexa, sorting out — at her request — an endless string of admin questions about her upcoming start at university and booking student housing. She'd insisted she'd live with me, but we might both end up with a "personal life" that, frankly, had no room in it for a sister. So it all had to be thought through in advance. My head was spinning. I got so caught up and worked up over it that when it was time to leave, I bolted out of the flat entirely on autopilot, still in my "at-home" clothes — very short summer shorts and a light, barely-there vest top. Hurrying to the car, I didn't even think to put on a bra, and only remembered once I was behind the wheel, when the fabric of the vest brushed intimately against a chest that had, for some reason, already gone sensitive with anticipation. Luckily, I'd thrown a blanket and a bag with the flask onto the passenger seat that morning, and my old checked shirt was hanging over the back of the seat.

Midnight was still a good way off — it wasn't even nine — but I couldn't stand staying cooped up indoors any longer. I decided I'd rather watch the sunset from the top of the hill than sit at home stewing in anticipation.

I drove along the forest road at a crawl, straining my eyes at the fern along the verge until they ached, dreading a repeat of last night's ordeal. But the treeline stood perfectly still, wrapped in the gold of the coming sunset.

The moment the car rolled out onto the viewpoint, though, my heart did a somersault and dropped somewhere down into my stomach. He was already there. A large grey shape, sitting motionless in the deep shade of the sprawling, ancient pine. It was him! My saviour from last night.

I stopped the car and shot