*Ella*

“Do not let go of my hand,” he says. I allow myself to look at him for the first time, to really look into those slate gray eyes of his that I now recognize with startling clarity.

Once, what feels like a lifetime ago, this man asked me to dance at Isaac’s twenty-first birthday ball. I’d declined, using his question as bait to ask him his last name, so that maybe, just maybe, I could have found him again.

I hadn’t been of age then to feel what I now recognize as a mate pull as his fingers curl around mine, his grip tight and demanding. Do not let...