It was still there.

Folded once and placed carefully on the arm of his minimalist leather sofa. Pale cream, soft to the touch, forgotten in the back seat of his car after he’d offered her a ride home—only because it was raining. Not because of her scent, or the way her voice made time blur around the edges. It was protocol. Manners.

He told himself he’d return the scarf. The moment he saw it, he’d intended to have it sent back via courier. But he didn’t.

It sat there. Undisturbed. Two days. He should’ve handed it off to his assistant. But he didn’t.

Instead, Lysander stood in front of it now, hands deep in his pockets, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, jaw tight with something he refused to name. The scarf looked so out of place in his space. Everything in the room was dark steel, white marble, curated shadows. And then—there it was.

Soft. Warm. Hers.

He shouldn’t.

His hand hovered, clenched, then opened slowly as if controlled by something ancient and dormant in his chest. When his fingers brushed the fabric, something in his lungs hiccupped. His Alpha stirred before his brain caught up. Dangerously quiet. A single note of craving that slid down his spine like the first drop of thunder before a storm.

He brought it to his nose.

And the world tilted.

The scent was nothing like the perfumes women wore around him. Not synthetic or cloying. It was natural. Earth after rain. Sunlight through linen curtains. Faint sweetness of wildflowers crushed by gentle fingers. A kind of peace he didn’t know his body had been missing.

Lysander inhaled sharply—and his knees almost buckled.

His throat tightened.

Instinct clawed at his ribs.

A low growl—barely a whisper—rattled in the base of his throat before he could bury it. Not desire. Not lust. Need. That sacred, terrible, animal thing that he’d trained himself to destroy since he was twelve. The Alpha in him howled, not for her body—but for the space she took up in his memory. Her voice. Her silence. Her absence.