She spent two years pretending he didn't exist. He spent two years pretending right back. The problem? They're very, very good at it — and it's getting harder to remember why they started.

Sola Vey has one rule that has never failed her: keep her lycan identity and her professional life in separate rooms, and never let anyone hold the key to both. After being outed and quietly forced out of a career she built from the ground up, she rebuilt herself with better walls and a sharper eye for exits. For three years, she's shared a city with a member of her rival pack — a statistical improbability the universe apparently found amusing — and they've maintained a flawless performance of mutual non-recognition.

Until a conference power outage traps them in the same room under emergency lighting.

And lycan senses, as it turns out, don't do flattering shadows.

Dex Malone doesn't make mistakes. He's direct, pack-loyal, and very aware that he's been living four blocks from Sola Vey for fourteen months longer than his city posting required. When their carefully constructed pretence collapses in nine seconds of eye contact, the only thing worse than acknowledging each other is acknowledging why they spent two years not doing it.

Hostile acknowledgement, they agree. That's all this is.

But when a third pack begins quietly mapping the lycan district's oldest boundary gaps — exploiting a sixty-year-old treaty loophole that only two people are legally positioned to close — Sola and Dex are forced into the same investigation, the same archive room, and eventually, the same kitchen at four in the morning with treaty documents between them and both their names on a declaration that will be very hard to explain to their packmasters.

The paperwork is legitimate. The subtext is obvious.

THE WOLF WHO HATED ME BEST is a steamy, slow-burn lycan enemies-to-lovers paranormal romance novella for readers who want their paranormal romance with sharp dialogue, earned emotional payoffs, and two people who are absolutely not falling for each other — until they are, completely, with no architecture left to hide behind.