The elder’s words hung in the floodlit courtyard like smoke after a gunshot.
I felt every pair of eyes on me—twenty wolves, maybe more, all in human skin but smelling like pine and threat and barely leashed power. The silver-haired woman stood ten feet away, hands folded, smile sharp enough to cut glass. She didn’t look at Damien. She looked at me, like I was a puzzle she’d waited decades to solve.
Damien’s arms were steel bands around my waist. He hadn’t let me slide off his lap. His blood still soaked my dress, warm and sticky, but his heartbeat never faltered. The bond between us thrummed so loud I could taste it—raw possession mixed with the kind of fear an alpha wasn’t supposed to feel.
“Elder,” he said, voice low and lethal. “This is not the time.”
“It is exactly the time, Alpha
