Chapter 18: The Concrete Jungle
New York City was a beast that never slept.
It did not smell like pine or rain or wet earth. It smelled of exhaust and hot garbage and ambition.
I stepped off the plane onto the private tarmac at JFK. The wind whipped my hair across my face. It carried the roar of a thousand engines.
Kael stepped out behind me. He looked miserable.
His Alpha senses were overwhelmed. He was used to the silence of the forest where he could hear a twig snap a mile away. Here the noise was a constant physical assault. He winced as a siren wailed in the distance.
"The city smells like dead stone," Kael grumbled. He adjusted his collar. "How do people live like this?"
"They adapt," I said. "Just like we will."
A black limousine waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. A
