(Kieran POV)
The moment I saw that rogue's claws inches from Catherine's throat, something primal snapped inside my chest like a chain pulled beyond its breaking point. The careful control I'd maintained for decades, the human restraints that governed civilized behavior—all of it dissolved in the face of watching my mate threatened by creatures too stupid to understand what they'd just awakened.
The wolf surged forward with violence that felt like coming home.
I moved through Blackwood's forces like death given form, claws finding throats with surgical precision, jaws crushing windpipes before screams could fully form. There was no strategy now, no careful consideration of pack politics or territorial negotiations. Only the pure mathematics of elimination—them or us, predator or prey, s
