LOGINThe power surged one last time, and I knew I couldn't hold it much longer. The shadows ripped from my fingertips like black lightning, cracking the marble floor under my feet. The crowd gasped, some dropping to knees, others roaring so loud that I could barely hear myself and barely fangs. Kris's laugh echoed as he vanished into the chaos he'd started. Marcus's arm locked around my waist, dragging me toward the service stairs Ethan had scoped out. "Move, now!" he screamed, his voice thick with the bond's panic. Elara was right behind, her red-dress friend covering our backs with some witchy shield that shimmered like heat haze.************We burst into the night air, the limo waiting like a getaway car from a bad movie. Ethan floored it the second the doors slammed, tires squealing on wet pavement. I slumped against Marcus in the backseat, the world spinning. My chest was beating so fast I thought I would have a heart attack, like I'd run a marathon in hell. The collar seared my sk
We stepped back into the ballroom like nothing had happened in that hallway, but my body remembered every second of it. Marcus's cock had stretched me open and filled me up, and now every step sent a slick reminder of his cum inside me. The bond between us hummed warm and sated, but underneath the power clawed at the collar like a caged animal trying to break free. I adjusted my tie, forced the CEO smile onto my face, and let the lights from the chandeliers wash over us. The room smelled like expensive perfume, old money, and blood hidden under silk. Elites clustered in groups, their laughter too loud, their eyes too sharp as they watched everyone and everything. Elara stood near the dance floor with that red-dress woman, her posture relaxed but her gaze flicking to me every few seconds like she was checking if I'd cracked yet after the safehouse. Ethan lingered by the bar, swirling a glass of something dark, probably timing our move to the service stairs that led down to the catacomb
We piled into Ethan’s blacked-out SUV like the world was on fire behind us. Ethan took the wheel, Elara riding shotgun, both of them quiet in that loaded way people get when they’re pretending the last hour didn’t just rewrite everything. I slid into the back with Marcus. The second the doors shut, the engine growled and we were cutting through the dark streets toward the city.The gala was happening tonight at the old Grand Meridian—some annual bullshit where the rich and the rotten pretended they weren’t all circling the same carcass. Ethan said the catacombs entrance we needed was sealed under the east wing ballroom. Perfect cover. Walk in like I still owned half the city just the usual CEO human crap, smile at the sharks, and slip downstairs when no one was looking. Easy. Except nothing about tonight felt easy.My ribs still ached from where that wolf had clipped me. The collar sat heavy under my dress shirt, the mark beneath it throbbing in time with my pulse. Marcus’s thigh pr
The door exploded inward like the building itself had given up. A massive werewolf barrelled through first, all fur and fury, his claws tearing chunks out of the frame. More followed, eyes locked on me like I was the prize at the end of a hunt they’d been waiting years for.I didn’t think twice I just moved.Marcus was already in front of me, shoulder wound be damned, swinging a piece of broken pipe like it owed him money. The first wolf caught it across the snout and went down hard, but two more came right behind it. Elara grabbed a chair leg and drove it into the throat of the one closest to her, twisting until something cracked. She wasn’t protecting some random—she was protecting me. Her brother. The words she’d never said out loud but lived like gospel every time she put herself between me and the world.“Stay close!” Marcus shouted his voice rough from the pain in his shoulder. He grabbed my arm and yanked me behind him, but I wasn’t staying behind anybody tonight. Not when t
The room was still shaking when the first howl hit outside, i literally could care less about having Marcus fuck my brains out.It wasn’t close but Far enough to be a warning. Close enough to make every hair on my arms stand up, my ears were more active now, that the collar was on my neck.I was still in the middle of the wreckage, chest heaving, shadows crawling over the ceiling like they had finally learned my name. Elara was on one knee near the wall, blood at the corner of her mouth, eyes wide from the force of what I had done. Marcus stood half in front of me, half turned toward her, one hand pressed over the bullet wound in his shoulder, the other hanging loose at his side like he was deciding whether to kill somebody or kiss me or rip the whole room apart. Maybe all three.Then the voices outside started, they weren’t hunters or wolves.Low, rough, pissed-off voices barking orders like he damn own the city,and then another sound, sharper this time, full of teeth and rage, a
The motel room felt too small for the three of us. Marcus stood in front of me, one hand near my throat, cleaning the collar burn with a focus that made his whole face go hard and serious. Marcus always looked dangerous, but when he got like this, steady and quiet, it did something ugly to my chest. I saw it in the way her jaw tightened as she watched us from the window. She had a gun in one hand, some silver thing I didn’t trust, and her whole body was tense like a wire about to snap. Outside, hunters shouted and moved with much intensity, boots pounding, glass crunching under them. “You always talk like you’re in charge.”“I am in charge right now,” he said. It was rough and musky, the same voice he used when he was one breath away from dragging me into bed and fucked me like crazy, just enough. “Then why are you standing there like a guard dog with a pretty boy problem?”My mouth almost twitched. “Elara,” I said, “could you maybe stop talking like we’re all in some toxic soap opera
The second Kris Heather’s words hit my ears, my chest went icy. Famous. The kind of fame that doesn’t make you rich, doesn’t make you powerful—it makes you prey. My legs felt like they were stuffed with lead. I wanted to run, I wanted to scream, I wanted to turn the tables—but the Nullifier collar
**************The water in the shower was so cold it should have hurt me so badly but it didn’t. It ran over my skin in thin streams, dripping from my hair, sliding down my back, but the heat inside my body wouldn’t go away. My veins still felt alive, it was trembling, like something inside them
ELARA POV ************I knew the exact moment Marcus Blackwood threw his life away.I tasted it, I felt it .I was standing on the ridge above the mountain pass, the cold wind cutting through my coat and whipping my hair across my face. The forest below was black and silent until the shockwav
**********The crash site was a graveyard of twisted metal and smoke, but the air around us didn't feel cold anymore. It felt electric. The sound in my ears was so loud it was almost a physical weight, a vibration that started in my marrow and radiated out through my skin in waves of golden light







