MasukANOKAIWhat the hell was he doing?The entire room had gone silent. Everyone was staring at Ethan like they were trying to figure out what was about to happen. What bomb he was about to drop.And he looked smug. So fucking smug. Like he’d already won. Like whatever he was about to say would destroy everything. My stomach twisted. Dropped. Something was very wrong.He stood slowly. Made a show of it. Buttoned his jacket. Smoothed down his hair. Then walked to the front of the room. To the podium where they’d stood for their speeches.Taking his time. Enjoying every second of the attention. I wanted to scream at him to just say it. To stop dragging this out. To stop looking at me like I was some prize he was about to reclaim.He reached the podium and turned to face everyone. And smiled.“I appreciate the council’s patience,” he said, his voice smooth. Practiced. “What I have to say is important. Critical, even, to this decision you’re all about to make.”Get on with it.“As many of you
ANOKAIThe minute Malachi stood, every single eye in that massive room turned to follow him.I watched him walk toward the platform.I watched the way he moved with that easy confidence, that natural grace that came from knowing exactly who and what he was. His shoulders were back.His head high. Like he was walking into a throne room instead of a courtroom full of people who feared him. And I wasn’t the only one watching.Women in the crowd leaned forward in their seats. I saw it happen. Saw their eyes following his movement.Saw lips part slightly. Saw hands come up to touch hair, to adjust necklines, expose cleavages, to draw attention to themselves.They were looking at him like he was something they wanted to taste.Something hot and ugly twisted in my stomach. Sharp and possessive and completely irrational.Jealousy.I was jealous of the way their eyes followed him, of the way they looked at him like he was available. Like he could be theirs if they just tried hard enough. Like
ANOKAIThat bastard. The rage hit me so fast and so hot I had to look away from him. The smirk. The easy confidence. The way he’d said my name like it still belonged in his mouth. Like he had any right to it at all.“Don’t worry.” Nikolai’s voice was close to my ear, quiet enough for just me. His hand found mine. “He won’t be smiling by the time this is over,” Rowan said from my other side.“Don’t let him see he’s gotten to you,” Emiriel added. I breathed. I tried to push it down. But the rage just sat there in my chest like something with a heartbeat, hot and stubborn and not going anywhere.The crowd moved toward the entrance and we moved with them, the brothers keeping me surrounded the whole way. Inside, the room opened up into something vast and old.Stone walls, high ceilings, rows of seats arranged in a curve around a raised platform at the front. The kind of room that had seen centuries of things being decided. You could feel it in the air.People filed in and settled. The wh
ANOKAII couldn’t stop looking at the moon.It sat up there heavy and bright and wrong in a way I couldn’t explain, and every time I looked away from it I found myself looking back.The brothers felt it too. I didn’t need them to say anything. I could feel it in the way they moved around me, close and tense, their bodies carrying something they were working hard to keep inside.The council building rose up ahead of us. Stone and old and enormous, light pouring from every window, voices and music drifting out into the night air. And people.So many people lining the pathway, dressed in their finest, holding crystal glasses, talking in clusters like tonight was just another event worth attending.We started walking and the crowd changed.Conversations died mid-sentence. Heads turned. And then that silence rolled outward from us like a stone dropped in still water, spreading and spreading until the whole pathway had gone quiet.Then the whispers came.“Is that them?”“The Shadowcrest bro
NIKOLAIThe moon hit and something in me cracked open.Not broke. Cracked. Like something had been waiting underneath the whole time, patient and coiled and hungry, and the moment that light touched my skin it stopped waiting.It just started pushing. Pressing up against the inside of me like it wanted out. Like it wanted everything.Blood.The word didn’t feel like a word. It felt like a heartbeat. Like breathing. Like something so fundamental and so wrong at the same time that my whole body didn’t know what to do with it except go still and hope the stillness would be enough.Fight. Kill. Blood.I could feel my brothers. That’s the thing people never understood about us, that invisible thread running between the four of us that we’d never been able to explain and never tried to.Right now that thread was pulling tight, vibrating like a wire about to snap. Rowan had gone rigid somewhere to my left. I didn’t have to look.I could feel the way his chest had stopped moving right, the wa
ANOKAIThe woman didn’t even hesitate. She was out the door before it fully registered that they’d told her to leave. The door clicked shut, and suddenly the room felt smaller. Hotter.They were advancing on me. All four of them moving as one, closing the distance between us with purposeful strides.“What’s happening?” I asked, taking a step back. Then another. “We need to go, don’t we? The selection—”“Take off the dress.”Malachi’s voice cut through my rambling. Low. Commanding. Not a request.I blinked. “What?”“You heard him.” Rowan moved closer, his eyes dark and hungry. “Take it off.”“Are we not going?” Confusion mixed with something else. Something hot and liquid in my stomach. “I thought we were leaving now. That it’s almost time.”“It is.” Emiriel’s voice came from my left. I was surrounded now, backed against the vanity with nowhere to go. “But with that dress, with how perfect you look, all I want to do is tear it off your body.”“All we want to do,” Nikolai corrected, his
ANOKAI’S POV"Get behind me," I said, my voice steadier than I expected."My lady…""Behind me. Now."Rissa moved, pressing herself against my back. I could feel her shaking, could hear her rapid breathing. The wolves continued their approach, yellow eyes gleaming with hunger and violence.My mind
ANOKAIThe world shattered in a moment. One moment the marketplace was whistling with life, merchants shouting out their prices, children laughing, the warm scent of baked bread mingling with spiced meat. The next second, there was a scream, and it cut the air with its sharpness, and then there wa
EMIRIEL’S POV. The meaning in his words hit me like an unseen bullet, settling deep into my heart and stirring the beast within me. Every part of me wanted to get up and bash his face on the table, tear his limbs, and let my hunger dissolve his skin into pieces. The audacity of him to come into h
NIKOLAI’S POVThe entire room coiled with tension, every alpha in attendance from the wedding in the meeting room. The long table felt smaller than usual, the scent of their unease and fear clinging to every corner of the room. We sat at the center of the table, my seat at the end with Malachi at m







