MasukCHAPTER 118SILASSix people in one room.I feel the weight of it before anyone speaks. The specific pressure of shared knowledge, finally shared, with no one holding a different version of the truth. It changes the air. I notice these things. I always notice these things.Rowan spreads his intelligence on the table.Not paper. Just words, deliberate, chosen, the way a man speaks when he's been carrying something carefully for a long time. I watch his face as he talks. The small things. The way he pauses before the details that cost him. The way Bree's hand finds his knee under the table without her looking at him.I stay still.Three rogue wolves confirmed.Possibly four.Sourced from outside territory. Disbanded pack, two years leaderless, hungry for direction. Rowan traces the scent signatures east, three territories, maybe more. Money changed hands. Promises were made.My father makes good promises.I know this better than anyone in this room.Sebastian is beside me. I feel him pr
CHAPTER 117JULIAAlicia arrives two days later.She looks afraid. She's terrified.We put her in the kitchen.Sebastian leans against the far wall with his arms crossed and his jaw set. He does not look at her like someone who used to love her. His rage is palpable. Silas takes the chair across from her.I stand beside Silas.Rowan is in the doorway."You have five minutes," Sebastian snaps. "Use them."She looks up.She starts at the beginning.She'd been with Sebastian for seven months, and she was happy. She says this without sentimentality.Then Steve called her in.An invitation that was the shape of a request and the weight of a command. She went. Of course, she went. He told her she was important to him, that he valued her specifically, that she had a particular kind of intelligence he wanted close. She believed him. "My mother told me," she says. "She'd heard things. About Steve, about the way he operated, about what happened to people who got close to him and stopped being
CHAPTER 116SEBASTAINMorning comes with trouble.I smell them before Rowan finishes his sentence.The scent memory of them, transferred, the way scent moves through a space and leaves fingerprints on everything it touches. Three distinct signatures, rogue and unaffiliated and unmistakable because I memorised them the night I found Julia on the ground, and I have not forgotten them, and I will not forget them.They've been near our territory.Rowan is at the kitchen table, both hands around his coffee, and he's using the voice he uses when he's delivering information he knows is going to be badly received, careful, level, stripped of editorialising. I've known Rowan long enough to know this voice. I've been on the receiving end of it before.I've never wanted to put my fist through a wall this specifically while hearing it."Two sightings," he says. "Northeast perimeter, both within forty-eight hours. Not passing through, the pattern suggests they're mapping something. Learning the ed
CHAPTER 115JULIAWhen we finally move, we do not collide out of hunger.Instead, there’s a certain softness in the air, a tenderness like no other, as if they are being cautious, not because they are trying to treat me like a porcelain plate, but because this changes everything.Sex won’t be just sex now. It’ll be different. We’ll be merged as wolves. I might not have seen my wolf yet, let her embody me, but I can feel her, patient, simmering, waiting for the perfect time. Sex will involve marking. They’ll have to bite me, sink their essence into me, and hope that my wolf can survive it. I know we can. Everything has built up to this moment, amongst others. We were always inevitable.Sebastain reaches for me first.I feel his heartbeat as if it’s pounding in my own heart, loud and awake.He presses his mouth to my wrist, then runs his mouth over my wrist, sending shivers down my spine. My heart roars in my chest, and I lean into him, pushing my whole body against his. He wraps one h
CHAPTER 114JULIAIt's the small things that accumulate.The shower water, for instance.I know immediately now when it's exactly the right temperature, before I put my hand in. I can feel the steam and calibrate from it, some register in my skin that didn't exist six weeks ago. I've started running it cooler than I used to because my body runs warmer. I am different. I didn't notice this happening. I just noticed one day that I was warmer.Next are my hands. I look at them a lot now. They look the same, but they are not the same. The door handle was the first thing, but not the last. I've been quietly testing edges, privately, in moments when the twins aren't watching. How much can I lift? How fast can I move through the upstairs hallway in the dark without touching anything? The feelings are the thing nobody warned me about.Joy, when it comes, is almost physical.I was on the phone with Bree two days ago, and she said something that made me laugh. The laugh moved through me like
CHAPTER 113SILASShe learns the way she does everything, completely.I've been watching Julia learn things since September, the layout of the house, the rhythms of the pack without knowing it was a pack, the specific language of Sebastian and me, without knowing she was learning a language. She absorbs. She observes first, longer than most people can tolerate observing without acting, and then when she moves, she moves with a precision that suggests she'd already run the calculation internally and was just waiting for confirmation.I didn't know, back in September, what that meant.I know now.She was always built for this.__We start before Sebastian is awake.So it's just Julia and me in the pre-dawn grey of the backyard, her in the old training clothes she'd found somewhere in the house, hair pulled back, looking at me with that expression she gets when she's about to be taught something.I know all her expressions now."We start with stillness," I begin calmly.She blinks and sc
CHAPTER 80JULIA – POINT OF VIEWI wake up hours later, at the crack of dawn. I’ve been sleeping for hours, and my memories feel fragmented, all over the place. It’s hard to remember anything except the sex. The overwhelming sex we had.Everywhere is dark, but sunlight streams in, just barely.I am
CHAPTER 79JULIA – POINT OF VIEWSilas pulls away from me, and Sebastian swoops in.I smile at him and melt into his kisses. I am exhausted, my heart is pounding, but I’m not done. I want more, and I’ll get what I want. Sebastian is a willing lover. The rain comes down harshly outside, and darkness
CHAPTER 78SILAS – POINT OF VIEW“What did you just say?” She whispers, voice trembling.I play it cool, “What did you hear?”“What … what you said about sex and pain, what?” She stammers, cheeks burning, eyes flickering between us. I don’t want to gaslight her, but I do just that, “Something I re
CHAPTER 77JULIA – POINT OF VIEWSebastian turns me inside out. I am his to break and mould. He makes me cum over and over again. I am panting, with beads of sweat all over my body. My thong is gone, and my bra hangs on a thin thread.He settles between my legs and fondles my breast hard. I throw







