LOGINChapter 6: UnknownKae's PovThe message said the same thing no matter how many times I read it.*Did she tell you about yourself and what she did?*It was from an unknown number, no name, just that one sentence.I turned the screen toward Lucian and watched his face while he read it, because right now his face was more useful than anything else in this lane."You know what this is?" I asked."No." He handed the phone back, but his eyes stayed on the screen a half second longer than they needed to, which told me everything his answer didn't."You hesitated before you said that." I watched him carefully, not letting him have the distance he was reaching for."I always hesitate before I answer you," he said, finally looking up at me. "You ask questions like the answer is already decided and you're just waiting for me to confirm it."Karl's car was two streets from the building and we walked, the city quiet around us in that specific way it gets past midnight, like everything really had
Chapter 5: ElaraKae's PovI stood in that stairwell and let Karl Whispere's last sentence settle over me the way cold water settles, slowly, until there is no part of you it hasn't reached.Someone at that table tonight ordered my father's death.I have thought about my father's death every day for six years and I have never once let myself say the word murder out loud because the moment you say it you have to do something with it.And I was not ready to do something with it until I was ready to do something with it properly and completely and without leaving anything on the table.I turned and looked at Lucian. He was already looking at me."We should go meet her," I said."Kae…""We meet her now, Karl, where is she?"Karl looked between us once and then he moved and we followed him down the remaining stairs and out through the east exit.The the service road was empty the way Lucian had said it would be, no cameras, no light except what came from the building behind us.Karl took u
Chapter 4: DarkLucian's PovThe lights going out in a building full of frightened Alphas is not a power cut.I was on my feet before the backup generators tried and failed to do anything useful.I could hear voices, movement, and the frequency of people who have been waiting for something to go wrong deciding that this is it through the wall.Kae grabbed my arm in the dark. Not roughly, that's the part my brain filed away even though it had no business doing that right now, he grabbed my arm the way you grab something you don't want to lose and then he asked very quietly. "Do you know this building?""Yes. It has twenty-eighth floor, four stairwells, the east exit opens to the service road which means no cameras on that side." I paused. "You did your homework too, right?""I always do my homework," he said, and let go of my arm.And with that, we moved. The hallway was chaos in the darkness.It was filled with bodies moving without direction, voices calling names, and I kept close to
Chapter 3: ElaraKae's PovI looked at the name and message on the screen for three seconds and then I looked at Lucian, the man who had not flinched once since confessing to murder in front of fifteen Alphas.He was looking at his Beta's message like it had reached through the phone and grabbed him by the throat.I took the phone and turned the screen back toward myself and read it again.“They know about Elara.”****"Who is Elara?" I asked.Lucian stood up and held his hand out for the phone and I pulled it back because I am not in the habit of handing things to people who haven't answered my questions."Kae." He said tiredly."Who is Elara?" I repeated.He looked at me and something moved across his face, and then he sat back down and pressed both hands flat on his thighs and breathed out once through his nose."Give me the phone and I will tell you everything," he said. "But I need to call Karl first because if Karl sent that message it means something has already happened and I n
Chapter 2: Burn HimLucian's PovThere is a specific kind of quiet that follows a confession and I know it well because I have been in enough rooms where someone said something true and the air just stopped moving while everyone decided what to do with it.This one lasted about four seconds before it became the loudest room I had ever been in.They took me by both arms before I finished my next breath, two of Scrolsal's men who had clearly been waiting for a reason to be in charge all evening.I let them, because fighting in that moment would have made me look like I regretted it and I didn't, not yet, not while I could still see Kae Armstrong standing across the table looking at me like I had just spoken in a language he didn't know existed.That look was worth something. I hadn't decided what yet.They put me in a room on the twenty-eighth floor with one light and no windows and a lock that was built for humans, not for what I am.I sat down on the single chair and waited because wa
Chapter 1: MeridianKae's PovThe one rule of the Meridian Summit that nobody says out loud but everybody follows is that you do not cause a scene.You come in, you sit down, you negotiate whatever cross-pack dispute has been rotting for three years, and you leave with your territory intact and your dignity more or less where you left it. That is the deal. That has always been the deal.I fixed my cufflinks in the elevator on the way up because I'm the kind of man who notices when something is crooked and physically cannot leave it that way.I was going to the thirty-second floor of the Halcyon Building.And that place has the specific kind of tension that only exists when you put fifteen Alphas in a room together and tell them to behave. I walked in at eight fifty-eight, two minutes early because I'm never late and I'm never first, and I took my seat on the east side of the table the way I always do.Alpha Gregor Vane was already at the head of it. He was seventy-one years old and h







