Thirty Two

Something snapped open in me waking up just as Aiden stabbed down the sword aiming at my chest.

And when I mean snapped, I meant like a chain that had been wrapped around something enormous for twenty two years finally giving way all at once.

Strength I never expected I had filled my body trembling and instantly calmed me down, relieving the pressure of fear in me in a second.

The anger hit first — mine and hers simultaneously, two rages fusing into one — and then something ancient surged forward from the deepest part of me and became fully, completely, terrifyingly present.

And I made a sound.

A sound I had spent my entire life convinced I would never make.

A sound that came from somewhere older than my body.

**I ROARED.**

My eyes burned blue — electric, blazing, illuminating everything in the room. My fangs dropped sharp and full. My claws tore through my fingertips long and black and ready.

And the shockwave that left my body hit the room like a physical force.

Nathan was thrown back into the wall behind him — he flipped midair with the trained instinct of someone who had survived worse and landed in a crouch, one knee on the ground, eyes wide as he stared at me.

Marcus wasn't as lucky. He hit the wall hard, the impact rattling through his huge frame, and he went down on one knee with a grunt before his Alpha instincts dragged him back upright. He stood with his hand pressed to his back, staring at me with an expression caught somewhere between shock and awe.

The table beneath me exploded from the force of it, silver restraints snapping clean off, wood splintering in every direction.

And Aiden—

The sword left his hands at the last second. The shockwave hit him too, but he didn't crash into a wall, didn't flip, didn't stumble backward. He planted his feet and took it like a man who had decided the wave wasn't going to move him, and it didn't. His Alpha eyes had already found mine the moment the blue blazed to life — had seen the wolf surge forward — and whatever he saw in that moment had made the decision for him before the shockwave even arrived.

He dropped the sword.

And reached for me instead.

The table was gone beneath me and I was falling but his arms were already there, wrapping around my waist, pulling me in against his chest with a grip that was firm and absolute and had nothing careful left in it. He pulled me *tight* — closer than necessary, closer than the situation required — until there was no space left between us and my hands were pressed flat against his bare chest and his arms were locked around me like something he wasn't ready to let go of yet.

The room was silent except for my breathing and the distant sound of Marcus finding his feet again.

Aiden looked down at me.

His hazel eyes were still bright with the Alpha red that had surfaced in the heat of it — not fully shifted, just present at the edges, burning — and they moved over my face like he was checking for damage, cataloguing every detail, making sure I was still here.

My eyes were still glowing. I could feel it — the blue light sitting behind my gaze, the wolf fully present for the first time, looking back at him through my face.

Neither of us spoke.

The air between us was pulled tight like a wire, electric and dangerous and neither of us was brave enough to name what was running through it.

His jaw worked once, turning his lips to smirk. While his arms didn't loosen with me in close contact with im

"*There* you are," he said quietly but this time in his Alpha red eyes glowing.

He wasn't talking to me.

He was talking to her.

And from somewhere deep inside my chest, the ancient wolf, was unsatisfied and not even slightly apologetic about the destruction she had just caused, she answered him the only way she knew how.

She yawned lazy.

“Who the fuck...woke me up from my sleep.” I heard my wolf speak inside my head slowly and my eyes widen in unbelievable shock.