LOGINDamien's POVThe laundromat on Kane Street still smelled like hot bleach and other people's poverty.I got there at 11:17, forty-three minutes early, because I couldn't stand another minute in that motel room with Cynthia pacing and Elijah typing and the walls sweating mold. I parked the stolen sedan two blocks down on a side street with no cameras, pulled my hood up, and walked in with a manila envelope tucked against my ribs and a silver knife in my boot.The place hadn't changed in three years, no matter how many times I came here. Same buzzing fluorescents. Same cracked linoleum that stuck to my shoes. Same row of ancient dryers, number six still taped shut with yellowed OUT OF ORDER tape. A box fan rattled in the corner, pushing hot air around. The old Korean attendant was half-asleep behind the plexiglass, snoring into a small TV playing static.I chose the orange plastic chair in the back corner. Back to the wall. Eyes on the glass front door and the big mirror over the foldin
Zosia's POVNyx had finally fallen asleep against my shoulder.She was warm for once, really warm, tucked under the thick throw blanket on the sectional with her head lolled against my collarbone and her breathing gone slow and even. No wheezing. No rattling in her chest like she was drowning from the inside. Just... sleep. I kept my hand on her thin back and hummed under my breath, some old Hollow lullaby Mrs Gable used to sing before everything went to hell, because I was afraid if I moved too fast I would break the spell.Then I felt it. The shift in the air.I looked up toward the kitchen and my stomach dropped.Sasha was standing at the sink with a half-rinsed bowl in her hands, frozen solid. Her eyes were locked on my phone where it sat face-up on the counter. It was lit up. Buzzing.Once. Then again.My wolf lifted her head and growled.Sasha had been off since she walked in. I noticed it even through my relief at seeing her home safe. She smelled like cinnamon and Tobias's b
Sasha’s POV I didn't breathe until I heard the outer steel door of the clinic slam shut. For a full minute I just stood there in the back exam room with my scalpel still palmed against my wrist and my duffel bag half-zipped on the counter, listening. Rourke's heavy boots. The kid's shuffling sneakers. Damien's slower, dragging steps. Then the rattle of the rusted stairwell gate, a muffled curse, and then nothing but the old refrigerator humming and my own heart hammering so loud I was sure they'd hear it through the concrete. Only when the silence stretched too long to be a trick did I let out the breath I'd been holding and lock the inner cabinet with shaking fingers. "Assholes," I muttered to the empty room, but my voice sounded thinner than I wanted it to. I finished shoving the rest of Nyx's herbal stabilizers and the trauma vials into my bag and zipped it hard. My hands were steady—they always were when I was working—but my mind was spinning. Damien Vane cornering me in my
Sasha’s POV Getting out of the valley estate felt less like leaving a house and more like breaking out of a five-star maximum-security prison. Don’t get me wrong—I loved the thread count on the sheets. After years of watching Zosia break her back at The Gilded Cage while we scraped together pennies to keep Nyx breathing, waking up in a place where the floors were heated and the fridge was stocked with organic berries the size of my fist was a religious experience. Zosia was glowing, wrapped in soft cashmere and smelling like expensive white roses, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, the crushing weight on her shoulders looked lighter. I was thrilled she was getting spoiled. We all were. I just wasn’t stupid. As the heavy iron gates of the estate rolled shut behind my beat-up sedan, I glanced in the rearview mirror at the mute bodyguard standing by the guardhouse. A "private consultant" didn’t have military-grade perimeter sensors. A clumsy guy from
Damien’s POV The boys were useless. Elijah Brook—my Beta, the only man still loyal to me after I was stripped of the Vane name—sat in the passenger seat of a stolen sedan that smelled like cigarettes and regret, his face pale in the glow of the laptop balanced on his knees. Behind us, two more wolves, Rourke and a kid named Jax who still had acne and too much ambition, sat in silence, waiting for orders I no longer knew how to give. “We’ve been tracking the consultant for seventy-two hours,” Elijah said, not looking up from the screen. “Every property registered to Nick Vance traces back to a shell corporation inside Vane Holdings. Every bank account is a ghost. Every address is either the valley estate or a post office box that doesn’t accept mail.” “So he’s rich,” Rourke said from the back. “We already knew that. The question is whether he’s Nikolai.” The name made my stomach turn. Nikolai. The Alpha of the Bluemoon Pack. The ghost who had raised me without ever showing me his
But she also knew that exposing him now, before we understood what he had done or what he was capable of, could cost Nyx her life. So she swallowed her rage. Her silence wasn’t surrender, it was an act of agonizing love. Aris didn’t even look at her. He placed his silver case on the bed and snapped open the latches. Then he leaned over Nyx, his pale eyes scanning the monitors. His attention settled on the fading black veins along her neck and the erratic rhythm of her heart. “Fascinating,” he murmured. There wasn’t a trace of concern in his voice. “Violent metabolic collapse. Her body is attempting to reject an artificial Omega-state. I haven’t seen a genetic anomaly like this outside of theoretical literature.” Well, I had absolutely no fucking idea what that meant. “Can you stabilize her?” I asked. I kept my voice bored and transactional, the way a man accustomed to buying solutions might speak. Aris straightened. A greedy glint entered his eyes. “I can. But a proprietary







