CHAPTER 4

"Where the hell is she? Move! If she crosses that ridge, she’s gone!"

Austin’s voice cracked through the damp woods, jagged and desperate. He scrambled over a rotting log, his designer hunting boots caked in filth. Behind him, a dozen Silver Moon enforcers crashed through the underbrush like panicked cattle. They weren't hunting a rogue. They were hunting a lawsuit.

"Austin, wait! My heel—ugh, what the fuck?" Victoria stumbled behind him, her face a mask of sweating fury. "Just kill her already! I want my accounts unfrozen!"

Madison crouched in the shadow of a massive cedar. The air tasted of pine and their pathetic, sour fear. She didn't breathe. Her heart beat with the slow, heavy thrum of a predator.

"There! By the trees!" Austin pointed, his hand shaking as he shifted halfway. His claws sprouted, ripping through his expensive gloves. "Madison! Drop the suit, sign the papers, and maybe I’ll let you live in the servant's quarters!"

Madison stepped out. She didn't look like a defenseless omega. She looked like a storm in a silver dress.

"Servant's quarters?" Her voice was a low vibration that made the leaves shiver. "You can't even afford the taxes on your own front porch, Austin."

"Grab her!" Austin roared.

The enforcers lunged. Madison didn't run. She didn't flinch. She snapped her fingers, and the wind didn't just blow—it screamed. A localized gale ripped through the clearing, solid as a brick wall. It caught the hunters mid-stride, slamming them backward into the trunks. Bones popped. Austin hit a rock, the air leaving his lungs in a wheezing grunt.

Thwump. Thwump. Thwump.

The black helicopter dropped from the clouds, its searchlight cutting through the canopy like a blade. Madison shifted. It wasn't the slow, painful grind the Cains were used to. It was a flash of white light. A massive, snow-colored beast surged upward, claws digging into the helicopter’s landing skid as it hovered ten feet off the ground.

She hauled herself into the cockpit, shifting back to human form in a blur of motion. She kicked the pilot’s seat. "Move. I'm driving."

"But ma'am, the wind—"

"I said move."

She grabbed the cyclic. The machine groaned as she pulled it into a vertical climb that should have snapped the rotors. Below, the Cain pack looked like ants scurrying in the dirt. She banked hard, the G-force pinning her into the seat, blood rushing to her head.

A shadow moved on the ridge below.

A wolf. But not a Silver Moon mutt. This thing was the size of a small car, its fur the color of dried blood and night. And the eyes. Even from two hundred feet up, those golden pits burned into her.

Ethan Harper.

The name echoed in her skull, unbidden. The Cursed Alpha. The man mothers used to scare their pups into silence. He wasn't just watching. He was running. He kept pace with the helicopter, leaping over ravines that would have swallowed a truck, his movements a terrifying blur of predatory grace.

He let out a howl.

The sound didn't stay in the air. It hit Madison in the chest, vibrating through her ribs and settling deep in her womb. It was a claim. A recognition that had been waiting a hundred years to find its target.

"Not today," Madison hissed, her knuckles white on the controls. "I'm nobody's prize."

She pushed the nose down, the helicopter screaming in a dive toward the city skyline. The wind whipped her hair across her face, stinging her skin. She saw him one last time on the edge of the cliff—the golden-eyed beast stopping, watching, his scent of sandalwood and rain somehow reaching her even through the cockpit vents.