LOGINI had never howled before. I had never even growled. Slaves don't growl. Slaves don't howl. Slaves bow their heads and stay quiet. But my wolf didn't care about rules anymore. The howl tore out of my throat, and it wasn't human. It was white. It was light. It was power. The ground shook. The dead wolves froze mid-leap. Nox froze too, his black fur bristling, his gold eyes snapping to me in shock. Morvath stumbled back on her dead wolf, her face white. "No!" she screamed. "Not yet! You are not supposed to shift until after death!" But it was too late. The pain hit me like fire. Not the cold cage pain from before. This was different. Hot. Burning. Like my bones were breaking and rebuilding themselves all at once. I fell to my knees on the muddy riverbank, screaming, clutching my chest. "Elyra!" Nox's voice roared in my head - I could hear him now, clear as if he was speaking out loud. "Don't fight her! Let her out! Let her OUT!" "I'm scared!" I screamed. "Kael, I'm scared!"
"They're here."Kael's voice was low, deadly calm. The kind of calm he gets right before he kills someone.Outside the hot spring chamber, I could hear boots. Many boots. Shouting. The Council had not waited for morning. They had come in the middle of the night, with torches, with guards, with Morvath leading them like a queen going to war."Alpha Thorne!" A deep voice boomed through the stone door. "Open this door! By order of the Council of Twelve, hand over the sacrifice! She is marked! She is tainted! She must be taken to the Temple tonight!"Kael didn't move. He was still holding me, water dripping off both of us, his wet shirt stuck to his chest, his eyes black.My white wolf was awake inside me now, pacing, growling.Don't....Don't let them take us. Don't let them take us."Kael," I whispered, my teeth chattering, not from cold now, from fear. "What do we do?"He looked down at me. And for the first time since I met him, the Lethal Alpha looked scared. Not for himself. For me.
Morvath was on the floor.Not because Kael had hit her. Because she had fallen back when he shifted.Half-man, half-beast. Black fur rippling up his arms, claws like daggers, fangs bared, gold eyes burning black. The Lethal Alpha. The thing they whispered about in other packs to scare pups at night.And he was standing between me and her like a wall."Get. Out." His voice was two voices now. Kael and Nox, speaking together.Morvath scrambled up, her white priestess robes tangled around her legs. Her face was twisted with fear and fury."You will regret this, Thorne! The Council will hear that you tainted the sacrifice! That you woke the white mutt!""Then let them hear it!" Kael roared. "Tell them I did it!"The six guards behind her had their swords out, but their hands were shaking. None of them wanted to be the first to step into that room.Morvath pointed a trembling finger at my chest. My chest was still glowing. Faint white light pulsing under my skin, like a heartbeat that wasn
His bite was still burning on my neck.Kael's forehead was pressed to mine, his claws gently tangled in my hair, his breath shaking against my lips. He had just marked me. Possessively. Obsessively. Like I belonged to him.And then I heard it.Not with my ears. With my soul.A low, furious growl, from deep inside my own chest. From a place that had been silent for 21 years.....Mine.I jerked back, eyes wide."What was that?" I whispered.Kael froze. His gold eyes, still glowing from his wolf snapped to mine, wide with shock."You heard her?" he breathed."Heard who?"He stared at me like I had grown a second head. Slowly, his hand left my hair and pressed flat against my chest, right over my heart. His palm was huge, burning hot through my thin slave dress."Again," he whispered to my chest, not to me. "Growl again."And she did.A second growl ripped through me — louder this time, angrier, vibrating through my ribs. My back arched off the floor. White-hot pain shot down my spine, l
I woke up, choking on smoke.Not real smoke. His scent.Kael Thorne's scent was everywhere. In the furs. In the sheets. In the shirt I was still clutching like a lifeline. Pine, cold rain, and that wild male musk that had haunted my dreams all night.In my dream, he didn't stay on the floor.In my dream, he got into the bed.I sat up too fast, heart hammering. The bedroom was empty. The floor where Kael had sat last night was empty. The bathroom door was open. No steam.He was gone.And the main door, the door he locked last night...was cracked open.My blood went cold.He left me. He left me alone. The Lethal Alpha who promised no one would touch, what was his had left the sacrifice alone on day two.Then I heard voices in the hallway."You can't keep her forever, Thorne. The Conclave demands to see the sacrifice. Is she still pure?"That was not Kael's voice. That voice was oily, familiar. Alpha Jaxx of the Bone Pack. The one who collected Omega slaves and broke them.I scrambled of
His shirt was still warm in my hands.I stood in the middle of Kael Thorne's bedroom holding it like an idiot, while the shower ran in his bathroom.The most lethal Alpha in the whole of the twelve territories was showering ten feet away from me, Shirtless, Wet and I was locked in here with him for 72 hours.The room smelled like him. Too much like him. Pine, smoke, leather, and that wild male scent that made my knees do stupid things. My Omega body, wolfless as it was, was reacting like it had never reacted before. Heat was pooling low in my belly, my pulse was hammering, and my skin felt too tight.This was wrong. I was about to be sacrificed. I should be crying. Panicking. Planning escape.Instead I was thinking about his chest. That ridiculous tattoo of the black wolf snarling over his heart. The scars that ran down his abs like lightning."Stop it, Elyra," I whispered to myself. "He is going to kill you. Or worse, watch you get sacrificed. Stop being horny for your murderer."The







