LOGIN**Stella's POV** The elevator doors open to my apartment and I stand in them for a moment longer than necessary. I can't believe today's events that I take a long breath in and hold when suddenly the elevator starts to beep at me for holding the doors. I exhale softly, step out and smell her before I see her. What is Rose doing here? I swiftly walk straight to the living room. It arranges itself in front of me and I take it in the way you take in a scene that is wrong before you have identified specifically what is wrong about it — the lamp on, the television off, the cushions disturbed — and then I find it. Composed. Crossed ankles. A small smile that she has been wearing since before I walked in. And on the floor in front of her, sitting with his building blocks arranged in the particular serious configuration of a one year old who has decided architecture is important— "Noah." I say his name and he looks up with a smile. "There she is." Rose's voice fills the room
**Shawn's POV** Sabrina closes her eyes for exactly one second. When she opens them, the mask is gone. "Shawn." Her voice drops low. "You're a rogue. You know what it is to need something and have no clean way to get it." Her arm tightens around Maya. "Cole needs that contract. The pack needs it. And the only way Stella signs is if she gets this pup back from someone she's grateful to." She tilts her head slightly. "Help me do this the right way." I look at her and I think — she is manipulative, no wonder Stella never stood a chance against her. "Let her go," I say. "We can work this out—" "Let her go, Sabrina." "You don't understand what's at stake—" She takes one step back, deeper into the trees. "I will disappear with her. I know this territory better than you think and I have rogues who will be here any second—" I smirk, "You had three rogues." I take one step forward. "They aren't coming." The silence that follows is absolute. Something crosses her face. J
**Shawn's POV** The wood splinters around the frame and the door swings hard into the interior wall and I am already through it before the sound has finished happening. The room snaps into focus the way rooms do when your body has shifted into the rescue mode that makes everything slower and sharper and more specific than ordinary life allows. I find three men. One by the table — big, heavy through the shoulders, already rising from his chair. One by the back wall reaching for something at his belt. One between me and Maya, which is the one I move toward first because proximity to the pup is the only geography that matters right now. Sabrina immediately grabs Maya and she screams. "Let me go!" "Go! We'll handle him." The man by the table shouts it at Sabrina and she is already moving — Maya under her arm like cargo, headed for the back of the room where a second door sits slightly ajar. The first one reaches me in two seconds. He is big and he knows how to move and
**Shawn's POV** (Hours prior) Victor's words have been sitting in my chest since this morning like something I keep checking to make sure is still there. 'Find Maya. Bring her home. And you settle your debt.' No contract. No conditions. No years of debt repayment stretching out in front of me like a sentence. Just one thing. Find the pup and bring her home and walk away clean like I never stole from him. I have been doing harder things for less my entire life. --- I pick up Cole's trail outside Ace Industries at half past two. He doesn't see me. He is not in a state to see anyone — walking with the careful, deliberate concentration of a man negotiating with his own legs, his jacket over one arm, his face doing something private and wrecked that the afternoon sunlight has no business illuminating so clearly. He gets into his car. I give him three minutes then follow. He doesn't go home immediately. He stops at a hum bar on his way home and he goes inside and he stays there f
**Sabrina's POV** "Cole." I cross to him, trying to look like we weren't plotting against him thirty seconds ago. "Cole, where have you been? I've been calling you all—" "She said no." He cuts me off, walking past me to the sofa and dropping into it with the full weight of a man whose bones have stopped cooperating. The smell hits me a second later — whiskey, thick and stale, rolling off him in waves. Oh, thank goddess he is drunk... I compose myself and step in front of him. "What do you mean she said no? What happened? What did she say? Cole, look at me—" It takes him a moment. His head lifts with the slow, effortful rotation of a man who has to think about moving his own neck. "She told me about the floors." He stares somewhere past my shoulder, his eyes glassy and slightly unfocused, like he's watching something play out on a screen only he can see. "What?" "The floors." He says it again, like the word is important and it explains everything. "She was cleaning fl
**Sabrina's POV** (Hours later in Black River pack...) I cannot sit still. I have tried three times and each attempt has lasted less than a minute before my body decides that sitting is no longer something it knows how to do. So I pace instead — from the window to the fireplace, from the fireplace to the door, from the door back to the window — while the television replays Victor Ace's press conference on a loop for what feels like the gazillion time. *Stella Ace. New heir.* "Sabrina." My mother's voice comes from the armchair where she has been sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap like we are waiting for a pleasant dinner to arrive rather than watching everything collapse in real time. "Come and sit down." "I can't sit down." "You're wearing a track in the carpet." "Mother." I stop walking and turn to face her. "Did you see the press conference?" "I saw it." "And you're sitting?" "Panicking requires the same amount of energy as sitting,"
**Shawn's POV** "Yes," Stella breathes. "Make love to me." The sound of her begging nearly destroys my resolve. But I force myself to pull back and put space between us. "No," I say, my voice hoarse. "Not like this." "Why not?" She reaches for me again. "You want me. I can feel it. So why—
**Shawn's POV**I ignore my wolf and try my luck again."Why not?" I ask, tilting my head slightly. "We're all adults here. Surely you can handle one double date with us.""It's awkward—""Is it?" I interrupt softly. "Or are you just scared?"Her eyes snap to mine, fire blazing in them. "Excuse me?
**Cole's POV** "I know what you're doing," I say quietly, looking between them. "I've known for days. I heard you talking to your mother, Sabrina. About getting pregnant. About eliminating Maya and Noah so your pup would be the only heir." Sabrina's face goes pale. "I never said—" "You did. I
**Shawn's POV**The hostess leads us to a larger table in the center of the restaurant—far more visible than I'd like.I try to position myself across from Stella, but Vanessa pulls me down into the seat beside her instead.Her hand immediately finds my thigh under the table.I shift away. She foll







