Chapter 6: Sabrina's Warning

"I saw you," Sabrina hissed, catching Elena alone in the hallway outside the dining hall a few days later. Her golden eyes blazed with fury, claws lengthening slightly at her fingertips in a clear display of barely restrained temper. "Sitting with him by the training grounds. Talking like equals, like friends, like something more."

"We're allowed to talk," Elena said, refusing to back down despite the tension radiating from Sabrina's tightly coiled frame. "Last I checked, conversation wasn't a crime in this pack."

"You're allowed nothing," Sabrina snapped, closing the distance between them until Elena could smell the sharp, angry scent of her wolf simmering just beneath the surface. "He is promised to me. Our pact unites two powerful bloodlines, secures a decade of hard-won peace between our packs after generations of conflict. You are a stray dog who wandered in from nowhere, with no name, no pack, no claim to anything here. Don't mistake his pity for anything more than what it is."

Elena held her ground, though her heart hammered against her ribs. "If you're so secure in his love for you, why does my presence threaten you so much? Seems like an odd reaction for someone who claims to have nothing to worry about."

The words landed exactly where Elena intended, and Sabrina's composure cracked visibly, fury bleeding through the careful mask she usually wore. "Watch yourself, Elena. You have no idea what I'm capable of when something threatens what's mine. I've spent my entire life preparing to be Luna of this pack, sacrificing everything for this pact. I won't let some rogue with nothing to lose destroy that."

"I haven't tried to destroy anything."

"Not yet," Sabrina said, voice dropping to something colder, more calculated. "But I see it building between you and Kane, this ridiculous tension neither of you seems capable of controlling. I'm giving you fair warning, rogue girl — walk away now, before this becomes something neither of us can undo. I always get what's mine, one way or another. I'd rather not have to prove that to you."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a promise." Sabrina's smile turned razor-sharp, all pretense of civility dropping away. "You have no pack to protect you here, no family to avenge you if something happens. Remember that, before you let whatever fantasy you're building in your head go any further."

She turned and stalked away, leaving Elena alone in the corridor with her heart racing and dread pooling cold in her stomach. The threat lingered in the air long after Sabrina had disappeared around the corner, heavy and suffocating as an approaching storm.

Elena leaned against the wall, forcing herself to breathe slowly, to calm the frantic beating of her heart. She'd faced hunters with silver blades and rival packs who wanted her dead. She told herself Sabrina's threats were nothing compared to those very real dangers.

But some instinct, some deep survival mechanism honed by years of danger, told her that Sabrina Blackwood might prove more dangerous than any enemy she'd faced before — precisely because this enemy lived within the walls meant to protect her, wearing the mask of civility while nursing violence beneath the surface.