LOGINROGERI didn't speak on the drive home.Silas sat in the front seat, silent, wisely so. Every few minutes he glanced at me in the mirror and then quickly looked away.I couldn't blame him.I had built VoxTin from a failing subsidiary into the pride of the eastern border. I had shaken hands with Alphas twice my age and made them nod along to whatever I proposed. And in one single morning, the King had stripped that image bare in front of a room full of witnesses.I require compliance.The words looped in my skull like a curse.By the time we reached the mansion, my knuckles had gone white against my knees.Naraya was in the garden when I found her, sitting on the stone bench near the roses, a book open in her lap that she wasn't reading. She looked up when my shadow fell over her.“Roger—”“Get up.”“What?”“We need to talk. Inside.”She rose slowly, closing the book, and followed me to my study without a word.I shut the door behind us and turned on her.“Do you understand what happen
ROGERThe call came at 6:02 in the morning.“Alpha.” Silas's voice, clipped, careful. “The King's convoy just passed the eastern gate.”I sat up so fast the sheet tangled around my legs. “What?”“He's here. Today. Not next week.”“That's impossible. The letter said—”“You are right Alpha, but,” a pause. “There's a second letter. It came an hour ago. I only just saw it.”“Read it to me.”“The King has grown curious about your good works. He will arrive to observe operations personally. No further notice will be given.”The room tilted, hard.Melissa stirred beside me, murmuring something in her sleep. I slid out from under the blanket without waking her, my heart slamming against my ribs like a wolf trying to claw its way out of a cage.“How long do I have?”“Twenty minutes. Maybe less.”“Get the office ready. Hide the second set of ledgers. Tell Marcus to bury anything with the warehouse code on it.”“And the auditors?”“Stall them at the gate. Offer them breakfast. Anything.”“Alpha,
CASPIANThe photograph was the fifth I'd been sent that month.I held it in my fingers under the lamp on my desk, studying the blur of trucks and men in the corner of the frame.Someone had circled a figure in red ink.Roger Brimstone.“Nothing has changed,” Ronan said from the couch, arms folded. “Same location. Same trucks. Same hour of the night.”I had started to get more valid information from Ronan every since I switched from that Raven.I set the photograph down.Outside my window, the Crimson Pack stretched out in the moonlight, black towers against a blacker sky, the whole southern territory asleep under my laws. Every wolf in the realm answered to this throne. Every Alpha bent the knee.And somewhere in the east, one of them was lying to my face.“How many she-wolves reported missing in BloodMoon this year?” I asked.“Forty-one.”“Last year?”“Nineteen.”“The year before?”“Twelve.”I closed my eyes.That wasn't a coincidence. A clean, steady line pointing upwards, just like
ZILLAIt was raining when I finally caught up with him.Five days of scanning parking lots. Five days of pretending to bump into strangers in the market. I had called every number Daryl could dig up. I had visited the Beta's known cafes, his gym, the barber where he apparently got a shave every Thursday.And now, at the edge of the eastern border checkpoint, there he was.Silas.His sports car was parked crooked on the gravel shoulder. He stood in the rain with no umbrella, an old canvas bag in one hand, talking to someone I couldn't see.I killed my headlights and rolled my car to a stop behind a row of scrub bushes."What are you doing?" Lupita whispered within me, curious."Following him.""Obviously. But why?""Because he knows where Raya is.""He knows where the Alpha's house is. It's not the same.""It's close enough."I stepped out into the rain, pulling my jacket over my head, and crept through the wet grass until I could see better.There was a girl.Wearing a man's raincoat
BRONTËThe human world smelt like fried oil and wet concrete.I hated it.I had been here nine days. Nine days in a motel that charged by the hour, eating noodles out of plastic bowls, sleeping with a chair wedged under the doorknob, pretending to be a woman named Anna Kessler from Portland.Nobody in this city knew Brontë. Nobody knew there was a small fortune in a bank account with my new name on it.I sat cross-legged on the stained bed, staring at the laptop balanced on my knees. A cheap thing, bought with cash from a pawnshop.Eight hundred thousand gold coins, give or take. Converted, moved through three exchanges, and reduced into figures that made my head spin.Silas had sent far more than I asked for. Someone had also tapped the same account behind his back, and I still didn't know who.Someone else had been stealing from Roger, too.Interesting."Order up," a voice shouted from the corridor, and I jumped so badly the laptop slid off the bed.Just the motel guy. He knocked tw
NARAYAThree nights.That was how long it took me to understand the rhythm of the house.Roger woke at five and left for VoxTin by six-thirty. Silas left ten minutes after him, always by the back stairs. The night guards changed at eleven and again at three, and in the gap between, for exactly nine minutes, the west corridor was left with only one man.A man who liked to drink coffee in the kitchen and complain to the cook about his wife."You're timing this like a bank robber," Ava muttered."I'm a financial analyst. We're basically the same.""The difference is, they get paid."I smothered a smile in the dark and eased my door open.The corridor was silent. The floorboards were cold under my bare feet. I had chosen black leggings and a loose grey top, and tied my hair into a knot so nothing would get in my way.My pup stirred."Not now," I whispered, pressing a palm to my belly. "Please, just be still."It kicked once, indignant, then went quiet.The study was at the end of the west
“The hardest lies to escape are the ones we tell ourselves for love.”NARAYA“You do know I’m still against you doing this, don’t you?” Zilla growled, stomping up the stairs behind me. Her fingers tightened around the flower basket.My jaw tightened. I took the remaining stairs two at a time and sk
NARAYA“Tell me you are joking, Raya.” Zilla's eyes widened behind her glasses. I lowered my gaze, suddenly picking interest in tracing the lines in my palm.“I’m not.”“Geez, Raya, you are twenty-three, not eighteen. How could you let that happen?”Neither of us spoke for a moment as we let the mu
NARAYAMost wolves reluctantly settle for the option of a chosen mate only when they have completely exhausted all hopes of finding their fated mate after decades of waiting. Or perhaps when their true fated mate passes from this world—that’s also after years of emptiness and loneliness.But those
NARAYA“Roger… where are you?” Melissa's voice drifted down the corridor. Her heels echoing closer.The aggressive heat in Roger's eyes melted into a cold panic. He dropped his hand from my shirt, stepping back just enough to break the intimate space between us.“Play along,” he whispered, his orbs







