Chapter 46 Part 3: Breath. Aim. Squeeze

The council room was full.Not just the usual faces — Corvin, Sylvia, Garrett, the senior members I'd gotten to know over the past months. There were others now. Wolves I didn't recognize. Some of them watching me with curiosity, others with something that looked almost like hope."House Marchetti sent representatives," Corvin explained, gesturing to a group of four wolves near the window. "As did House Thorne and House Vasiliev."I looked at them. Looked at the way they straightened when my gaze passed over them."Why?"The oldest of the Marchetti wolves stepped forward. A woman in her fifties with steel-gray hair and sharp eyes. "Because Seraphina Varen has gone too far. Kidnapping an Alpha — a mated Alpha — is a violation of every code we hold sacred.""She's making all of us look bad," a younger wolf added — House Thorne, I thought. "The human world is complicated enough without wolves starting wars over rejected marriage proposals.""It's not just about politics." This from a mas

Chapter 46 Part 4: Breath. Aim. Squeeze

We walked to the gardens behind the main house. The same gardens where Fao and I had walked after my first night at the ranch, when everything was new and terrifying and wonderful."How are you holding up?" Nina asked."I'm not.""Yeah." She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I figured."We sat on a bench overlooking a small pond. The sunset painted everything gold and pink, beautiful and completely wrong. How dare the world be beautiful when he was suffering?"When Declan got shot," Nina said quietly, "I felt it. Not just knew it — felt it. Like someone had put a bullet in me too." She stared at the water. "For a few seconds, I thought he was dead. The bond just... went dark. And I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. Couldn't do anything except scream.""How did you get through it?""I didn't. Not really." She turned to look at me. "The first three days are a blur. I remember being at his bedside. I remember Thalia telling me he'd make it. But the actual time? Gone. Just... gone."

Chapter 47 Part 1: Calling Her Mate

FAOSeven days.The table had become my world.Every morning, the guards dragged me from whatever corner I'd collapsed in and strapped me down. Every morning, Seraphina descended those stairs with her leather case and her cold smile. Every morning, my body betrayed me a little more.I'd stopped counting the sessions. Stopped trying to track the hours between them. Time had become meaningless — just an endless cycle of stimulation and denial, pleasure and shame, her hands on my body and her voice in my ears."One week," Seraphina announced, circling the table. "A full week since you became mine. How does it feel, Alaric?"I didn't answer. Answering only encouraged her."Still giving me the silent treatment?" She traced a finger along my ribs, and I flinched despite myself. My body had learned to anticipate her touch — to crave it even as my mind recoiled. "That's fine. Your body speaks loudly enough."She was right. I was already half-hard, just from hearing her heels on the stairs. Pa

Chapter 47 Part 2: Calling Her Mate

I tried to focus on her words. Tried to find something useful in them."They think I'm obsessed." She laughed softly. "Maybe I am. But they don't understand vision. They don't understand what we could build together — you and I. The de Grandmesnil bloodline merged with Varen power. Our children would rule for generations.""Never," I managed."Never is a long time." She squeezed, and I saw stars. "And you're already halfway broken. I can feel it — the way your body arches toward me, the way you've stopped fighting the restraints. Part of you wants this, Alaric. Part of you has accepted it.""My body isn't me.""Isn't it?" She brought me to the edge — right there, right on the precipice — and stopped.The sound I made was inhuman. A keen of desperation that echoed off the stone walls."Beg me," she whispered, leaning close. "One word. That's all I need."I bit down on my tongue until I tasted blood."Your little pet is probably crying into her pillow right now," Seraphina continued, he

Chapter 47 Part 3: Calling Her Mate

I lay there in the darkness, still strapped to the table, the collar pressing against my throat with every breath.El.I reached for her through the bond, pushing past the wolfsbane fog.I don't know how much longer I can hold on. She's breaking me. Not my mind — my body. Making it respond to her. Making it want things I don't want.A long pause. Then — warmth. Love so fierce it burned through the static.You're not broken. You'll never be broken. Whatever she does to your body, you're still mine. Still my mate. Still the man I love.What if I can't — what if when you find me, I'm not—Then we heal together. Her voice was stronger now. Clearer. Like she was fighting through the fog from her end. Whatever she's done. Whatever you've had to endure. It doesn't change anything. Do you hear me, Fao? It doesn't change ANYTHING.Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. I couldn't wipe them away. Could only lie there, bound and collared and broken, holding onto my mate's love like a drowning

Chapter 48 Part 1: Over My Dead Body

ELOWENFourteen days.Two weeks since the ambush. Two weeks since I'd driven away with Declan bleeding in the back seat, not knowing Fao had been taken until we reached Silverpine. Two weeks of searching, planning, waiting.Two weeks of feeling him suffer through the bond and being unable to do a damn thing about it.I stood at the head of the war room table, maps spread before me, pins marking every Varen property we'd identified. Red for confirmed. Yellow for suspected. Blue for eliminated.Too much yellow. Not enough red. And every blue pin — every dead end — felt like a personal failure."The Montana compound is empty," Garrett reported, sliding a folder across the table. "Surveillance team confirmed it's been abandoned for at least six months. No power, no water, no activity."I pulled the pin from the Montana location and dropped it in the discard pile. Another dead end."That leaves what? Four possibilities?""Three." Lucia, the Marchetti liaison, shook her head. "We eliminated