All Chapters of ECHOES OF THE MASKED DAWN : Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

You little… you hit me." Dorn’s voice was slurred, heavy with blood and sudden rage. Blood trickled down his temple, running into his eye as he pushed himself off the rug. "You actually hit me.""Stay down," I whispered, my hand trembling against the doorframe. "Please, just stay down.""Do you know what will happen to you when they find you like this?" He took a heavy, uneven step toward me, his fingers curling into claws. "Look at you."I didn't answer. I backed toward the hallway, the cool air touching my bare skin."Can't even hold a lamp straight," he growled, staggering into the bedside table.I let the brass base slip from my fingers. It hit the carpet with a dull thud, rolling out of reach.I hit him. Me. Fifteen years of being soft, and the lamp didn't get the message."Get back here!" Dorn lunged, but his foot caught on the dragged bedsheet, his knee crashing hard against the wood.My hands shook violently. I kicked off my remaining shoe where it stuck to the threshold, leav

Valen's POV……The splash echoed off the marble walls, cold water soaking my sleeve to the elbow.In my right hand, the thin cut across my palm stung like fire. I had squeezed the hidden fruit knife until the steel bit deep into my own flesh, using the sharp, biting pain to force my wolf down. I stared down at the drenched, shivering girl gasping in the tub, my expression cold and unreadable.Four minutes earlier."Alpha. Have you eaten? Slept?" Marcus’s voice came through the line, protective and steady."Marcus," I said, pacing the dark floorboards of the suite."Did you find anything in the lower hall?" Marcus asked. "Any proof of the coup?""No," I replied, staring out the window toward Victor's territory. "I..."A faint scrape sounded outside my door—a shoe dragging against the carpet."Marcus, I'll call you back.""Watch your back, Alpha," Marcus warned before hanging up.I shoved the phone into my pocket, my eyes tracking the brass handle as it slowly turned downward.Only an ho

I turned around slowly, every movement deliberate and measured as I finally faced her in the dim light of the suite.She was standing right there in the pale moonlight filtering through the window, framed entirely in my oversized white shirt, shaking so violently that her knees knocked together beneath the wet linen. Her hazelnut eyes were wide, completely drowned in pure, unadulterated fear as she stared up at me, waiting for the axe to fall."Do you know who I am?" I asked, my voice dropping into a low, dangerous rasp that filled the quiet room and vibrated in the air between us."No," she breathed out, her pale lips trembling as she held my gaze despite her terror."Are you so utterly desperate that you'd throw yourself at the mercy of a complete stranger you found hiding in the dark?"Now she'll cower, I thought, watching her intensely for the inevitable sign of weak submission that every desperate she-wolf displayed when cornered. They always break under pressure.She hesitated,

"We... we didn't know it was you, My Lord," the first guard stammered out, his rough voice cracking violently mid-sentence as the sheer, suffocating weight of the man's primal growl crushed down upon him. His eyes were blown wide with pure, unadulterated panic, locked entirely onto the tattooed black wolf and crowned crest stretched across the broad, powerful back right in front of him. "Forgive us! We had no idea you were quartered in this suite!""Wrong room! Completely wrong room!" the second guard squeaked out in sheer terror, stumbling backward into the corridor so fast his heavy boots caught on the wooden doorframe, nearly throwing him flat on his back in his frantic haste to escape the terrifying presence towering over them.They practically scrambled over one another to grab the handle and pull the heavy oak door shut, the latch catching with a sharp, desperate click that echoed loudly through the quiet suite like a gunshot.I stood completely frozen in the stranger's firm arm