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Viktor’s eyes were already cutting through the room in systematic passes. Front to back, left to right, the columns along the east wall, the service corridor, the main doors. Chris watched him do it, watched the conclusion arrive in the slight tension at the corners of his mouth.

She wasn’t here.

“She was on the attendance list this morning,” Viktor said. Low, directed at Kahn. “Confirmed by patrol at the south gate, oh-seven-hundred.”

“That was three hours ago,” Kahn said.

“Anyone seen her?” Damian asked the row behind him, rising to his feet. Heads shook. Shoulders lifted.

Chris’s wolf pressed against his ribs. Not the gentle stir from before. A full-body push, hot, insistent, aimed at the doors of the hall with a focus that made his teeth ache. He shoved it down. His hands clenched at his sides, knuckles blanching.

Sloane Mercer. The woman who’d tried to sabotage Caitlynn’s place in this pack. The woman who’d whispered poison into the kitchen, the training yard, the women’s hall. Who’d aligned herself with Gideon and run a campaign so vicious that Caitlynn had eaten cold eggs alone for weeks because the staff had turned against her. He remembered the heat that had risen through his body when he was so woefully unable to protect his sister.

He’d wanted to find Sloane when the truth came out. Wanted to walk into whatever room she was in, look her in the face, and make her understand exactly what she’d done.

He never did. Caitlynn handled it herself, in her own graceful manner, and Sloane pledged her loyalty, and the chapter closed.

Except now the magic had ripped it back open and written his name next to hers.

“Chris.” Kahn’s voice, pitched for him alone.

He looked up.

“Take a breath.”

Chris breathed. The air tasted of cedar smoke and candle wax. His wolf clawed at his sternum, pointed at the door, unreasonable and singular. He ignored it.

“I’ll find her,” he said, his tone clipped.

Kahn studied him. “You don’t have to go right now.”

“I have to.” The words came out harder than he intended. Caitlynn was watching from the dais, her hands still, her expression the careful blankness she wore when she was reading a situation faster than anyone else in the room. He gentled his voice. “I just need to talk to her.”

What he needed was to look Sloane Mercer in the eye and tell her that he didn’t care what the ritual drew; he didn’t care what ancient, overpowered magic had decided about the two of them. He was not mating anyone. He had never needed a mate. He had never built his life around the expectation of one, never left space for it, never sat in a quiet room and imagined the shape of someone beside him. He’d watched Kahn and Caitlynn fall into each other with a force that rearranged furniture. He’d watched Viktor and Olivia build a partnership out of resistance and raw will. He’d been glad for them. Proud, even. But he’d never looked at any of it and thought: that’s for me.

And if he ever had, if he’d ever let that thought live long enough to breathe, it would not have been for the woman who’d tried to destroy his sister.

He pushed off the wall. Moved through the hall toward the main doors. His stride steady, unhurried, his face giving nothing away to the Beaumont members who turned to watch him pass. Behind him, Caitlynn said his name once, softly. He didn’t stop.

He was going to find Sloane. He was going to tell her that this pairing was a mistake, that the magic had gotten it wrong, and that he intended to find a way out of it before either of them had to pretend otherwise. He was going to be calm about it. Reasonable.

The morning air hit him when he cleared the doors, cool and sharp with pine, and his wolf lunged for the treeline with a desperation he couldn’t explain.

He headed east, toward the edge of the compound.

Chapter 2 - Sloane

Sloane had been staring at the claw mark for forty minutes.

Four gouges in the wood, dragged downward through the paint, deep enough that the pale grain showed through in ragged strips. The spacing was wrong for a bear. Too wide for a coyote. The angle started high, above where her head would be if she were standing on the other side, then raked down to hip level in a single, deliberate stroke.

She pressed her thumb into the deepest groove. Sawdust crumbled against her skin, still fresh. Last night, maybe early this morning, while she’d been lying on her mattress with the lights off, listening to the compound settle into sleep.

He’d been standing right here. On her porch, three feet from her bed, close enough that if she’d opened the door she would have smelled him.

She pulled her hand back, then wiped it on her jeans.

The cottage was too quiet. She’d moved to the edge of the compound two years ago, after the pack had collectively decided that Sloane Mercer was someone to step around rather than speak to. A storage shed, really, converted into living quarters with a cot against one wall, a small kitchen counter along the other, a single window that faced the tree line. She’d brought nothing because she owned nothing worth bringing. A few clothes. A blade she kept under the mattress. Possessions that could fit into a bag in under a minute, which was the point.