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She turned.

A shadow moved outside. Too fast to be wind. Too still to be natural.

She rose slowly, wrapping herself in the previously discarded robe.

Outside, something waited. Keira's breath stuttered as her gaze locked onto the shifting silhouette just beyond the windowpane. The hairs on her arms rose beneath the robe, her instincts screaming a warning her mind couldn’t place. She couldn’t make out what it was—just that it was there.

CHAPTER 12

FINN

The sound came sharp and sudden—a muffled thud that didn’t belong. Finn froze, heart kicking against his ribs, a flare of instinct racing through him. His breath hitched, a primal jolt firing through his chest like a warning flare, hot and immediate—an instinctive recognition that danger was near. Something was off. Wrong. Not just unexpected, but invasive.

Finn’s hand tightened around the glass, the whiskey forgotten as he froze in the kitchen. This wasn’t just a sound—it was a threat. A chill slid down his spine, his pulse spiking hard in the sudden stillness. Every instinct screamed alert.

The noise wasn’t just wrong—it was uninvited, predatory. The hairs on his arms rose, his body already tensing into readiness before his mind fully caught up. Whatever it was, it was close. And it was getting closer.

Instinct slammed through him like a punch—sharp, sudden, and primal. The kind of alarm that came not just from training, but from something ancient and feral, buried deep in his blood. It wasn’t panic. It was precision—hyper-focused awareness snapping through him like a live wire. A warning that bypassed logic and went straight to the spine.

He felt it in his gut, low and immediate, like the split-second breath before a trap snapped shut. The room pressed in around him, heavy with silence, as if even the walls were waiting. He set the glass down without drinking, muscles going taut, every nerve ending straining toward the disturbance. The old burn of danger surged in his chest, sharp and primal, stirring a flicker of memory—Keira's scent laced with adrenaline, the unshakable sense that something was about to go terribly wrong.

He didn’t bother with the security panel. His instincts had never lied to him—not once. A single, out-of-place thud on a quiet night wasn’t coincidence. It was intention—silent, precise, and aimed. In his world, intention wasn’t just a warning; it was a prelude to blood.

As he moved, he keyed his comm. "All units, report in. East perimeter sweep. Full circle."

Voices crackled back with affirmatives. Finn's jaw locked, his expression darkening as he turned on his heel and strode to the front hall. With deliberate precision, he unlocked the weapons cabinet, fingers moving with muscle memory honed from years of readiness and wariness. This wasn’t just preparation—it was a warning: anyone watching would learn just how ready he was to protect what was his.

Seconds later, Donal appeared at the back entrance, breath fogging in the cold. "You hear it too?"

"East side. Something off."

Donal nodded. "Partial prints in the garden just past the terrace. No breach, but someone was damn close. Might be testing us."

Finn pulled on his coat and stepped into his boots. "Or planning something bigger. Get three men on the ridge and two more at the boathouse."

"Already moving."

The cold slapped him as he stepped outside. The night air bristled with salt and pine, but something else rode beneath it—a synthetic tang, sharp and chemical. Alien. Wrong. A warning in the air, too faint for humans, but screaming at every predator's instinct in him.

He broke into a run, feet silent over the gravel path leading to the eastern edge of the estate. The cold bit into his face, sharp with salt and pine, but he didn’t slow. When his boots hit the shadowed grass beyond the tree line, he yanked off his coat and let it fall behind him. Hidden in the dense cover of trees, he dropped to one knee and pressed his palm to the earth, drawing in a breath of the air—cool, tinged with mist and something other. Then, with a focused breath, he gave himself over to the beast.

Mist burst around him like a living thing, brushing cool against his skin before quickly warming, crackling with barely contained energy as it wrapped his body in a charged veil. It clung to him like breath and shadow, electric and intimate, as if the air itself recognized the beast within. His skin prickled with heat, muscles tightening as the world narrowed to instinct and sensation.

The shift came swiftly—no pain, no tearing, just the seamless shift from man to beast, as natural as breathing. The cold vanished. The dark welcomed him. And he moved through it with the lethal grace of a predator who’d always belonged.

The scent trail was faint. Whoever it was had masked themselves well, but not perfectly. He followed the traces: crushed leaves, a snapped twig, the shallow indentation of a knee near the perimeter fence. No signs of forced entry. Just someone watching.

Then he caught it—a whisper of blood on the air. Not Keira's. Male. Familiar. Feral. One of his own, carrying the scent of pain and warning like a flag in the dark.

Finn bolted, paws pounding the earth with silent precision. He found Ewen sprawled behind a tangle of brush, his body limp but his pulse strong. A dart jutted from his neck, its shaft barely visible in the moonlight.

A message.

Finn leaned in and sniffed. The chemical trace hit his senses—non-lethal, a tranquilizer. Not designed to kill, just to incapacitate. Whoever had been here wasn’t hunting. They were scouting, assessing, leaving a message without bloodshed—for now.

Finn shifted back as Donal emerged from the trees, his breathing hard but eyes sharp and alert. Dropping to a crouch beside Ewen, Finn scanned his packmate's face, watching the shallow rise and fall of his chest. The tranquilizer had done its job—but only just. Rage coiled in his gut like a live wire, pulsing beneath his skin. Whoever had done this hadn’t come to kill. They’d come to make a point.

"They didn’t kill him," he said, low and cold. "They’re watching. Measuring."