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Stripping was precise, almost reverent—boots, shirt, trousers, each movement deliberate. The night air met his skin with a chill that raised goosebumps and stirred something deeper. His heart gave a single, thunderous beat. Then silence, thick and electric. The mist swirled tighter, curling around him like silk drawn through static. Power gathered in the hush, pressing close. In a breathless instant, his body blurred, shimmered—and reformed. Where Finn had stood, a black panther now prowled forward, sleek and soundless, as if he’d always belonged to the dark.

He moved low and silent, paws eating the ground with fluid, predatory grace. Each stride was a calculated whisper against the earth, strength wrapped in silence. The forest exhaled, shadows lengthened and the air was thick with the weight of the night. Leaves rustled above like old secrets. His nostrils flared, tasting the dark.

Sap. Squirrel. Ewen’s old trail. Then—everything snapped sideways.

A break in the pattern. The scent twisted—wrong and unsettling. Male. Sharp. Tainted by the bitter stench of brake fluid and cold metal, the tang of sweat-laced adrenaline, and the artificial sting of synthetic fibers clinging to engine grease.It wormed through the underbrush like a parasite, greasy and invasive. It sliced through the known world like wire through muscle—alien, yes, but worse than that. It reeked of intent.

His ears flattened, the weight of the scent burning through his sinuses. Breath low and steady, he pressed forward, one paw after another, instincts cutting like knives through the quiet. He followed it—silent, lethal, a shadow on the hunt.

Tracks veered west, hugging the tree line like a second spine. The intruder had avoided the cameras with precision, sticking to blind spots Finn had mapped years ago—but they’d slipped. A spent casing glinted from the moss near an uprooted pine, half-buried but not hidden. A rookie mistake. Or worse, bait laid with intention. A signal.

Not just sloppy. Deliberate.

Finn’s chest tightened. Whoever left this had wanted him to find it. It wasn’t an oversight—it was a message. And he’d received it, loud and clear.

Further south, buried beneath layers of damp leaves and moss-slick stone, Finn uncovered the gear cache nestled in the crook of a collapsed tree root. A waterproof bag, military-grade and sealed tight, lay partially concealed by debris. He eased it open with a paw, claws retracting as muscle reshaped and settled. Inside: topo maps marked with scouting routes, a burner phone with encrypted software still warm from recent use, protein bars in vacuum-sealed wrap—and a knife.

Not just any knife. The handle bore the Lynch crest etched into darkened steel—sleek, deliberate, and damning. Not Cathal’s blade—Finn knew the curve and weight of that one—but unmistakably crafted for someone in his inner circle. Blood-tied or bonded. Trusted. Dangerous.

Too fucking close.

The hairs along his neck lifted. This wasn’t a scouting slip. It was a message. A warning. A test.

A low growl rumbled from his chest.

His mind flicked to fire, to blood, to the massacre at Con's abbey above Galway—when everything changed, and Con moved their people to the island off the Irish coast. And then Siobhan Lynch had followed them there to try to exact revenge.

Keira’s father—one of the Lynch brothers and Cathal’s blood kin—had been shot on the beach alongside Siobhan after she’d pulled a weapon on Con’s mate, Katie.

Con hadn’t hesitated. Siobhan went down first, and when her father lunged toward her weapon, Con’s second shot ended it. The sand drank their blood, and the sea breeze carried away the echoes of their final, fatal mistake.

They’d come for Katie—Con’s mate. They’d meant to end her. Instead, they’d ended themselves. The justice Con meted out had been cold, precise, and absolute. There had been no room for negotiation. No room for doubt.

Finn had stood beside Con, breath shallow, rage singing through every nerve. That day, Con hadn’t been just a leader—he’d been the storm. Silent, devastating, and final.

It was the moment Finn had shed the last of his hesitation. The last of his youth. It wasn’t loyalty alone that had bound him to Con from that day—it was conviction, ironclad and unshakable.

Con fought not for power, but to protect what could not protect itself. And Finn had vowed, that day, to be the same.

Finn crouched by the cache, tail twitching, muscles drawn taut with instinct. The scent curled in his nose—sharp, oily, edged with sweat and static. Fresh. No more than four hours old. Whoever had been here wasn’t just scouting. They’d lingered, confident enough to leave a signature, cocky enough to think they wouldn’t be tracked.

Cathal wasn’t just posturing—he was testing, hunting. He circled the estate like a predator tracing the scent of vulnerability, searching for a break in the defenses. This wasn’t random. It was surgical. Designed to scatter Finn’s focus, to create distance between him and Keira. To see what line he would cross—and which he would not.

And if Finn hadn’t picked up the trail, it might’ve worked.

Finn turned, every muscle pulled tight like drawn wire, his body alive with barely restrained force. In the span of a breath, he launched into motion—swift, precise, and deadly—like a predator who’d waited just long enough to strike.

Sand exploded beneath his paws, a plume of grit trailing in his wake as he surged across the dunes. The wind howled past, raking his fur, carrying with it the sharp tang of the ocean and the faintest echo of something fouler. Trees streaked by in a blur, branches grasping like skeletal fingers. Overhead, the moon rose sharp and high, not a blade now—but a beacon, silver and unrelenting, as if bearing witness to the hunt already in motion.

He shifted just inside the tree line, the soft swirl of mist brushing against his bare skin like breath from the earth itself. Naked and alert, he stepped onto the back lawn, the cool air wrapping around him. Every nerve sparked with warning, tuned to the pulse of something near—something wrong.

And there she was. Keira stood barefoot in the grass, eyes locked on him like she'd been waiting—not with fear or surprise, but with something deeper, ancient. A primal awareness that mirrored his own, wild and unblinking. Her posture was relaxed but alert, bare toes curling in the cool blades, like the earth itself had whispered his arrival.

Her pulse quickened, steady and strong in the space between them, not loud, not frantic—just steady, tethered to something older than words. There was no need to speak. Not yet. Not with the tension crackling between them like a live wire waiting for a spark.

"You felt me coming," he said, striding up to her.

She nodded slowly, the wind stirring her hair. "Like I could taste your breath on the wind." Her voice was soft, tinged with awe—and something else, something that hummed low in her blood. It wasn’t fear. It was recognition.