Page 39

She was the panther. Low to the ground. Eyes burning. Every nerve alive and sparking with wild power.

She blinked, and there he was. Finn, waiting. Still. Watching. Dominant.

He dipped his head once. Permission.

She growled low in her throat. Submission—but not surrender.

Then they ran—silent and swift, muscle and instinct moving as one. Two predators unleashed, hunger and vengeance boiling beneath their skins. Blood stained their memories, not their muzzles, but their intent was lethal. They streaked across the rocks and mist, black shapes against silver night, each breath syncing, each stride feeding the other.

They didn’t need to speak. They didn’t need to look back.

They were the storm now—and they were hunting.

The confrontation with Cathal detonated like a fault line buckling beneath their feet—sudden, violent, and final. The air shattered around them, tension ripping through the space like a thunderclap, every muscle primed, every instinct honed to a blade's edge.

He hadn’t seen it coming—none of them had. Not the guards at the perimeter. Not the lookouts on the ridge. And definitely not Cathal himself, tucked deep inside his compound like a rot hiding deep inside the stone.

They struck just before dawn. Fast. Precise. Lethal.

Keira moved with Finn, glued to his side like a shadow tethered to a storm. Her beast pressed against the inside of her skin, restless, teeth bared in silence. She didn’t shift—yet—but every breath she took came laced with the wild. Her heartbeat matched his, synced to the rhythm of a hunt with no room for hesitation.

They were a force—cold, coordinated, and utterly merciless. Finn’s crew moved like wraiths through the compound, each motion honed to lethal perfection. Blades flashed in silence, guns coughed their deadly whispers, and blood spilled cleanly, without fanfare. No shouting. No chaos. Just the brutal, rhythmic cadence of trained predators dismantling an empire one heartbeat at a time.

Keira watched one of Cathal’s lieutenants stumble into the open, blood pouring from his mouth, eyes bulging in terror. His voice caught in a strangled gurgle as he raised a hand in a futile plea for help. Before the sound could escape, a blade flashed—fast, clean, silent—and sliced through the space between them.It lodged deep in the man's chest. He buckled, the life draining from his eyes before his knees hit the ground. The thud of his body hitting the dirt was the only sound that followed.

Finn didn’t pause.

He moved with an inevitable kind of determination, a silent reckoning forged in blood and control, carving through the compound with lethal calm. With each step, the walls seemed to contract, the shadows recoiling from his path. And when they reached the inner chamber—where Cathal stood, spine pressed to cold steel, wrapped in shadow and false bravado—the very air thickened, weighted with the gravity of the moment, as if the world itself braced for the violence to come.

Cathal reached for a weapon, his hand jerking toward the holster at his side. Finn didn’t hesitate. With a single stride forward, he closed the distance and kicked the pistol hard, sending it skittering across the stone floor with a metallic clatter. The weapon bounced into the shadows, useless. Finn kept moving, predator-smooth, each step a warning that the final reckoning had arrived.

Keira felt it like a ripple in her blood. Not of body, but of command. Finn was no longer just the hunter, he had become the executioner.

“No clever lines today?” Cathal spat blood onto the floor, grinning through the break in his lip. “Thought you liked the sound of your own?—”

Finn moved, swift as a lash. One brutal step forward and his open palm cracked across Cathal's face with bone-breaking force. The blow sent the man sprawling backward, slamming into the stone wall hard enough to rattle the shelves. He slid down in a heap, a strangled gasp escaping as blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

Keira didn’t move. She didn’t have to. Finn's voice cut through the tension like a blade wrapped in velvet—low, deadly calm, but sharp enough to bleed the silence.

“You don’t touch her. You don’t breathe near her. You don’t think about her. Ever again.” He crouched to Cathal’s eye level. “Or I’ll take your throat and feed it to the tide.”

Silence. The silence after Finn’s promise didn’t last. Cathal, cornered and bloodied, still had pride left in him—and pride made fools of men on the edge of death. He lunged. Desperate, reckless, teeth bared like an animal too stupid to die quietly.

Keira moved to intercept, but Finn was faster.

Finn's hand locked around Cathal’s throat with lethal precision and slammed him back into the wall hard enough to send cracks spiderwebbing across the wall. The impact echoed like a rifle shot, shaking the dust from the rafters. Cathal gagged, his fingers clawing helplessly at Finn’s iron grip, feet kicking off the floor as he struggled for air. His face darkened, veins bulging, the frantic rasp of breath barely audible over the pounding blood in Keira’s ears. The power radiating from Finn was volcanic—controlled, but only just. The room stank of sweat, terror, and the copper bite of blood already spilled.

“You had your warning,” Finn said, voice low and razor-sharp. “You didn't heed it; so now, you die.”

“Finn…” Keira started, but the word barely left her mouth before Finn shifted.

Fully. All the way. His jaw widened. His teeth lengthened. His voice dropped to something other.

Keira froze, blood turning electric. She’d seen him shift before. Fought beside him. But this—this was different. This was personal.

Finn’s claws punched through Cathal's skin like obsidian daggers. He didn’t hesitate. He drove them straight into Cathal’s gut—up and under. A wet, sucking noise filled the room. Cathal’sbody seized, eyes blown wide with the realization that this was real, that there was no bargaining, no crawling away from this moment.

The maelstrom of color, thunder, lightning and violence swirled up around Finn as he became man once more. “You thought you could threaten her and walk away?” Finn’s voice dropped lower. “You think this is a story where you crawl off into the dark and come back for revenge?”