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You will not take another thing from me. Try it, bastard. I dare you. Come close enough, and I’ll show you what happens when a wolf stops hunting and starts claiming.

You will not leave this city alive.

The wind glides past, brushing icy fingers over my fur, tugging at the Reaper’s scent before it fades. I push farther out, muscles taut, every nerve honed to a razor’s edge. Just past the narrow curve of the alley, where the light breaks and the dark folds in close, a smear of blood glistens on the pavement—fresh, wet, and defiantly human. It shines like a warning staked to the earth. Not just a clue. A dare.

Fresh.

Human.

A visceral reminder that the hunt is no longer theoretical—it’s personal. He’s marked the edge of her world like adog staking claim, leaving behind the one thing guaranteed to light a fire under my skin. This blood isn’t just evidence—it’s provocation, an invitation, a twisted game of chicken where he’s daring me to lose control. He’s testing the line, inching closer with every move, watching to see how far he can go before I shatter the leash around my fury and rip him apart.

Not Sutton’s.

Another message.

I press my nose closer, inhaling deep, letting it fill every part of me until my lungs burn with it. The scent is mixed—copper sharp enough to cut, the acrid tang of adrenaline-soaked sweat, fear clinging like wet velvet. And beneath it all, colder than the grave and twice as cruel, is the Reaper’s signature—clean, clinical, and inhuman. It slides down my throat like ice, awakening something ruthless in my blood. My hackles rise. My claws scrape the pavement. Every part of me screams to run him down and end this—before he marks her next.

A warning.

Or a promise.

Either way, the game just changed.

I raise my head, eyes glowing, moonlight catching the silver threads along my fur. I hear the subtle scrape of Gideon adjusting his position behind me, his scent grounding me

The Reaper is already gone. Next time? He won’t be so lucky.

CHAPTER 12

SUTTON

The sound that wakes me isn’t the low rumble of Deacon pacing or the sharp clink of his weapons being checked. It’s… whistling.

Not the kind of eerie, off-key kind you hear in horror movies, either. This is cheerful. Jaunty. Like someone without a single care in the world decided it was a perfect morning for cookies and cowboy tunes. And that someone, clearly, is not Deacon.

I blink up at the ceiling, disoriented by the cheery lilt of some old country song drifting through the townhouse. My sheets are tangled around my legs, warm with sleep and something heavier—unease maybe. Deacon should be here. But the hallway is empty. His energy, always so damn palpable, is missing.

I slip out of bed, wrap my robe around me, and pad barefoot into the hallway. The floor is cool beneath my feet, the hush of the early morning wrapping around me like fog. The scent of chocolate, sugar, and butter hits me like a soft slap—warm, rich, and almost absurdly domestic. Cookies—chocolate chip ones to be exact.

For one suspended heartbeat, I imagine a world where mornings start like this, sweet and simple. The scent of cookies, the soft patter of bare feet on wood floors, a man in the kitchenwho isn’t haunted by ghosts or carrying the weight of a thousand silent wars. A world where I’m not trying to outmaneuver death at every corner.

Then reality rushes back in like a slap of cold water to the face.

Deacon’s gone.

Not in the way a person steps out for a coffee or takes a walk to clear their head. No, this absence is deeper. It thrums in the air, a vacuum where his presence used to wrap around the space like a storm front. That raw, electric awareness of him—of his restlessness, his heat, his barely-contained protectiveness—is gone.

And it leaves something in its place—an ache I don’t understand. A hollow I can’t quite explain.

I clutch the edge of the banister tighter. My instincts tingle, a low buzz crawling along my spine, whispering that this isn’t just a simple morning absence. There’s a change in the air, subtle but unmistakable, like a missing note in a song I didn’t realize I’d memorized. Something’s wrong. Something’s… different. My skin prickles, not with fear exactly, but with the uneasy certainty that the moment I name what I’m feeling, everything will change.

I come down the stairs and look into the kitchen and blink again. Gideon Bonham. I’ve seen him before at the bakery here in town. He’s tall, broad, and terrifyingly efficient—is standing at my stove in a tight black T-shirt and jeans, humming while he pulls a tray of cookies out of the oven like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

“Morning,” he says without turning around.

I narrow my eyes. “Where’s Deacon?”

He flips a cookie onto the cooling rack with military precision. “Out.”