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She turned her head just enough to flash me one last smirk—sharp, cruel, satisfied. The kind of look that belonged on a wolf with blood on her teeth.

And then they led her out. The door closed behind them, the silence folding in around me like a tomb.

I sat down heavily, the fire cracking in the hearth the only sound left. The scent of her still clung to the room—not her body,no. That had been scrubbed clean. But the aura of her, the storm she carried in her voice, still stirred the air. I stared at the stack of reports on my desk—border updates, trade supply shortages, Crescent Moon loyalists in hiding—but the words blurred into nothing.

My hand gripped the edge of the desk until the wood groaned. It wasn’t her defiance that haunted me. It was the mockery in her voice.

My Alpha.

She’d said it with venom, with a sneer. And still… fuck. My cock twitched.

Not because of her words—because of the way she said them. That silken purr, that bitter surrender laced with scorn, the sound of submission spoken like a challenge.

My Alpha.

I could see it. Clear as the moon at midnight. Lexa on her knees before me. Blood on her lip. Runes half-broken and glowing beneath her skin. Her mouth parted, her eyes wild, and that voice—that voice—whispering those same words with heat instead of hate.

My Alpha.Gods. I raked a hand through my hair, breath shallow, skin burning with something primal, filthy, and wrong. She hated me. Hated wolves. Hated what she was. And still I wanted her—on her knees, chained or not, ruined or raging—mine.

And the worst part? I didn’t want to tame her. I wanted her to stay wild so I could be the one to break her.

CHAPTER 11

Andros

The knock on my door came just after dawn, sharp and urgent. I was already awake. I hadn’t slept. Not with her voice still clawing at the edges of my mind like a lullaby gone wrong.

Garrick entered without waiting for permission. He didn’t need it. I could tell by the look in his eyes that something was wrong—real wrong.

“Village to the east,” he said grimly. “Attacked in the night. Three dead. Two missing. Smoke spotted at the tree line.”

I didn’t ask who. I already knew.

“Crescent Moon?” I asked anyway.

He nodded. “Loyalists. Survivors, most likely. Or the ones too cowardly to die with the rest.”

My jaw clenched. The bastards were supposed to be dead. Broken. Gone. I'd gutted their Alpha and spilled the blood of his sons on snow-covered soil. The last heir fell by my hand, and stillthe ghosts of that rotted pack refused to lie down.

I stood, already strapping on my armor.

“Ready five men,” I ordered. “We leave in ten.”

Garrick nodded and vanished, efficient as ever.

The keep stirred behind me as I made my way to the stables. Wolves moved out of my path without a word, sensing the weight of the storm in my steps. The sky outside was a sheet of white, snow falling thick and steady. The wind was cutting, feral. This wasn’t a gentle snowfall—it was a blizzard with teeth. The kind that ate bone and buried the weak.

Perfect hunting weather.

By the time we rode out, the sun was nothing more than a smudge behind grey clouds. Visibility was shit. Wind howled through the trees like a mourning chorus, biting through our cloaks and icing our beards. But none of us slowed.

We followed the path east, past the frost-choked rivers and dead fields, until even the horses began to falter. Then we left them behind, moving on foot through knee-deep drifts, senses sharp.

No one complained. This wasn’t the kind of pack that needed comfort to kill. We moved like shadows—silent, cold, focused. The blizzard covered most of the tracks, but not all. A bootprint here, a snapped branch there. Wolves learned to read the quiet between movements, the broken silences in the snow.

By nightfall, we found blood. Frozen into the snow. Fresh enough to make my wolf lift its head and snarl. We were close. Close enough to taste vengeance on the wind.

The storm worsened as night swallowed the last traces of trail. Snow came down in thick sheets now, blinding and relentless, coating the world in silence and white death. The wind howled through the cliffs like a cursed thing, threatening to knock us off our feet if we pushed any farther.