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“I have an announcement to make,” Emilio said, standing in the packhouse dining room where his family sat waiting.

All eyes turned to him, most with an indulgent look like they thought he was going to tell them they’d completed the mate bond, even though if they used their noses they’d know they’d done no such thing.

He’d been thinking about this moment since Rocco dropped his gift at his feet, but now that the time was here, he shifted on his feet, uncharacteristically nervous.

Marco stood from his seat across the room and came to stand next to him, gripping his shoulder, while Rocco kept an arm around his waist on the other side.

No one was going to abandon him because of his art , he reminded himself.

Not like his mother had. His Alpha and his mate would make sure of it.

“Most of you have probably heard by now that I’ve been working as an assassin since I moved away.”

“Hell yeah, you have, sugar!” Vin called out, breaking the tension in the room and making everyone smile .

Emilio tipped his head in gratitude to the vampire who’d shared contacts and jobs with him, giving him a foothold in their profession. He’d sent just as much Vin’s way once he’d become established, but he would always owe the sassy vampire a debt for that start.

“What you don’t know is that I’ve also been exhibiting as an artist under an anonymous name this whole time.”

His family broke out into a confused collection of whispered comments and shouted questions. Their family was close—well, was supposed to be close, anyway. He’d caught them by surprise.

“What name?”

“Why didn’t we know this?”

“Give him a chance to explain!” Luca called out.

Emilio swallowed hard, struggling to make his throat work. This was it. They were going to turn away from him just like she had. Tearing himself away from Rocco’s arms, he went to leave, but his mate’s power held him where he was.

“Enough,” Rocco said. His voice was conversational, but he used his power to amplify it, so it echoed throughout the space. “Go ahead, Emmy,” he added once silence fell.

So, he told them. He opened his mouth and let the words about his true passion spill from his mouth.

The artworks he’d created as Cadmium, first, to have something just for him, and later, to share with the art world that embraced him despite his anonymity, or perhaps because of it.

He told them what it meant to him to combine graffiti, carefully orchestrated audio, and the ropework he used to suspend his tattooed subjects in a three-dimensional, gritty, dangerous space that people walked through, unknowing.

How he could channel the beauty and fascination he found in pain, in the inner workings of the human body and mind, into this thing that other people understood.

How all he’d wanted was to be understood .

“Did you think we wouldn’t understand?” Aria asked, pain in her eyes and voice.

Emilio stared at her, not sure what to say.

“You saw firsthand what losing his mother did to him, Aria. Do you really need to ask that?” Marco said.

“We’re not the same as that bitch! He’s ours . We’d never let him go!” she said, stalking closer and pulling Emilio into a hug he wasn’t expecting. “You don’t need to keep secrets from us. We’re so proud of you, Emmy.”

“What she said,” Silas added, stepping forward to pull him into another hug.

From there, it became the shifter equivalent of a puppy pile. Emilio blinked back tears of joy as it finally hit him that his family wasn’t going anywhere.

“Why’d you tell them now? Because of Rocco’s present?” Marco asked.

Emilio nodded. “I’m going to use it in a piece I’m working on to send a message to whoever he was working for. It will link Cadmium and the pack for the first time.”

“Excellent,” Marco said. “You’re an asset to the pack, Emmy. I’m glad you’re finally home.”

Emilio dropped his head as he processed Marco’s words.

Rocco came over from where he’d been giving him space to bond with his family and pulled him back into his arms. He didn’t even mind that Marco was assuming he was going to stay.

His Alpha knew him better than he knew himself.

He’d sensed the shift in how Emilio felt about being back in New Trinity through their pack bond.

The rest of Christmas day passed in a blur of food, family, and non-stop teasing about their matching tattoos once Emilio took his shirt off to shift.

Was there a better way to spend a winter day than tattooing Atlantic wolffish features onto a cadaver’s face before making his body a pattern of bondage ropework and stringing him up under a bridge?

Emilio didn’t think so, and he suspected Rocco agreed, given the erection his husband was pressing to his ass as he bent forward to focus the video camera he’d be filming on.

It was the perfect end to a day spent organising the other artwork he’d been commissioned for that he’d been so reluctant about before.

Now that his family knew who he was and he could be more open, he and Rocco had found the perfect location for his next commission—one of the illegal fights the pack ran across the city.

Emilio’s work didn’t always use dead bodies.

His pieces were designed to be immersive, and sadly, you couldn’t send the general public to walk through a collection of murdered criminals.

In Europe, he had a waitlist of people willing to be tattooed and tied for his work now that he was famous.

They willingly submitted to blindfolds and long hours of pain and suspension, knowing that once they were cut down, their bodies would be forever marked, and they would wear a piece of living art.

What he carved into their skin with the tattoo gun was as much a surprise for Emilio as it was for them.

The living elements of his pieces were unscripted and raw. Instinctual. Wild.

The guy he’d strung up under the bridge had not volunteered, of course. He probably hadn’t even known the use his body would be put to once Charles killed him. It had taken careful, elaborate ropework to cover the bruises, burns, and signs of torture.

They’d come late at night so the eerie lighting could be used to full effect to create the seeming of a deep ocean wonderland within the barren, abandoned cityscape.

With Rocco’s help, he could manoeuvre the camera in ways a hand-held couldn’t, echoing the motion of the sea’s currents as the camera flew through the space like a predator of the deep.

These works of his that veered into the truly criminal were only ever streamed live on social media platforms, not stored online.

The video he was filming of the completed piece would go viral like all his guerrilla artworks, and whoever had paid the dead man to deliver weapons to the D-2S would see either firsthand or from the screenshots and reporting that would follow his livestream.

He wasn’t sure whether using a wolffish as his subject was too obvious or too subtle a reference to the pack.

It probably depended on the observer’s knowledge of marine life.

Either way, the terrorist group should be able to figure out who the dead guy was and why he’d been killed.

Marco had given his blessing for Emilio to go ahead, but none of them knew what kind of response the move might elicit.

They were hoping to spark a reckless response from the group that had gone strangely quiet.

Something that would give the pack a target to chase.

Speaking of chasing, just as he cut the livestream, light exploded around them and Rocco crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

Spinning to face a threat he couldn’t see, Emilio snarled before tilting his face west toward his pack and howling.

The move was a cover for what he was really doing—pressing the SOS button on his phone that would notify Marco something had gone wrong.

Before he could step closer to his mate, the concrete beneath his feet ruptured and the earth itself wrapped around his ankles like manacles. A ring of fire spun up around him a breath later.

Fuck. He’d told Rocco to stay behind, but the air witch had been sure his shielding would keep him from the MC’s notice. Apparently not .

“Stop squirming or you’ll injure yourself.” Blaze’s voice came from somewhere to his left, but he couldn’t make him out through the licking flames and heat haze. “We just need to talk to him. No one needs to get hurt.”

The sound of engines revving filled the air shortly after, and Emilio stood fuming as he sensed his mate being carried away from him.

It was a good five minutes before the ring of flames around him disappeared like it had never been.

By that point, Emilio had well and truly lost control of his wolf and shifted, which had the added bonus of releasing him from the earth that had been holding him captive.

His wolf’s howl was longer and louder than anything he could manage with a human voice box.

As he ran toward the clubhouse, it was answered by a dozen more coming from the pack’s territory.

Despite how long he’d lived overseas, he could still recognise each individual from their howl.

The wolves joining him weren’t only his blood relatives, they were people from the wider pack.

People who would’ve volunteered to come because his witch mate had been taken from him.

If he could cry in this form, he would’ve blinked back tears as it truly sunk in that he was home now. That while some of the pack were wary, there were still plenty more who would kill for him.

Or die for him.