Page 143 of Ruthless Knot

My pen pal.

My bonded Omega.

The heir to the legacy my pack was sent here to destroy.

The irony would be funny if it weren't so catastrophically fucked.

The theater looms before us now—a decrepit structure of crumbling stone and boarded windows, the kind of place that screamsabandonedanddangerousandstay the fuck away. Ivy crawls up the walls like nature is trying to reclaim what humanity forgot. The doors are heavy, iron-bound wood that should be rusted shut. To think this place is still used is one thing, but then hey swing open at our touch.

Music hits me first.

Low, sensual, pulsing through the darkness like a heartbeat. The kind of sound that gets into your bones and makes them want tomove—all heavy bass and sultry rhythm and something that sounds like longing given auditory form.

Then the light.

A single spotlight, cutting through the darkness of the vast performance space, illuminating a stage I can barely see from the entrance.

And in that pool of golden light?—

Her.

My breath catches.

Every rational thought I've had in the last hour—about targets, missions, and the impossible situation we've found ourselves in—dissolves into nothing.

Because Seraphine is dancing.

She's changed since I saw her leaving her place in uniform. Gone are the combat boots and uniform; in their place, she wears something that looks like moonlight made solid—a costume that catches the spotlight and fragments it into a thousand sparkling pieces. Her pink hair streams behind herlike a banner as she spins, wild and free and completely unbound by the gravity that holds the rest of us down.

The movement is...

Fuck.

I don't have words for it.

She moves like violence given form—every step precise, every gesture deliberate, every extension of her limbs carrying the same deadly grace I saw when she was killing. But this isn't death.This is art.This is the language her body speaks when it's not busy surviving, not busy fighting, not busy proving she deserves to exist.

This is who she really is.

Beside me, I hear Blaze's sharp intake of breath.

Jett has gone completely still—that predatory stillness that means he's cataloguing every detail, memorizing every movement, filing away information for later analysis.

And Kai?—

I glance at our pack leader, expecting to see cold calculation.

Instead, I find him frozen.

His dark gold eyes are fixed on the stage, tracking Seraphine's movements with an intensity I've rarely seen from him. His jaw is tight, hands clenched at his sides, and there's something in his expression that looks almost like...awe.

Or hunger.

Could very well be both at this rate.

The music swells.

Seraphine rises onto pointe—those mismatched ballet shoes I remember from the post office, one pink, one red—and begins a series of turns that defy physics.Fouettés, my brain supplies, recognizing the technique from years of working in performance circuits.