He called me his ruin. Then he made me one. 

Alpha Shiloh's rejection wasn’t just a scar—it was a betrayal. He left me shattered. Broken. And I had to rebuild myself in silence. 
I almost forgot the way his touch once burned like salvation.  

Now he’s back.  

Not to beg forgiveness. To bargain. A deadly mission, he says. He promises freedom.

But then presence ignites my wolf into a frenzy. She thrashes, desperate to claim him again. But I remember the coldness in his eyes when he exiled me. The way the pack turned their backs as I crawled into the wilderness, half-dead and wholly broken. Hate simmers hotter than desire.

Yet here I am, bargaining with the devil who shattered me. Every moment we share is a lie. He doesn’t know about the shadows I’ve fed, the truth I’ve buried.  

Or the child.  

One whisper of its existence, and the pack will paint the forest with my blood. 

But the closer we get to completing his mission, the harder it is to hide… from him, or from the part of me that still craves him.  

Freedom has a price.  

So does vengeance.  

And I’m not sure which will destroy me first.

Someone has already been here," Kai said with a frown as he sniffed the air. "I don't suppose you know anything about that."


Zara was not as good at covering her tracks as she needed to be. "Do they smell familiar?"


"No." So none of the other wolves. Just Zara. "And is anything amiss?"


Glowering at me, Kai picked up a scalpel. "This may not be one of our pack, but I assumed responsibility of them when they came into my infirmary. I do not like to know that someone else was here."


"It does not help. Why, exactly, are you here watching me? Do you have some medical degree that I don't know about?"


"Not exactly. I'm here to report back to Shiloh," I lied.


Chapter 54 - 4