Magnus
Peace is always the shortest part of my day and even though I was far away from Aysel now, I could still smell traces of the faint honeyed scent of her shampoo.
I pushed it away.
The moment I stepped out of her apartment building, I had dropped the teasing Magnus aside.
My phone buzzed with a message from my beta and my jaw tightened as I read it.
“Faster,” I ordered the driver.
The car surged forward but my mind was already preparing for the worst.
Because the worst was always coming.
My phone buzzed again.
I answered without looking at the screen.
“Alpha.”
“Report,” I commanded.
There was a hesitation on the other end.
“The border,” my beta, Nathan, said carefully.
“The rogue wolves have breached the eastern perimeter.
We’ve lost seven soldiers so far.
More are injured.
They’re pushing hard, Alpha.
Harder than before.”
Seven.
I closed my eyes, and behind my eyelids, I saw them.
Men and women I’d trained, fought beside and trusted with my life.
“What is Bastien doing about it?”
“He’s…
coordinating from the command center,” Nathan finally said.
“He’s sent reinforcements, but they’re arriving slowly.
He says…”
“I know what he says.”
I cut him off because I’d heard it all before.
The same excuses.
Bastien had been my salvation once.
He’d found me in the wilderness, half-dead and feral, a child who had watched his mother descend into madness and his father’s legacy crumble to ash.
He’d pulled me from the dirt and given me a purpose.
He’d become the father I’d lost but I was no longer a child who believed in fairy tales.
I understood now what I hadn’t understood then.
Bastien’s loyalty had never truly belonged to me.
It belonged to the memory of my father.
Bastien had taken me in, out of devotion to my father.
But that was where his loyalty stopped.
Every time the border was attacked, Bastien was just slow enough to let the instability continue.
Because instability meant power for the one behind the throne.
I clenched my fists.
“Push the car harder,” I said.
“I want to be there in ten minutes.”
We finally got to the war front and my soldiers parted to let me through.
Their faces were filled with relief at the sight of me.
The border was filled with the smell of blood and death.
I stopped at the edge of the carnage and looked out at the forest beyond the border.
They were still out there, watching us.
And I knew exactly Connor was behind this.
Ever since my family’s downfall, my uncle had hungered for the throne, willing to burn everything to claim it.
Bastien had once stood with me against him but now he let Connor’s rot spread, benefiting from the endless instability even as good wolves died for it.
Disappointment coiled inside me, piercing deeper than any wound.
Bastien had failed me again.
I drew in a slow breath, steadying my wolf, but a strange new scent stopped me cold.
I frowned, stepping forward towards the dead bodies and I froze.
The corpses have been arranged with a deliberate, mocking imitation of the scene of Kael’s death.
Whoever had done this had known that I’d been taking trips to moon valley to investigate Kael’s death and this was their warning to me.
A primal surge of fury rose inside me and I felt my control slipping as my wolf began to rise to the surface.
They’d killed these people.
Good people who had families, who had futures, who had trusted me to protect them just so they could send me a message.
The strange scent came again.
This time I was able to place it.
It smelled like cocoa.
Why the hell was cocoa smelling here?
“Alpha…”
I didn’t hear the rest of the warning.
All I heard was the sound of a gunshot, the whistle of a bullet cutting through the air toward me, and then Nathan’s body colliding with mine as he threw himself in front of me.
“No!”
I shoved him aside with a force that sent him sprawling, and I saw the bullet’s trajectory shift, saw it heading for his throat instead of his chest, and I moved in front of him without thinking.
Hot pain exploded in my shoulder, but it was nothing compared to the fury that consumed me.
“Alpha!
Alpha, you’re hit!”
I barely heard Nathan’s voice.
I was somewhere else, somewhere far away and I was a child again.
I was ten years old, watching my mother’s eyes turn red, watching her descend into madness.
I was running through the wilderness, alone, abandoned, cast out from my own bloodline.
It all came together at that moment.
Is this it?
Is this where the truth had been hiding and I was too blind to see it?
Unbidden, Aysel’s face flashed in my mind and I thought that if I died here, if this was the end, I’d never get to see her again.
“Dammit,” I breathed.
And then the darkness took me.
***
Aysel
“Stop it.
Stop laughing.
You’re not even listening to me.”
I jabbed my fork in Skylar’s direction, but she was too busy cackling to notice.
Her wine glass wobbled dangerously in her hand, and I had to resist the urge to grab it before she spilled red wine all over her white blouse.
“I’m listening,” she managed, wiping tears from her eyes.
“I’m absolutely listening.
You’re complaining that the hottest man you’ve ever seen, and yes, I’ve seen the photos, I’m not blind, left you a perfectly cooked breakfast and a love note, and you’re mad about it.”
“It wasn’t a love note.
It was a…a business note.
A professional note.”
“The man wrote ‘stay in touch’ and signed it with a single letter.
That’s romantic as hell and you know it.”
I stabbed my pasta aggressively.
“It’s not romantic.
It’s lazy.
He could have at least called.”
“From where, exactly?
You said he had to leave for work.”
“Work,” I repeated flatly.
“I don’t even know what he does.
For all I know, ‘work’ could mean he’s an international jewel thief or something.”
Skylar raised an eyebrow.
“And that would be a problem?”
“YES.
Obviously that would be a problem.”
“Would it, though?” She leaned forward, her eyes glittering with mischief.
“Imagine it.
A hot, very tall, dark-eyed man who sweeps in, steals your heart, and then disappears on a mission.”
I groaned, dropping my head into my hands.
“Can we please talk about something else?”
“I’m just saying, if I had a man built like that in my bed, I wouldn’t have let him leave.
I’d have handcuffed myself to him.”
I lifted my head to glare at her, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Skylar was grinning at me with that too-knowing expression she’d perfected over years of friendship, and I knew I was fighting a losing battle.
“I liked him,” I admitted quietly.
“That’s the problem.
I’ve known him for like, a day, and I liked him.”
Skylar’s grin softened into something gentler.
“I know, babe.
It’s written all over your face.”
“It’s not.
My face is completely neutral.”
“Your face has never been neutral a day in your life.
You’re an open book.
A very chaotic, slightly arson-prone open book.”
I laughed despite myself, and some of the tension in my chest eased.
This was what I needed.
Skylar and the familiar rhythm of our friendship, the teasing and the wine and the shared understanding that we’d get through anything together.
“I can’t stop thinking about him.” I said suddenly, “I feel like…”
My words died in my throat as I suddenly felt a sharp, unbearable tightness in my chest, like someone had reached inside my heart and was squeezing it.
The sensation was so sudden, so overwhelming, that I dropped my fork with a clatter.
“Aysel?” Skylar’s voice sounded distant and concerned.
“Aysel, what’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer because I was finding it difficult to breathe.
The pain in my chest radiated outward, spreading through my limbs, making my vision swim.
I clutched at the table tightly.
Something had happened to…
“Magnus…”