The second gunshot was a lot closer than the first.
Adrian moved before my brain really caught up, yanking me down behind an archive cabinet with a grip hard enough to leave bruises I wouldn’t notice until later.
Sal was already gone, headed for the stairwell, weapon out, moving like a man who’d rehearsed this a hundred times.
“Stay down,” Adrian said — low, urgent.
He put himself right between me and the stairs.
“Whatever happens, do not follow me up there.” “Adrian—” “I mean it, Wren.” He caught my eyes in the weird glow of the emergency lights, and just for a second, I saw something break through the bossy tone.
Real fear.
Not for himself, either.
“I can’t watch your back and fight blind.
Just give me that much.” Before I could argue, shouting broke out overhead — voices, furniture smashing, everything you’d expect in a house under siege.
Adrian’s jaw locked.
He pressed something cold and heavy into my palm, and it took me a heartbeat to figure out what it was.
A gun.
“You know how to use this?” he asked.
“No.” My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“I know how to fight without one.
Pack training starts at twelve.” There was something on his face — maybe surprise, maybe respect, but there wasn’t time to figure it out.
He was already moving for the stairs, and even though every instinct screamed at me to stay hidden just like he wanted, I found myself creeping out and following anyway.
I’d let other people decide what I could handle for two years now.
I was done with that.
The main hall was a disaster.
Furniture tossed in all directions, cold air slicing in through a shattered window.
Three of Adrian’s men fired off shots from behind cover.
I couldn’t really see the attackers, just dark shapes moving in the stairwell shadows.
Adrian cursed and dove right in.
I pressed myself flat against the wall, gun awkward in my hand, searching for a chance to move that wouldn’t get me killed instantly.
That’s when I smelled it.
Not gunpowder, not the metallic tang of blood already soaking the floor.
Wolf.
And not the polite, managed scent markers I’d started recognizing around Vitale territory lately.
This was different—wild, aggressive, and underneath the fear and adrenaline, sharp with something painfully familiar.
It clawed straight through the chaos, the way childhood memories sometimes do.
Redthorn.
A shape bolted out of the shadows near the window.
Much too fast to be human, already half-shifted.
Pale gray fur.
My heart stopped for half a second—then I knew him.
Magnus.
The same enforcer who dragged me to the Ferro border.
The same one who’d looked away when he handed me off to die.
Now he stood there, half-wolf, bared teeth, lunging for one of Adrian’s unarmed people who’d stumbled into view.
I didn’t think.
I just moved.
“Magnus!” My voice cracked through the din—raw, angry, and just a little not-human.
Magnus jerked his head toward me, flinching instinctively.
Even in his shifted form, my voice meant something it shouldn’t.
For a split second, our eyes locked across the wreckage.
Gold clashed with amber.
I watched surprise — real shock — flash across Magnus’s face.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he said.
His voice sounded rough and misshapen through his shifting teeth, equal parts disbelief and fear.
“Yeah, well, guess somebody’s plan wasn’t airtight.” He came at me.
I don’t remember every detail after that.
Later, I’d piece it together in flashes: the gun slipping from my grip — completely useless with him so close; the heat rolling up out of my chest, wild and golden and familiar from the garden, but this time, it made me stronger instead of flooring me.
Time stretched out.
I saw every muscle in Magnus’s leap unwind before he even landed.
I moved.
Not shifting, not all the way—whatever lived inside me wasn’t ready for that—but something happened anyway.
My body just got faster, sharper, stronger than training ever made me.
I took Magnus’s charge head-on, and nobody who’d called me wolfless for years would’ve believed it.
We crashed to the floor hard enough to splinter floorboards.
His teeth snapped inches from my throat.
I got my arm under his jaw, fighting him back with strength that felt ancient, like I borrowed it.
“Who sent you?” I gasped out, fighting to keep his jaws away from my neck.
“Elias?
Selene?
Who?” Magnus’s wild-shifted eyes flickered and for a second, he looked honestly confused.
“Nobody sent me,” he spit out.
“Rogue contract.
Brokered job.
I didn’t even know it was you until—” He cut off with a yelp as Adrian’s boot slammed into the side of his head.
Magnus skidded across the mess.
Adrian was on him instantly, gun pressed to his temple, breathing fast, rage boiling off him.
“Rogue contract?” Adrian said, voice sharp and dangerous.
“Who’s behind it?” Magnus glanced from me to Adrian; calculation flickered behind the pain.
“Let me go and I’ll tell you everything.” “Try again.” Adrian’s finger tightened on the trigger, just enough to make it real.
Magnus swallowed.
“Fine.
The contract came from Rocco Moretti.
Open bounty — no questions — for anyone who can take in ‘the Redthorn wolf with the gold eyes.’ Alive, preferably.
Word’s out past the pack lines.
Every merc between here and the coast knows there’s money on her now.” My stomach dropped.
A bounty.
Out in the open.
Already spreading.
“How much?” I asked, quiet.
Magnus looked at me, and for once, I thought I saw some real regret on his face.
“Enough,” he said, “that I won’t be the last one through that window tonight.” Adrian’s hands didn’t move off the gun, but he looked at me across the ruined hall, and I could see he’d come to the same conclusion I had in that exact instant.
This wasn’t just one threat we could outfight or outsmart.
Not just Rocco or a single enforcer.
There was a bounty on me now.
Public, growing.
And now every merc, rogue, and desperate wolf in range had a reason to come for me next.