My wolf slams against her cage, howling. Reaching for the freedom she’s never been granted. She calls out for her people, her makeshift pack, and against all reason, for the man who should be our mate. The man who left only hours ago and is probably safe in his own pack’s territory by now.
Rennick,I cry out soundlessly without thought, as if he could hear me from his home across the state’s line.Please. Help me.
My vision blurs again as I wipe at my eyes with trembling hands, trying to will myself back into control.
That’s when I hear it.
A baby’s cry.
All the oxygen leaves the room.
I whip around toward the sound, nearly toppling over before rising into a tense crouch. It’s Ivey. I know that cry like I know my own breath. But as I start to lurch forward, a new sound halts me. Footsteps. Confident and purposeful. They echo from the far side of the room, from the darkened doorway of one of the unclaimed Nightingale rooms.
I freeze before Lowri’s body, heart pounding too fast as a figure appears from the shadows.
She emerges slowly, like she’s savoring the reveal. Tall and unnaturally pale, her impossibly straight black hair drapes loosely over her shoulders like a curtain. Her face is all hard lines, no softness, not a single hint of kindness. Her lips are bloodless and her eyes...her eyes arewrong. Too pale. Too empty.Inhuman. I don’t recognize her, but the power rolling off her tells me everything I need to know.
Witch.
Not just any witch. A strong one. The kind whose aura thrums with so much power the only person I’ve ever felt outmatch it is my own mother. And now it’s walking toward me, wearing the face of a stranger and cradling the innocent life of one of the people I care about most in this world.
Ivey.
The baby squirms on the woman’s narrow hip, her chubby cheeks flushed and blue eyes wide with fear. The moment she spots me kneeling there, they well with tears, her little body arching away from the stranger’s hold.Ivey knows this isn’t right. That this presence is wrong, that something is missing.
That her mom isn’t here.
I can’t think about where Seren is. Can’t let myself go there, not when I need to focus on the very clear threat before me.
The woman steps into the room like she owns it, like the crimson ornamenting her pale hands and the baby on her hip are both trophies. Her cold eyes lock with mine as a sinister, taunting, smile spreads across her bloodless lips.
“Oh, please don’t stop on our account, dear,” she coos, her voice dipped in honey and malice. “I always find satisfaction in observing such dramatic displays of emotions…” She watches me for a stretched, quiet beat, her long slender fingers tapping rhythmically on Ivey’s back. “So much pain…” she murmurs, almost wistful. Then, like a switch flipping her expression fractures, her eyes brim with tears. Her too pale lips tremble. A strangled, hoarse sob rips from her chest. It’s the sound of a woman unraveling. Her shoulders quake, the air she sucks into her lungs catching. And for one horrifying second, she’s me. The witch wears my grief like a second skin.
Everything within me goes cold at the display.
She exhales, a slow casual breath, and just like that all that grief vanishes like it never existed.She blinks once. Twice.Straightens her spine and smiles like the predator she is. “How did I do? Too much? I can never tell with these kinds of things.”
I stare at the woman, suspended in the gray no-man’s-land that exists between bewilderment and terror, unable to find the ability to comprehend her question, let alone answer it. I think there’s still a part of me that is desperately holding on to the threadbare possibility that this isn’t all happening. That I’m stuck in some kind of nightmare.
It’s Ivey’s fussy whimper that once again grounds me in the horrifying reality surrounding me.
The dark witch clucks her tongue disapprovingly at the five-month-old, offering her an unimpressed look. “Irksome creature,” she mutters as her eyes cut back to me and light up with an upsetting gleam. Like a panther setting its sights on its next meal. “I suppose we can say the same about you, Noa. My sisters and I wouldn’t have been sent here if you weren’t a pesky little thorn in the side. Now, would we?”
Her sisters?
My head shakes, jaw stiff. “I’ve done nothing to you.”
She smirks. “I never said you were a nuisance tome. Credit where it’s due, your mother’s bleeding-heart crusade and this pitifulsanctuaryhave made things mildly inconvenient for us, but we’ve adapted. Thalassa rescued a few strays, her allies razed a handful of our sites, and yet, our operation stands. Pressure only sharpens a blade, after all. But no, you’re notmygnat. Someone far less tolerant than me seems to have grown tired of your buzzing and that is why we have been sent here.” She hums, finding pure satisfaction in this hellscape. “We’re simply…pest control.”
The Nightingale program my mother built, the one I’ve fought to keep breathing, was never meant as a way to make friends with the ones who’d see it burned to ash. The sanctuary carved beneath this old manor was created to get omegasout.Out of cages. Out of forced bonds and oppressive packs. Out of the hands of the vile people who believe softness is something that can be owned. I’ve never been naïve enough to think this mission came without consequences. I’ve seen the fury in an alpha’s eyes when they had shown up at our borders having tracked what they thought belonged to them here. I’ve seen what an omega’s desperation looks like up close. Ripped skin, broken nails, bodies flung through windows just to get away. Some of them didn’t care if they lived, as long as they gotout. I’ve cleaned the blood off more trembling bodies than I care to count, I’ve promised safety to more lost souls than I ever should have had to.
I know what we do here threatens the wrong kind of people—creates enemies—but I never thought one of them would launch an attack on me and my people like this.
Up until eight months ago, I wasn’t even the one carrying this place. That was my mother. And after what I’ve learned about her recently, I’m not stupid enough to believe I ever knew the whole of her. She kept secrets like they were sacred and was capable of things I didn’t think possible. For all I know, someone she crossed in her shaded past finally decided they’d had enough.
But that’s not what the witch said.
This isn’t about the program. Or my mother’s dealings. The witch made that clear. This was aboutme.Something I did, something I touched, was enough to leave blood and a body at my feet.
