Nadia
The storm doesn’t stop. Snow falls so thick that I can’t see past the shelter’s opening; just endless white and shadow pressing close.
I sit with my back against stone that leeches heat through the dead operative’s coat. Rifle across my lap. Blades on the floor beside me. Eyes on the man just a few feet away.
Allon hasn’t moved since we got here.
He sits against the opposite wall, hands locked in suppression cuffs resting loose in his lap. His breathing stays even. Controlled. The kind of rhythm you learn in combat—shallow enough to conserve energy, deep enough to stay conscious.
The gash above his eyebrow has stopped bleeding, the edges raw and ugly, less healed than they would be if the cuffs weren’t suppressing his dragon. Snow has melted off his hair and refroze in his stubble. He looks like something carved from winter itself—cold and hard as an ice sculpture.
Still.
Too still for someone recently ambushed, restrained, dragged through a forest by an armed stranger who’s planning to kill him.
My finger rests against the rifle’s trigger guard. Not on the trigger—not yet. But close. Ready. Waiting for him to make a move.
He doesn’t.
Dammit.
The cuffs glow faintly—runes etched into metal pulsing with suppressed energy. They’re doing their job. I can’t sense any dragonfire. Can’t feel the heat that should radiate from a dragon this powerful, even at rest.
Just cold stone and colder air and the man who ordered my mate’s death sitting close enough that I could end this in seconds.
So why haven’t you?
The question has been circling my thoughts since I dragged him in here. Relentless. Hungry. Refusing to let me rest.
I know why.
He was unconscious when I pulled him from the wreckage. Defenseless. Killing him like that would have been murder. Not the justice Chance deserves.
Aurora trained me better than that. Wolves don’t slaughter helpless prey. We hunt. We fight. But we don’t butcher.
I won’t become what the Syndicate is. Won’t let grief turn me into something that kills without honor. Without the lines that separate executioner from monster.
But he’s not unconscious now. Hasn’t been since we left the scene of the battle.
My grip tightens on the rifle. My wolf surges closer to the surface, wanting me to do something.
Now.
Not later. Not when the storm clears.
Now.
I just need him on his feet. Need those cuffs off. Need this to be what it should be: justice delivered by someone who earned the right to take his life.
Not slaughter.
Combat.
Fair.
The thought steadies me even as my pulse kicks harder. Even as that unfamiliar sensation floods through my system again—hot and fast, clawing up from my stomach into my chest.
I ignore it. Crush it down beneath half a decade of discipline. It’s adrenaline. Stress. My body’s response to impending violence.
