Then Rafe's power slammed into my ward-work like a battering ram.
I felt it tear through the patterns I'd been building—corruption magic eating through moonlight like acid through silk. My control shattered, and pain exploded through my system as magic I didn't know how to wield turned against me. I was still suspended, still being held by something that wouldn't let me fall, but now I was screaming.
The moon had shown me what to do. But guidance didn't make me strong enough to actually do it.
“Michael!” Gideon's voice cut through the agony. “Let go—you can't hold it—let go before it tears you apart?—”
But I couldn't. Wouldn't. Because letting go meant Nate stayed trapped, meant the ritual would finish whatever Silas had planned, meant my son would die on his knees while I watched from safety.
I poured more power into the failing ward-work. Felt my body protest, felt blood vessels burst behind my eyes, felt magic shred through me like I was paper and it was wildfire. But the ritual stuttered again. Weakened. The carved lines flickered with silver instead of that awful dead glow.
Not enough. Not nearly enough. But something.
Then the forest went silent.
It wasn't sudden noise that marked his arrival. It was the absence of sound.
Birds that had been screaming warnings went quiet mid-cry. Wind that had been howling through trees stopped like someone had closed a door. Even the battle sounds—snarls and howls and the wet crunch of violence—cut off as if the world itself had decided to hold its breath.
The pressure in the air changed. Went from heavy to crushing, from wrong to absolutely, cosmically fucked. And I knew—knew with terrible certainty even before I saw him—that something had arrived that made corrupted wolves and resurrected Alphas look like children playing at darkness.
Silas stepped into the clearing, and reality bent around him like light around a black hole.
He didn't walk. Didn't emerge from the trees or materialize from shadow. One second the space was empty, and the next he occupied it with the kind of presence that said I was always here, you just weren't worthy of noticing until I allowed it.
Power rolled off him in waves that made my teeth ache. Made the moonlight holding me flicker and fade. Made every wolf inthe clearing whimper—not from fear, though there was plenty of that—but from the sheer weight of magic that predated pack bonds and territorial claims and everything their instincts said should be the top of the food chain.
He raised one hand. Just one casual gesture, like he was swatting a fly.
The clearing exploded.
Not with fire or light. With force. Pure kinetic pressure that threw everyone outward like toys discarded by a bored child. Wolves tumbled through the air, bodies hitting dirt and stone with sickening thuds. Daniel's wolf form flew backward into a ward stone hard enough to crack it. Evan hit a tree and didn't get up. Jonah and Sienna scattered like leaves in a storm.
And me—still suspended by moonlight that was rapidly losing its grip—I dropped.
Hit the ground hard enough to feel ribs crack, air rushing from my lungs in a gasp that tasted like blood. Stars burst across my vision, and for a second all I could do was lie there trying to remember how breathing worked.
Through blurred vision I saw Silas properly for the first time.
He looked expensive. That was the most horrifying part.
Not ostentatious—nothing so crude as obvious wealth. But the kind of expensive that whispered old money and older power. His suit was perfectly tailored, charcoal gray that caught moonlight like liquid shadow, cut with precision that spoke of craftsmen who charged by the stitch. His dark hair was cropped short, silver threading through black at the temples in ways that suggested distinguished rather than aged.
He could have stepped from a corporate boardroom or a museum gala. Could have been a CEO, a benefactor, someone who wrote checks that changed lives and never bothered to remember the names attached.
Except for his eyes. They were the color of old blood—deep burgundy that should have been brown but wasn't, that caught light wrong and reflected nothing back. And they held the kind of patience that came from living too long and watching generations die while you remained.
He didn't look at the pack first. Didn't acknowledge the wolves struggling to their feet, didn't spare a glance for the ritual circle or Nate bleeding in its center.
He looked at Gideon.
And the way Gideon froze—like every muscle had locked, like his body remembered something his conscious mind had tried to forget—was answer enough before Silas spoke.
“Hello, son.”
The words fell into the clearing like stones into still water. Rippled outward. Shattered something fundamental about reality because Gideon—steady, reliable Gideon who'd been fighting Silas's dark magic for decades—went gray.
“No,” he said, and his voice cracked. “I'm not—you don't get to?—”
