Gold filled my sight. Claws tore through my fingertips in a jagged, painful extension that should have been effortless. Instead, it felt like dragging myself through barbed wire. I jerked against the cuffs on instinct, but they didn’t budge.
The silver in my system weighed down my strength, turning what should have been easy into the impossible. My wolf raged uselessly beneath my skin. I bared my teeth at him anyway.
Marion recoiled with a sharp inhale, and for a split second, genuine fear flashed across his face.
“Whoa,” he breathed. Then he laughed. “Well. I think that proves enough.”
He went back to the board and pinned the article into place again. Distantly, I noticed that when he returned to his chair, he dragged it several feet farther away from me than before.
He sat down and pulled the gun from his waistband. He rested it casually against his thigh, but the barrel angled unmistakably in my direction.
“So,” he continued conversationally, “you and ‘John’—if that’s even his real name—must be enforcers or something, right?”
My pulse spiked.Chris.
He smiled, watching for a reaction.
“Has to be. I mean, John’s a pretty big guy. And you’re… well.” His gaze dropped to my hands, to the claws I kept extended despite the strain. His smile faltered slightly.
I forced my claws to remain out. It hurt. The silver fought every shift in my body, but I refused to let him see weakness.
“Anyway,” Marion went on, clearing his throat, “I heard that’s what they call the strongest ones in a pack. Enforcers. So it makes sense you two would be sent here.”
Under normal circumstances, provoking a man holding a gun less three feet away would have been a poor tactical decision. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have considered it.
But nothing about this was normal.
The silver was spreading fast. I could feel it in the way my limbs grew heavier with each passing minute, in the way the edges of my vision softened and blurred if I didn’t actively force them into focus.
If I was going to make a move, I would only get one. I wasn’t strong enough yet, so I needed information first.
I forced a rough, humorless chuckle. “For this?” I nodded faintly toward the wall of clippings.
Marion frowned slightly. “What?”
“This is barely a case,” I said, breathing carefully through the pain. “We were sent here to check it out. Heard some shifters were getting nervous. Someone called in a favor. The pack alpha did it as a gesture of goodwill. They sent whoever was available. John and I just joined the pack a month ago. We’re barely even part of it.” I kept my tone as dismissive as I could manage. “This wasn’t high priority. In terms of actual threat levels, it barely registered.”
I let a small beat pass before adding, “The pack wouldn’t waste an enforcer’s time on something like this.”
Marion shot to his feet so fast that his chair tipped backward with a crash. In two strides, he was in front of me, the gun raised and pressed hard against my temple.
“You’re lying. No one would have figured it out,” he snapped. “We covered everything. We threw off the trail. We?—”
He cut himself off.
We.My mind latched onto the word immediately.
“You almost made me screw it up,” Marion continued, breath coming faster now.
Almost. So he hadn’t planned to escalate this yet. Good to know.
While he was focused on his anger, I slowly forced my claws to retract. It took too much effort to extend them.
Marion’s expression shifted abruptly. A strange light entered his eyes.
“No,” he murmured. “No, this is better actually.”
The barrel of the gun stayed pointed at my head as he stepped backward toward the table, never taking his eyes off me. He groped across its surface with his free hand.
