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Then, I do the last thing I ever thought I’d do: I open myself up to the mate bond between us. His eyes widen, and I know his wolf feels mine.

Come back to me, I tell him through that thread I’ve felt connecting us since that first night we met. Even if it was dull enough to pretend away.

My words are half-plea, half-demand combined with my wolf’s full dominance. I don’t say anything out loud. And I can’t afford to wait or repeat myself. Not with Ramsey and Davina watching.

Instead, I let go and step back just as the rest of the pack takes off through the gates after Grey and Lexi in a flood of fur and purpose.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nash shiver as the beginning of the shift takes him over.

Defeat washes over me, so strong I can taste it.

I won’t fight Nash. Not even if it means letting Ramsey live. I can’t.

“You two,” Ramsey says.

I turn.

Ramsey is watching us. His eyes move between Nash and me with the careful attention of someone totaling a column of numbers. Davina stands at his flank, arms crossed, her gaze doing its own quiet cataloguing. She looks at me the way you look at a variable you haven’t solved for yet.

I hold still. I let my face reveal nothing.

“Hang back with us,” Ramsey says. “I have something else in mind for the two of you.”

I don’t let myself react to that, mostly because I’m not sure whether this new angle will save me or make it worse. “Of course,” I say. Easy. Agreeable. The performance of a woman who has handed her will to someone else and found it a relief.

Makes me wonder if the spell is simply called patriarchy.

I glance at Nash.

His gaze has drifted to the middle distance. His jaw is slack. His hands are still.

My wolf presses close to the surface and says nothing.

I look away.

Ramsey takes a slow step toward us, then another, with the unhurried confidence of a man who believes he’s already won.

“I wasn’t sure about you,” he says to me. “Even after we took that Null out of your bag, I wasn’t sure if this would work on you.” He glances at Davina. Something passes between them. “See, babe? You figured it out.”

Davina smirks. “I told you I could make them all our little puppets.”

Ramsey grins and turns back to me. “Isn’t she something?”

“Mm,” I say.

I don’t trust myself with more syllables than that.

He stops a few feet away. Close enough that I can feel the weight of his wolf pushing at the edges of the space between us; all that manufactured dominance spilling out around the seams.

“Davina has been busy,” Ramsey says, pleased with himself. “Franco’s wards were impressive. Paranoid. Layered. Designed to keep threats out and useful people in.”

Davina’s mouth curves, but there’s no humor in it. In fact, there’s only haunted darkness in that smile as she says, “They were designed by men who thought magic was something they could own if they locked it in a cage long enough.”

Ramsey glances at her, indulgent. “And no one knows cages quite like you, do they, darling?”

Something passes through Davina’s expression. Not pain exactly. Something older and harder. Something merciless.

I keep my face empty.