Chapter 14
CADE
I’ve seen blood spilled and new life born, I’ve seen alphas fall and others rise, and everything in between.
None of it compares to this.
Rowan’s wolf rises under the moon, her fur—a creamy white with darker silver coming through—ripples like liquid starlight across her body.
Power radiates from her in waves, wrapping around me until I can barely breathe, and still, I’m on one knee, practically bowing before her. Not out of weakness. Out of awe.
This is no cursed prophecy. No abomination born of Hollowborn blood and wolf. She is something new, something beyond the laws the Council clings to. She is fire and fury and salvation wrapped in one impossible creature.
Her eyes find mine. At first, I think they’re golden, but with the slightest tilt of her head, I see silver, then blue. Could she possibly carry the colors of all six packs? The thought slips away before I can think too hard about what that might mean.
For this moment, it’s not about what may or may not come.
It’s just me and Rowan.
Seeing her when I crashed through the window knocked me back, but now? I swear the bond between us roars alive unlike anything I’ve experienced, a tether pulled so tight it hurts to breathe. My wolf presses against my skin, howling his reverence, begging me to shift and stand beside her.
Mate, he growls, desperate and unyielding. Ours. Finally.
My chest aches with this connection, and for the first time in years, I don’t fight what the fates have given me. I let the bond sing through me, let the reverence shake me to my bones. Because Rowan isn’t just a Hollowborn or wolf or Ashmark.
She is Alpha.
And gods help anyone who tries to take her from me.