Chapter Nine
T he call came before the sun had properly broken over the city.
Dorian was awake the moment the secure line chimed, years of conditioning snapping him out of sleep before thought caught up. Riley stirred beside him, a soft sound in her throat as Rafe shifted onto her other side, instinctively pulling her closer even as Dorian reached for the comm.
“Malik,” he answered quietly.
“Command. Now,” Malik said. No preamble. No reassurance. “And bring your mate.”
Dorian was already sitting up. “On our way.”
Rafe met his eyes in the low light, understanding there without words. Riley pushed up on one elbow, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Something’s happened?”
“Something, yes. What it is we won’t know until we get upstairs,” Dorian said, brushing his knuckles over her cheek. “We’ll eat after.”
Command was already humming when they arrived, screens lit, the team moving with quiet urgency. Victor stood near the head of the table, Ivan at his side, both of them alert in that way that meant something had shifted beneath their feet.
“We need to brief the rest of the teams,” Victor said when they approached. “And our people in New York. Whatever Malik’s found, it’s something all of us need to hear.”
Within minutes, the room filled. Lions. Leopards. Razorbacks. Gorillas. Wolves. Then the main screen split and two new feeds came online.
Kamon.
Rune.
And between them, Klarissa.
Klarissa gave them a sharp, assessing look, then a grin that was all mischief and steel. “You all look like someone kicked your nest,” she said. “This better be worth me missing breakfast.”
Malik stepped forward, fingers steepled in front of him. “We cracked the encrypted layer.”
The room stilled.
“It wasn’t Chimera,” Malik continued. “Not fully. The architecture is built on their framework, but the logic is different. Tighter. More ... personal.” He tapped the screen, bringing up a single file header. “The name that keeps repeating in the deepest layers is Christian Bidois.”
Dorian felt something cold slide through his gut.
“That’s the fucker who tormented Riley, right?” Kamon asked.
“Yeah, and they have him classified in these files as a failed alpha-hybrid,” Malik said.
Silence, heavy and sharp.
Rune frowned. “Define failed.”
Malik exhaled slowly. “He’s an alpha wolf shifter who was part of Chimera’s early hybrid program.
The attempt to create hybrid alphas—made, not born.
But he didn’t stabilize the way they expected.
His physiology adapted. His cognition ..
. diverged. He became stronger than projected, more autonomous. And completely uncontrollable.”
“Which is why they flagged him as a failed attempt,” Jamal added. “Further through the data he is listed as an asset terminated. Or so they thought.”
Dorian folded his arms, mind racing. “So, Chimera lost him ... but he didn’t go away.”
“No,” Malik said. “He went independent.”
Klarissa’s smile had vanished. “Meaning he’s not a tool. He’s a zealot.”
“Worse,” Malik said quietly. “He’s convinced he’s the next step in shifter evolution.”
Images scrolled across the screen—medical schematics, behavioral analyses, fragments of psychological profiling pulled from the encrypted data.
“Christian’s obsession with mate bonds isn’t instinct,” Malik continued. “It’s pathology. Control fixation. He doesn’t experience attachment the way shifters do. He reinterprets the concept of a mate as ownership, entitlement, destiny imposed by power rather than choice.”
He felt his mate tense between him and Rafe and Dorian’s jaw tightened.
“Every bond he references in the data is framed as conquest,” Malik said. “Acquisition. He doesn’t want a partner. He wants a singular point of focus that proves his superiority over every system that ever tried to contain him.”
“Which means Riley was never a woman to him,” Dorian said quietly. “She was a symbol.”
Malik met his gaze. “Yes.”
Rafe shifted beside him, a low, dangerous tension rolling off him that Dorian knew better than to interrupt.
“There’s more,” Malik said. “Genetic desirability markers. Traits flagged for future acquisition.” He enlarged one data set. “And this is where it gets ... interesting.”
A broader classification lit up across the screen.
Lion genetics.
Strength. Pack cohesion. Loyalty under pressure.
For half a second the room simply stared. Then one of the Lions—Jackson—lifted his chin a fraction, a slow, amused smile spreading across his face. “Well,” he drawled. “We always knew we were superior.”
His brothers mirrored the posture, shoulders rolling back, expressions identical. “Maybe we should be running this whole operation,” Wyatt added lightly.
The room crackled.
Victor didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. The dominance in it rolled outward, sharp and absolute. “Enough.”
All three Lions stiffened.
Then, almost in unison, they grimaced—and bared their throats.
“Just kidding,” Jackson said quickly.
A ripple of dark amusement moved through the room, tension bleeding off without ever truly leaving.
“Christian isn’t building an army for Chimera,” Malik said. “He’s building something for himself. And Riley is the focal point.”
Victor’s gaze landed on their mate for a moment, then snapped back to the core group still standing. “This stops being about analysis,” he said flatly. “From here on out, it’s a hunt. We find Christian. We run him to ground. And we end it.”
Something in Dorian settled at that—an old, familiar clarity sliding into place. Beside him, Rafe’s posture shifted almost imperceptibly, the same understanding taking hold.
They shared a brief look. A hunt, then. Fuck, yeah.
Klarissa didn’t leave the screen as her mates stood up and moved away from the camera.
She tilted her head toward Riley. “Can I steal you for a minute?”
Riley glanced at Dorian. He nodded once.
They moved a few steps aside, though Klarissa remained very much on screen, her image filling the corner display. Her tone stayed light, teasing, but there was genuine warmth beneath it. Dorian watched Riley as she spoke—shoulders looser than they’d been in weeks, laughter soft and real.
She’s coming back to herself, he thought.
Klarissa’s eyes sharpened, tracking something just out of frame. “Hold on,” she said, leaning closer to her camera. “Is that a bite mark on your neck, or am I imagining things?”
Dorian winced internally. We really need to stop doing that.
Then, unhelpfully, no. She’s too damn delicious. And it drives us both crazy.
Klarissa arched a brow. “And what is that about?”
Blushing Riley answered with a soft smile. “My mates have a fixation with my neck. And to be perfectly honest, I love that they do.”
The words landed with quiet, unmistakable certainty.
Dorian felt it in his chest—pride, heat, something dangerously close to reverence.
Klarissa’s face broke into pure delight. “Oh, I love that for you, Riley.” She clapped her hands together. “We’re talking soon. Margaritas. Virtual or in person, I don’t care. You’re not doing this next part of life without me in your corner.”
Riley smiled, bright and unguarded. “Deal.”
When she turned back to them, she was glowing.
Rafe’s arm came around her without thinking. Dorian stepped in on her other side, the three of them moving as one.
They didn’t need to speak it.
She had claimed them.
And they were already moving her back to their room—too happy, too hungry, too undone by the way she had said my mates to not claim her right back.
****
T he elevator ride to their floor felt too long and not long enough at the same time.
Riley stood between them, still bright from the way she’d said it—my mates—as if the words were a living thing she had finally let breathe.
Rafe couldn’t stop looking at her. Couldn’t stop feeling the echo of it in his chest. Dorian’s hand rested at the small of her back, steady, protective, but there was nothing guarded about any of them now.
The doors opened. They didn’t speak.
They were halfway across the open living space toward the bedroom before Rafe’s fingers found the hem of her shirt, before Dorian’s mouth brushed the skin he revealed.
Fabric fell away as they moved—soft, urgent, inevitable.
Riley laughed under her breath, the sound trembling with want and something deeper.
Every inch of skin they uncovered earned a kiss, a touch, a quiet promise.
Rafe drew her into him mid-step, the kiss not gentle but grateful, reverent—the kind of claiming that never took, only answered. Dorian pressed in from behind her, mouth warm at her shoulder, hands sure as if he had always known the shape of her.
“You said it,” Rafe murmured against her lips, needing to hear it again. “You claimed us as your mates to Klarissa.”
Riley’s eyes were luminous. “I meant it.”
Dorian’s voice was a low thread of awe. “We will do nothing that will make you regret that.”
They moved together through the room, clothes left in a trail that felt like shedding an old life.
There was no rush and no restraint—only the urgent rightness of three hearts beating in the same space.
Rafe learned her again with every breath, the way she leaned into him when she needed grounding, the way she reached for Dorian when emotion threatened to crest. They were not separate desires. They were one.
When they finally drew her down between them, the world narrowed to warmth and breath and the unspoken truth they were building with every touch.
It was intense without being frantic, tender without ever losing its fire.
Rafe felt Dorian beside him, felt Riley between them, and knew with a certainty that stole the air from his lungs that this— this —was what choosing meant.
“I love you, Riley” he said into her hair, the words leaving him without fear for the first time in his life.
Dorian didn’t hesitate. “Me, too, sweetness. I love you with everything I am.”