Chapter 4
Nadia
I move through shadow and silence, tracking the road from the high ridgeline. The convoy is a distant rumble below, engines grinding through roads carved into the mountain’s flank. Snow mutes my steps. My breath comes steady despite hours of running.
The odd heat from earlier has faded—tucked away beneath focus and fury.
Chance’s killer is on his way to sanctuary.
Not if I finish it here.
The wolf prowls just beneath my skin, patient now that prey is close. Every sense extends outward: wind direction, scent markers, the exact distance between me and the road below. Two hundred yards. Maybe less.
Close enough.
I pause behind an outcrop of granite, muscles tense, watching the convoy navigate another hairpin turn. Headlights sweep pale across snow. Everything precise. Routine.
Then the wind shifts.
It comes from downslope—a chemical sting that hits the back of my throat like acid. Propellant. Explosive residue. Wrong for this terrain, this altitude.
The fur along my arms stands straight.
Trap.
I don’t think. I move.
The ridge drops away steeply beneath my feet. I hit the slope running, snow spraying behind me in white plumes. Tree branches whip past. My lungs burn. The wolf surges forward, lending speed I shouldn’t have in human form.
Light shatters the dusk.
The blast punches through my chest hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. I stumble, catch myself against a tree trunk, ears ringing so loud the world goes silent.
Then sound rushes back: gunfire cracking sharply, screams cut short, the metallic shriek of twisting metal.
I push off and sprint downhill.
The lead vehicle is sideways across the road, flames pouring from the engine block. The transport van—his transport—has been forced into the cliff wall, rear axle crumpled. The third vehicle sits intact but smoking, doors hanging open, bodies sprawled in snow.
My wolf senses sort details faster than conscious thought: Syndicate scent signatures mixing with Aurora’s, dragon flame scorching the air, spilled fuel spreading dark across white ground.
Adrenaline wipes everything else clean.
I burst from the tree line as debris settles.
A Syndicate operative swings his rifle toward the wreckage of the transport van.
I’m faster. My shoulder hits him mid-torso with enough force to crack ribs.
We go down together. Snow sprays. His weapon skitters away.
I don’t reach for it—just drive my knee into his sternum and feel something give. Crush.
He stops moving.
Another operative materializes from the haze, weapon rising. I pivot low, using momentum and ice beneath his boots against him. He goes down hard. Skull meets rock with a sound I don’t need to interpret.
The fight lasts seconds. Efficient. Instinctive. Controlled panic translated into motion.
Secondary explosions bloom orange against gathering darkness as fuel lines catch. Heat presses against my face. The air tastes like burning plastic and copper.
I move toward the transport van.
Smoke hangs thick. The vehicle’s back half is crushed against the cliff wall, metal folded like paper. Glass glitters across snow. One Aurora guard lies dead nearby, half-shifted—scales visible along his throat, eyes frozen open and gold.
Through the jagged hole torn in the transport’s hull, I see movement.
Jericho Allon.
He’s kneeling in the wreckage, hands pressed against an escort’s chest—trying to stem bleeding that’s already pooled black beneath them. His face is turned away, shoulders tight with focus.
Then something detonates.
Close. Too close.
The shockwave hits me sideways. I’m airborne for half a second before the ground rushes up. Impact drives the breath from my lungs. Vision blacks at the edges, sound compressing to a single high whine.
I blink. Force my eyes to focus.
Silence collapses inward—that unnatural vacuum that follows violence. The ringing in my ears fades slowly, replaced by the soft tick of snow hitting hot metal. Somewhere distant, fire crackles. Wind moans through shattered glass.
I push upright, legs shaking.
The escort Allon was trying to save is gone—just blood and torn fabric marking where he’d been. The blast must have—
Movement in the wreckage.
Jericho Allon half-crawls through the door frame and collapses into the snow. Blood trails from his temple, already freezing into dark ice against his skin. His breathing comes shallow, uneven.
I shift without deciding to.
Bone and muscle snap back into human alignment. Smoke stings my throat. My fingers slip on bark as I steady myself, bare feet numb against frozen ground.
Thoughts come mechanically, stripped of emotion: Assess. Eliminate. End it.
I crouch beside him.
His face is turned toward me—unconscious or close to it. Dark hair matted with blood and snow. A cut above his eyebrow still weeping red.
The heat slams back into me.
Wrong. All wrong. My skin flushes hot despite the cold, and beneath my ribs, something twists hard enough to steal my breath. The wolf stirs—not aggressive. Something else. Something I don’t understand and don’t want.
I shove it down.
I force my hand forward, fingers finding his wrist. The pulse beats strong and steady beneath my touch, and the heat flares brighter. Spreads up my arm like fever.
I jerk back.
What the hell?
Around us, fire reflects off blackened snow. Orange light dances across Syndicate insignia visible on a nearby corpse—the twin serpents coiled around a sword. The same symbol that decorated the reports I’d read about my mate’s death.
Acceptable losses.
The phrase echoes in my skull. That’s what they’d called it. What they’d written in clean type across official documents while I held Chance’s ashes and tried to remember how to breathe.
I make myself look at him again.
At the man who killed my mate.
Commander Jericho Allon.
His face shouldn’t look like this.
I expected something cold. Cruel. The kind of features that match atrocity—sharp angles and dead eyes, maybe. Evidence of what he is written in bone structure.
Instead: brutal beauty.
Strong jaw dusted with dark stubble frosted white with snow. High cheekbones that catch firelight, casting shadows beneath. His mouth is relaxed in unconsciousness, lips parted slightly around shallow breaths that fog the air between us.
Hard. Uncompromising. A face built for war.
But stripped of consciousness, something else bleeds through.
The tension he carries—that coiled readiness I glimpsed in the transport—has dissolved. His brow is smooth now, no longer furrowed with concentration. Blood tracks down his temple in a slow line, almost delicate against tanned skin.
Vulnerable.
The word tastes wrong in my mouth, but I can’t deny it. Unconscious, bleeding into snow, he looks… breakable. Human in a way that makes my chest constrict.
I hate it.
Hate that I notice the length of his lashes, the faint scar tracing his left eyebrow, the way his breathing stutters slightly before evening out.
Hate how my fingers itch to brush the snow from his face.
I could end this now. No challenge. No resistance. Just a blade across the throat and years of grief paid in blood.
My hand moves toward the belt of the fallen Syndicate operative. Finds the knife strapped there. One slash. That’s all it would take.
I pull the blade free. Test its weight.
Do it. End this.
My fingers tighten around the hilt. He doesn’t even know I’m here, wouldn’t feel it coming. Quick. Clean. Justice.
But the heat pulses beneath my skin again, and my wolf pushes forward. Not hunting.
Guarding.
The wrongness of it makes bile rise in my throat.
No.
I can’t. I don’t know why, but I can’t.
I drop the knife. My hand shakes as I reach for the suppression cuffs on the operative’s belt instead. Standard Syndicate issue, designed to dampen a shifter’s magic and physical strength.
Now I snap them around his wrists.
The rune-etched metal flashes once, bright enough to leave afterimages. His body jerks with faint reflex, dragonfire dimming to nothing. The air around him cools immediately.
“You’ll wake up mortal enough,” I mutter. The words come out rough.
I straighten and make a slow circuit through the wreckage.
All Aurora guards dead. The Syndicate operatives I didn’t kill are gone—fled or incinerated, hard to tell which. Snow already crusts over blood trails, a cold erasure that will hide this within hours.
I stop beside the lead vehicle.
The driver is still strapped in, neck bent at an angle that tells me everything. Young. Maybe twenty-three. Aurora insignia on his jacket collar catching firelight.
Poor kid.
I realize with sudden clarity: the Syndicate attack wasn’t meant to capture. It was meant to destroy. No witnesses. No intelligence leaked. Just eliminate the problem and let Aurora wonder what happened to their precious defector.
I turn back toward my prisoner.
He hasn’t moved. Blood still seeps from the gash at his temple. His breathing stays shallow but regular, chest rising and falling beneath torn jacket fabric.
I kneel beside him again. Check his pulse one more time—telling myself it’s protocol, not compulsion. Still strong.
Heat flares the moment my skin touches his.
I pull away fast, wiping my hand against my thigh like I can scrub the sensation off.
Snow begins to fall heavier, fat flakes that stick to his eyelashes, his hair, the hollow of his throat.
A storm is coming. The kind that traps you wherever you are when it hits.
I look toward the horizon where clouds mass dark and threatening, swallowing the last of the twilight.
Then back down at the man who killed my mate.
Leave him here. Cut his throat. Let him die in the snow.
But I can’t. My hand hovers over his chest—not violence, not comfort. Just… frozen. Caught between what I want to do and what I can’t seem to do, for some reason.
“I’m not done with you yet,” I whisper. It’s not mercy. Not concern. Just the stubborn refusal to let this end before I understand what the hell is happening to me.
I straighten and look around me. The body beside us remains unmoving.
It’s pretty clear he’s not going to need the heavy coat he’s wearing.
Reaching down, I grit my teeth as I unbutton it, flip him over, and tug it off his limp arms and shoulders.
My lip curls at the smell of sweat and cordite, but I slip it on and button it up to my chin.
It reaches mid-calf and doesn’t offer as much warmth as I’d like, but I can’t drag Allon out of here if I shift, and there’s no way I’m going to be naked when he wakes up.
So don’t let him wake up…
I give a shake of my head, dismissing the thought. When I do it, it won’t be like that.
I take another look around.
The burning convoy casts orange light across the snow. Wind picks up, carrying the stench of smoke and death downslope, where someone will eventually find this. But not tonight. Maybe not for days if the storm hits hard enough.
Unless the Syndicate sends more operatives to see what happened to their team. Which seems likely.
Got to get out of here.
Grimacing as I retrieve a rifle and a couple of blades from the fallen operatives, I grab Allon under the arms and drag him toward the tree line.
He’s heavy—dead weight and muscle and dragon bone density add to the fact that the man is huge. My feet slip twice before I find traction, the rifle bumping across my back, where I’ve slung it. Sweat freezes against my skin despite the exertion and the unnatural heat still crawling beneath my ribs.
Behind us, flames climb higher. Ahead, the forest waits dark and silent.
And between us, suppression cuffs gleam dull silver in the firelight—a leash I’ll need when he wakes up.
Unless you fucking kill him now, Nadia!
Guilt claws at my throat.
My wolf prowls beneath my skin, feeling… protective. The wrongness of it makes me want to scream.
I hate him for killing Chance. I hate myself for not finishing this.
But most of all, I hate that I can’t.