Chapter 36 Sable
SABLE
Silence settled like smoke—thick, tasting of burnt magic and iron. My father was gone, but the air still held his shape, the memory of his rage etched into stone.
Astrid hung against the wall, the chains half-melted, fused around her wrists. Her skin was gray with exhaustion, yet her magic still glimmered faintly beneath it.
Rhys moved first, bare and bruised, a raw silhouette in the low light of the chamber, and I rushed right behind him.
I pressed my fingers against Astrid’s neck.
Her pulse fluttered once, twice, steady enough.
The faint gold of her life force flickered beneath her skin—fragile, but alive.
Relief burned through me, sharp and humiliating in its intensity.
“She’s alive,” I said quietly. “He drained her energy, not her blood.”
Rhys’s exhale was ragged, half-growl, half-prayer. “Then we get her out.”
The chains cracked under his hands, silver shards skittering across the stone. I caught Astrid before she could fall, her head lolling against my shoulder. She was light as breath, her magic a faint whisper against mine.
We climbed the narrow stairway, Rhys ahead of me, each step echoing through the tunnels.
His body moved like a shadow. He hadn’t bothered with clothes after his shift, and I barely noticed—until the bond brushed against me, hot and alive again.
Proof that he was still here. And that something had drastically changed between us.
Almost there, he sent through the bond.
The smell reached us first. Wolves. Blood. Burned ozone.
We stepped into the assembly hall. The room had been rewritten mid-battle: chairs overturned, tables shoved into barricades, glass glittering across the marble. Blood streaked a trail toward the stage, already drying. The Bellweather crest hung crooked behind it, half-torn.
Eve stood on that stage beside Logan, blue light tracing the air around her fingers. The hum of her power mingled with the low growls of restless wolves.
Several alphas were gone. The absence hit harder than their presence ever had. Emmanuel Vex’s seat was empty, his nameplate cracked in two.
Rhys stopped beside me, eyes scanning the ruin, his shoulders shifting like he was bracing for another fight.
Bart appeared from the chaos, his swagger gone wary. His gaze flicked over Astrid, then up to Rhys. “She looks bad.” His voice carried a rough edge of command. He snapped his fingers, and a young wolf bolted toward the back. “Fetch the healer. Now.”
Rhys took Astrid from my arms and laid her on the nearest intact chair, movements almost reverent. Someone thrust a bundle of clothes into his hands—black pants and an undershirt. He didn’t thank them. Just nodded once, pulling the fabric over sweat-streaked skin.
“What happened?” he asked.
Bart’s mouth twisted. “When Eve returned, the whole damn house tried to eat itself.” He gestured toward the wreckage. “Alpha Vex turned on the others. Eve shut him down before it got worse. He stormed out. Took a few with him.”
Rhys and I stood there, taking it in.
“Welcome back to the surface,” Bart said softly, eyes flicking between us.
“Where a lot of rot is making its way out of the woodwork.” He glanced at the stage where the former prisoners were huddled behind Eve.
Some were still looking shell-shocked and weak, but a few carried new energy in their stance.
Logan spotted us before we reached the stage. He moved through the scene of former chaos like he owned it—steady, unhurried, every inch the alpha. His stride was calm despite the storm.
“Change is coming,” he said as soon as he was close enough. His gaze swept over Rhys, then me, lingering just long enough to acknowledge the raw energy still sizzling between us. “This was only the beginning. The cracks are finally showing.”
He looked around the hall—the overturned tables, the wolves whispering in clusters, the faint shimmer of Eve’s power hanging in the air. His voice lowered. “The ones who stayed are the ones ready to build something better.”
Eve joined us and touched my shoulder. “Someone is waking.” She nodded to the place where Astrid was being treated by the healer Bart had called in.
I rushed to Astrid’s side. “I’m here,” I whispered into her ear, and a slight smile came across her lips.
“Hey, Mama Sabe.”
The healer rubbed a salve onto Astrid’s forehead.
“I’ll take care of her for the next twenty-four hours.
She needs quiet and rest, but when I’m done with her, she’ll be good as new.
” The healer, a middle-aged woman who, judging from the lines on her face, had seen many wounded shifters, tilted her head. “She’s safe with me.”
“Come.” Eve led me back to the group with Logan and Rhys. “When I arrived with the prisoners, Vex had already started stirring up the different packs. Told them the Council had been infiltrated, that Logan was compromised. I walked in on him trying to seize the floor from Alpha Thorne.”
Logan’s mouth curved. “He didn’t get far.”
Eve turned to him, something fierce and fond in her eyes. “Someone needs to keep the peace and civility in a place like this. You made sure of that.”
He reached for her hand and drew her close, kissing her deeply as shifters started tidying up the mess.
When Logan finally broke the kiss, his expression changed—alpha again, but softer around the edges. He turned to me. “It couldn’t have happened without you, Sable. None of this.” Heads turned, most of them given shifter hearing.
I froze, unsure what to do with that kind of attention. Compliments were a currency I didn’t trade in. But he raised his hand—palm open, fingers curled slightly, waiting.
For a heartbeat, I didn’t move. Then, I placed my hand against his, and our fists closed together. His grip was warm.
“You are, and will always be, Orion,” he said.
Something in my chest tightened. The words hit deeper than they should have—Logan claiming me as one of his own.
When we let go, I felt Rhys step closer behind me. His heat pressed against my back, his scent curling in the air. His hand slid around my waist—not possessive, just there.
Bart cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’d say this was a big day.
And now that the Council has been unexpectedly dismissed, we have a free day.
I’m making sure the Orion delegation is put up in the best hotel our pack runs, so you can rest up before we hit the town tonight.
” He raised his hand to high-five Logan, and Logan offered the high-five right back.
“A little rest sounds like a great idea,” Rhys whispered in my ear, but when I turned and looked at him, I knew that we’d be doing anything but rest. He wove his fingers through mine, and I suddenly wondered how we were going to make it to any hotel.
My body was on fire for him, for my mate. My fated mate.
It was time to seal our bond.
The hallway was too quiet—just the sound of my pulse refusing to calm.
Rhys stopped at our door and turned. The movement was slow, as if he wasn’t sure whether to touch me or fall apart trying not to.
His gaze found mine, and whatever words he’d been holding back broke under their own weight. “Sable,” he said, then swallowed.
I didn’t remember leaning in first. Only that one moment I could breathe, and the next, his mouth was on mine.
The kiss wasn’t soft. It was sure. It found the walls I’d built and pulled until they collapsed.
What mattered was his body pressed into mine, warm through the thin barrier of my clothes, the cool wall against my back.
It was a relief not to think about control or danger or bloodlines.
Instead, I thought about the taste of him, the heat between us, the way the bond had become almost a living thing encircling us.
He kissed like he fought—focused, relentless, a rhythm that burned and steadied at once. My hands found his shoulders, tracing the lines of strength there, memorizing what survival felt like.
When he finally pulled back, both of us were breathing like we’d outrun something. His forehead rested against mine.
“Rhys,” I breathed heavily against him, “get the door open.”
“Door,” he whispered, voice rough. “I should—yeah—door.”
He fumbled for the keycard, still close enough that each movement brushed against me. His fingers missed the slot twice.
“Rhys,” I murmured, my lips still tingling. “Open this fucking door.”
“Trying,” he said through clenched teeth, though his mouth was already finding mine again. “I just can’t bear to stop feeling you against me.”
The lock finally whirred. The door swung open, and momentum carried us through. We stumbled, caught between laughter and hunger, his hands bracing us against the nearest wall before it could close again.
The hotel room was all glass and city lights, Dallas sprawling beneath us like a carpet of stars someone had spilled across the ground.
Floor-to-ceiling windows showed the skyline in sharp relief—buildings lit up against the night, cars moving far below in rivers of red and white.
The kind of view that cost more per night than most people made in a month.
I caught the faint scent of rain through the glass, the city beyond lit up and looking unreal. Rhys’s eyes caught the light—full with a feral shimmer that made my pulse trip.
“This okay?” he asked, voice low enough to almost disappear between heartbeats.
I answered by pulling him back to me. The kiss deepened—a kiss that learned rather than claimed.
His thumb brushed the edge of my jaw, tracing a path that felt both promise and apology.
For a moment the bond flared, silver and gold twining so tightly I could feel his heart beating inside my own ribs.
When we broke apart, we were still close enough to share breath. I almost told him what it felt like, how the world had gone weightless, but the words would’ve broken it.
Instead, I watched his lips. He smiled, the corner of his mouth curving with a hunger that set me on fire.
The door drifted shut behind us, cutting off the corridor light.
“Finally,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for this for longer than I knew.”
He scooped me into his arms and carried me to the massive king-size bed. Then he laid me down with such delicate precision that I started to believe I was a princess.
Me—the head enforcer of Crux—turning to putty in the arms of my mate. I let out a long exhale and knew without any shred of doubt that this was exactly where I was supposed to be.
With him.