Chapter 5
The banquet hall slowly emptied, but the air still carried that uneasy heaviness, like an invisible fog that refused to lift.
I stayed where I was, watching the Silverfang pack members leave one by one.
Lily’s heels clicked against the floor, each sharp note stabbing at my eardrums. Two omegas trailed behind her, heads bowed. Her phone screen kept lighting up, her fingers flying across it. I could picture exactly what she was doing—rewriting tonight’s scene into her own version and feeding it to the pack’s gossip collectors who thrived on scandal.
Vincent lingered at the bar, back rigid, not even touching the drink in his hand. His hollow expression made me wonder for a fleeting moment if he was waiting for someone to hand down his final sentence.
Miranda, however, hadn’t left.
She moved through the thinning crowd with unerring precision, her gaze locked on the hallway by the exit.
Alpha Noah was leaving.
I saw her quicken her pace, catching up to him at the corner and stepping into his path.
“Alpha Noah.”
He stopped, turned, his expression as composed as ever—but with that sharp, cold edge beneath the calm.
“I have something I need to tell you,” Miranda said softly, tucking her hair behind her ear. That small gesture had once melted the guard of many males—but Noah’s face didn’t shift.
“I didn’t know they’d go after Macie this viciously. If I had known—”
“You would’ve stopped them?” Noah cut in, voice low and heavy.
She hesitated, then changed tack. “I wouldn’t have let it get out of hand.”
“But you stood on that stage and said nothing.” His gaze pinned her like a shard of ice.
“I was protecting Vincent.”
A faint, humorless laugh left him. “You’ve spent your life ‘protecting’ others, only to conveniently destroy your sister in the process.”
She drew in a slow breath, trying to shift the ground beneath them. “You’ve changed. The Noah I knew wouldn’t judge me before hearing me out.”
“The Noah you knew,” he said evenly, “hadn’t yet seen you for who you really are.” He stepped past her, adding without looking back, “Don’t try to bind me with the past again.”
I shouldn’t have heard any of that, but the corridor was too narrow. I stayed frozen until they both walked away in opposite directions.
When I finally stepped outside, the street was eerily quiet, save for the “shhh” of wind rustling the flags along the roadside. My car was parked just ahead—but before I reached it, I noticed a long, deep scratch across the door, the raw metal glinting under the streetlight. It looked as if it had been gouged by claws.
Wolf claws.
A prickle of warning raced down my spine.
Then came the sound—fast, heavy footsteps behind me. Before I could react, a harsh, metallic scent flooded my nose—silver dust laced with something chemical and sweet.
An arm, rough with coarse fabric, snaked around my throat from behind. My knees buckled instantly.
I tried to twist free, but each breath seared down my windpipe, the silver burning its way into my lungs.
“Hurry up,” a deep male voice growled by my ear. “The Elder Council’s waiting.”
“Don’t kill her,” another voice replied. “But leave a mark—make sure she knows to keep her mouth shut.”
A third chuckled, the sound oily with malice. He pulled out a thin silver chain, its pendant a sharpened wolf fang. I knew what it was—a humiliation ritual among wolves. Pressing a non-mate’s fang to a luna’s neck, breaking the skin, leaving a false mark.
A luna with a false mark? Her standing would collapse overnight.
“Don’t touch me!” I rasped, struggling against the grip, but my limbs were leaden from the silver dust.
They pinned my shoulders down. The man with the chain leaned in, voice low and mocking. “Don’t move. It’ll be over quick. Your dear husband will be the first to doubt you.”
My heart hammered, nails scraping against the pavement, shrieking in protest. The fang pendant hovered close to my neck—
And then—
An engine roared, sudden and deafening, headlights flooding the narrow street with blinding white.
A vehicle tore in from the alley’s mouth, the light slicing through the shadows.
The van door beside me was wrenched open with brute force from the outside.
“Get your hands off her!”
