Kaelen pressed himself against the counter, his chest heaving as he tried to draw breath beneath the suffocating weight of the stranger’s aura. Elara was still on the floor, whimpering softly, her arms wrapped protectively around her gel-covered stomach.

"Who... what are you?" Kaelen forced the wo

The drive back to the Obsidian packhouse was a silent affair, but the air inside Caspian’s SUV hummed with an electric anticipation. Seraphina watched the sprawling territory of the pack roll by her window. The paved roads, the state-of-the-art security fences, the massive, modern packhouse looming

By nightfall, the packhouse felt less like a fortress and more like a sinking ship. The perimeter lights were completely dead, plunged into darkness after the regional power grid operators abruptly severed their contracts. Emergency generators hummed loudly in the basement, providing only dim, flick