Kian POV
The elevator ride to my penthouse office was a blur of red-hot fury. I slammed the mahogany door, the sound cracking through the sterile space. On my desk lay the brown envelope Adella had slapped against my chest—those damn Rejection papers. A monument to my public shaming.
My inner wolf clawed at my skull, whimpering for the mate who’d walked out with another Alpha. To silence the traitorous beast, I forced myself to remember the truth about Adella Gray.
Six years ago. My grandfather, Alpha Alvah, bleeding out in a Rogue ambush near the border. When I arrived, a scentless girl crouched beside him. Adella. A wolfless Omega. Grandfather claimed she’d outwitted trained killers to save him. A ludicrous fairy tale. I knew it was staged. She was a snake using Rogues as pawns to infiltrate Blackwood.
I’d confronted Grandfather in his study. "I love Ember! I won’t bind myself to a stray!" But Alvah, desperate for some unnamed alliance he refused to detail, locked me with his Alpha Command’s crushing weight. My knees hit the floor. My freedom died that day—sacrificed to a scheming Omega’s ambition.
The memories grew darker. Three weeks ago. Ember trembling in my arms after fleeing Rogues in the wild. She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a jagged silver burn scar. "Adella discovered my Rogue blood," she wept. "She threatened to expose me unless I vanished."
That wolfless witch had exiled the woman I loved.
My phone buzzed. Security: Trail lost, Alpha.
Goddamn incompetents. It reminded me of last month—discovering Adella had hired a human PI to track me. An Omega surveilling her Alpha? The audacity still curdled my blood.
Suddenly, Ember’s scream tore through our mind-link: “Kian! My apartment!”
Her terror spiked like ice in my veins. “Show me!”
Images flooded my mind: slashed furniture, shattered glass, crimson paint like blood on the walls.
“Guards caught two Rogues fleeing,” she sobbed. “They took a dark web bounty... Techs are tracing it now—”
Before she finished, another mind-link pulsed—Liam’s voice tight: “Alpha, the IP traces to Silvermoon servers.”
Silvermoon. The name was a silver dagger through my ribs.
Adella. That "harmless" wife of mine wasn’t just a liar. She’d weaponized her newfound Pack to send assassins after Ember.
My wolf’s whimpers transformed into a roar. Our territory violated. Our chosen female threatened.
I stared at the torn Rejection papers scattered like ash on my rug. She thought she could burn my world and walk away?
I’d drag her back to Blackwood Manor.
And make her bleed for every sin.
