My breath catches.

The footsteps pause again. Not the quick shuffle of a busy clerk who realized they forgot me down here. These are slower. Heavier. Deliberately loud, almost.

I slip my phone into my blazer pocket and tuck the file carefully back in the drawer. I don't have time to close everything neatly. My hands are shaking, fingers trembling with the weight of what I've just found—and the cold certainty that I'm not alone down here.

The lights flicker again and go out completely, plunging the basement into a soft, grainy gray. There's a tiny window near the staircase that keeps it from being oppressively dark.

I don't think. I move.

I duck behind one of the taller filing cabinets in the far corner of the room, crouching low. My breath sounds unbearably loud. I keep still. Listening.

Whoever's come down isn't trying to announce themselves. No cheerful greeting. No annoyed reminder that the office is closing. Just footsteps and silence.

For a paranoid moment, I wonder if it's Crestline. I know Beau assumed that it was the Lunar Pack stalking me, threatening me, but I'm not so sure. It's the middle of the day in Jackson, I doubt a bunch of werewolves would come to murder me in broad daylight. On a trail, sure, but why risk discovery in such a human-location? With the full moon tonight, there's no way their wolves would let them come here easily.

But then dread curdles my stomach. What if something happened to Beau? It's not him walling off the bond, it's not him pulling away, but the reason I can't feel him on the other side of the weak tether is because he's been injured, or...

The footsteps draw closer. I can hear the soft brush of fabric against paper, the faint scuff of a boot on linoleum. I press myself higher against the cabinet, praying whoever this is hasn't noticed the fresh finger print smudges against the dusty drawer I just opened.

My wolf is alert now. Not frighted, but on edge. Watchful.

Paper shifts. The boots pause. A long silence stretches, taut as a wire. I don't dare breathe.

And then—

"Rhea?"

It's a woman's voice. Familiar. Clipped.

Nora.

I nearly sag with relief, but don't move.

She says my name again, louder this time. Not sharp. Not angry. Almost casual.

My pulse doesn't really slow. My brain is still trying to make sense of it.

Nora shouldn't be here. She's supposed to be with the pack. The pack doesn't visit Jackson. It's the full moon tonight. It doesn't make sense.

So what the hell is she doing here?

I rise slowly, keeping the cabinet between us. "Nora?"

She turns toward my voice, stepping into a shaft of faint light bleeding through the room. Her smile is small. Tight. As if her wandering off the street and into the county records' basement is completely normal.

Something in her voice makes my stomach knot all over again.

My back is pressed to the wall. "What are you doing here?"

Nora tilts her head, her dark eyes flicking toward the drawer I'd just been searching. "Looking for you, of course."

I stay quiet. Let her fill the silence.

"You texted Beau," she says mildly. "Said you found something? He passed it along. He's worried about you."

I don't believe her. Would Beau really have sent her after me? Lila had said the betas sometimes went into town, but I'd never pictured Nora being among them, what with her clear dislike for anything human. But the implication that Beau is fine, unharmed, sends a wave of relief so powerfully through me that it's hard to think straight.

"Yeah," I say slowly. And then I lie. "I just sent the photos."

She takes a step closer, her boots nearly silent on the linoleum floor. "You shouldn't be alone, Rhea. Beau would hate it if something happened to you."

My fingers tighten. The way she's acting like I never left, like Beau has sent the usual beta babysitter after me... It makes me wonder if Beau didn't tell the pack the full truth about why I left, Or if he told them anything at all. But the longer I study Nora's expression, the more it unsettles me.

Something's off.

Her skin's too pale and her scent is... wrong. Dulled. No edge of wolf. Only a trace of cloves.

I force my voice calm. "You can't be here, Nora."

She raises a brow. "Why not?"

"It's the full moon tonight, isn't it?" I ask, slow and deliberate. "You'll shift. Expose the pack."

Nora smiles—calm, small, like I've just caught up to a lesson she's been teaching me all along.

"I took wolfsbane," she says. I realize that her dark eyes are usually pale. "Enough to suppress the urge. At least until the moon is out. I wanted to do this right."

I pause. "Do what right?"

"I was telling the truth, Rhea. I don't hate you. I don't think it's your fault, being what you are, but I can't let you hurt my pack."

My wolf bristles. My heart jumps into my throat. "Nora, I'm trying to help. I can beat Crestline with—"

"This isn't about Crestline."

"But—" I struggle to find the words. "Beau—"

"Beau," she cuts me off with a slight edge. "Will come to thank me. I have always supported my alpha, even when others doubted him. Even when I didn't agree with him."

I go perfectly still. Listening. Searching. Trying to calculate if I can push past her or skirt around a shelf or shimmy through the tiny window. My wolf watches too, coiled like a spring.

"I watched him force us into the human world. Kept us in town, told us to be patient, to work within the human system." She turns her head and meets my eyes, her expression unreadable in the half-light. "But I've watched the pack grow quieter. Softer. Less wild. Our wolves our smaller. Our young ones can't shift until their bones ache. We medicate our instincts. We suppress our wolves."

"And then you show up," she says. "Raised by humans. Telling Owen to delve deeper into human technologies. Telling Lila to spend more time with humans—"

"I—"

"No, Rhea. You are the danger. Beau was the strongest of all of us. The strongest wolf I've ever known." She laughs weakly, pained. "And you made him hesitate."

"I'll leave," I promise. Because I will. I'll leave if that's what's best for Beau and the pack. "I won't come back to Wyoming. But at least take what I found."

Nora's expression doesn't soften. She scoffs. "We don't need to fight this your way—the human way. If Crestline wants to take what's ours, we will defend our land with fang and claw."

"But the trust—"

"I don't care about the trust," she snaps, and for the first time, her composure frays. Yellow flashes behind the strange pallor of her eyes. "I don't care what was signed or filed. That land belongs to our kind. It always has. We don't need paper to prove it."

I shake my head slowly, inching towards the staircase. The light buzz overhead weakly, but they don't flicker back on. The shelves are too narrow. There's no where to run without turning my back. "If you kill me, the pack—Beau—"

"No one will know," she says, quiet again. Almost serene. "Beau will assume you rejected the bond." She pauses to pull a phone from her pocket. "He's—occupied. I took his phone. No one knows you're here."

A flash of acid creeps up my throat. I reach for my wolf, asking her to take my skin. If Nora can't shift with the wolfsbane in her system, maybe I can. In our current forms, she's stronger than I am. She's been training and fighting her entire life, whereas I play-sparred with Beau a few days ago. I can't beat her as I am. Not if she's really trying to kill me.

"You don't need to do this, Nora," I say, outwardly trying to project a calm I don't feel. Internally, I'm begging my wolf to take my skin. Though the smell of mildew and paper, the confined basement, makes her balk, my wolf tries. She pushes against my ribs, my skin. I try to make myself small, to let her have the space. For a moment, I smell ozone. I feel my bones shift.

Nora raises an eyebrow. "Go on, Rhea. Prove me wrong."

My skin tightens. My muscles scream with impossible force, like they're pushing and pulling at the same time, tearing with the impossible demand I'm making of them. My wolf is growling in my chest, throwing herself against my ribs.

But she doesn't rip through me.

I fall to my knees, panting. Sweating.

Nora squats to my eye level.

She doesn't reach for me, not at first. Doesn't gloat. She watches with her strange, pale eyes as I shake beneath the weight of my own failure, my breath ragged.

"You see?" Nora murmurs. She pets my arm, consolingly. Her voice is pitying. "This is what I mean."

I try to lift my head, but it feels heavy. My body is flooded with panic that has no outlet, shame that freezes me in place. Because underneath it all, a slow surge of the horrible truth turns my blood to ice.

"You're just not one of us." There's no cruelty, just a soft finality that almost feels worse. "You're too human, Rhea. You're too dangerous."

"The bond," I rasp. "It'll hurt Beau—"

Nora shakes her head. "I don't think so," she says. "It's only half formed and he's halfway to rejecting you."

My wolf whines as I instinctively pull on the frayed tether, begging to feel him. There's nothing on the other side. The emptiness, the void... it hurts more than anything I could have imagined.

Nora's right, I can't reach him.

"Beau's strong," she continues tenderly, as if consoling me. "He'll survive this. This is better for everyone. When the moon rises tonight, it'll all be over."

"Over?" My voice is hoarse. And then I laugh, because I almost can't believe that I'm about to be murdered in the basement of a government building. "You're really going to kill me."

She stands. "No. I'm not going to kill you. I can't risk having any of this fall on the pack."

A chill crawls up my spine as my wolf begins to snarl. Shadows appear in the darkness, a shadow with heavy, measured steps. The scent hits me first. Not the mildew and paper rot of the basement. Not Nora's wolfsbane muted spicy scent. Something colder. Wilder.

Snow. Cedar.

It stops cold.

I've smelled the ghost of it before.

On the clothes Nora let me borrow.

On the jacket of the pale-eyed attacker.

The man from the coffee shop.

The black wolf.

My mouth goes dry. My wolf bares her teeth.

He steps from the shadows, into the weak light. He's larger than I remember, muscles bursting at the sleeves of a black shirt. His dark, shaggy hair hides the strange pallor of his eyes.

"You brought him here," I breathe, horrified.

Nora doesn't answer. She doesn't have to.

"I thought it was your scent," I whisper. "But it's his. You've been meeting him." My voice cracks on the last word.

She turns slowly to face the darkness, her expression unreadable. "Someone had to do what's necessary."

"But—how could you do that to Lila? To the pack? Don't you—"

Nora snarls, the air around her rippling with the force her wolf attempting to tear through her skin. "I'm doing this for the pack. Lila will be safe. The pack will be safe." She pauses to breathe. "Marcus was wrong. Kade isn't hunting with a pack. He doesn't need one for hunting his prey."

My knees dig into the cold tile as the truth settles, jagged and hard. Marcus was wrong. Kade isn't hunting with a pack. He doesn't need one... for hunting me. My mouth tastes like copper.

"The other pack?" I ask weakly.

Nora shrugs. "Lila's old pack, it turns out. We'll deal with them. It's not your concern."

And then she nods to the black wolf. To Kade.

He crosses the space between us like it's already his. Like I'm already his. Every step is controlled, measured. His gaze—pale amber—never strays from me, not even when Nora retreats and disappears into the darkness.

I try to stand, to scramble back, but my limbs feel thick and clumsy with failure. My wolf is frantic, pacing inside my skin, but still can't break free. I am alone. Human. Breakable.

Kade crouches beside me.

He doesn't smile. Doesn't gloat. He studies me like I'm a strange artifact he hopes will answer a secret question.

"You're smaller than I remember," he says at last. His voice is quiet. Deep. It lacks the rough, gravely tone it had a month ago, but the hint of it is there. The edge of his wolf, lurking near the surface. "But they always are."

He reaches out, gently almost, to pull my blouse to the side. To trace the edges of the healing bond mark near my shoulder. Kade lets out a huff of surprise.

I want to scream, to claw at him, to fight, but I'm frozen. There's a strange tingling burn working its way across my skin, from where Nora touched my arm. My brain flips between a thousand different things I could say or do or try to save myself and surrendering my skin to my wolf. Anything. And, still, I can do nothing.

"You don't have to do this," I whisper. "I'll disappear."

Kade pulls me to my feet, wrapping his fingers around my bicep like a shackle. Once I'm steady, a flood of adrenaline courses through me. I twist, try to claw at his arm, but he his grip only tightens. A deep growl rumbles from his chest, pressing on me with painful weight until I whimper. Until I stop struggling.

"Don't fight," he rasps. His voice is low. Final. Threaded with an alpha command that makes me want to drop back to the floor, to bear my neck.

The prickling of my skin turns fiery, like it's burning into my blood. The world tilts. My vision swims. I look at my arm to find a layer of a paste smeared there. I hadn't noticed. I hadn't noticed Nora had rubbed something on me.

"Sedative," Nora says from far away. "To keep her quiet until you're clear of town."

Darkness pulls at the edges of my vision, and the last thing I see is Kade's profile. Angular, unfeeling, darkly beautiful in the way of a predator incapable mercy.