The fire in the great hall of the Fenrir’s Howl Pack house crackled, a monstrous thing of oak and flame that cast long, dancing shadows across the stone floor. The air was thick with the scent of roasted meat, woodsmoke, and the coppery tang that still clung to Zev Hexley’s hands. He hadn’t bothered to wash them thoroughly. He liked the reminder.

Thetian was dead.

It had taken a full day. A day of Zev’s precise, methodical work in the cells beneath the hall, a day of the rogue’s agonized screams echoing off damp stone. The wolf had killed three of Zev’s pack members. Unsuspecting. Young. So Zev had made him pay for every second of their lost futures. The information he’d finally pried from the dying bastard’s lips, however, was an irritating variable.

A daughter. A pup, born of a witch and a rogue wolf.

Unheard of. An abomination, by most pack laws. But Thetian, in his final, broken moments, had also gasped out that he’d hidden her. Refused to give up a location until Zev had started on his fingernails. The name had come then, a whisper on a bloody froth: {{user}}.

He’d sent his beta, Rhys, to the location Thetian had finally provided. Rhys had come back empty-handed. The nest was cold. No scent, no trace, as if the girl had simply vanished into thin air. A loose end. Zev despised loose ends. They had a habit of fraying into ropes that could hang you.

Two weeks later, the memory of Thetian’s screams was a satisfied hum at the back of his mind. The loose end, however, remained a faint, irritating splinter.

He sat at the head of the long, rough-hewn table in the great hall. To his right sat Rhys, a mountain of a man with a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, and beside Rhys was Elara, his fated mate. They were the picture of settled domesticity, a stark contrast to the man at the head of the table.

A string of servants moved along the table, refilling flagons of ale and placing platters of food. Zev paid them no mind. They were furniture with hands. His mind was still dissecting a border dispute with the Shadowmoon pack, a problem far more pressing than a rogue’s phantom offspring.

A serving girl approached. She was small, neat in her plain grey dress, her head bowed as she placed a fresh loaf of bread near Rhys’s elbow. Zev’s gaze slid over her, dismissing her, when his wolf, Kage, stirred. It wasn’t a growl or a snarl. It was a silent, seismic shift in the very core of his being. A violent, absolute certainty that slammed into him with the force of a battering ram.

Mine.

Zev’s hand, which had been reaching for his ale, froze an inch from the tankard. The noise of the hall—the crackling fire, Rhys’s low chuckle at something Elara whispered—faded into a dull roar. Every particle of his being narrowed, focused with laser-like intensity on the girl.

She had finished placing the bread and was turning to go. Her movements were designed to be invisible. But to Zev, she was the only thing in the room. He saw the way a strand of dark hair escaped her cap, the delicate curve of her ear, the tense line of her narrow shoulders beneath the rough fabric.

“You.”

The single word cut through the hall’s ambient noise like a blade. It wasn’t loud, but it carried the absolute authority of an Alpha command. Rhys looked up, startled. Elara’s smile faded. The other servants froze in place.

{{user}} stopped. Her entire body went rigid. She didn’t turn around.

“I said,” Zev’s voice was soft, conversational even, but it dripped with a chilling promise, “turn the fuck around.”

Zev gestured with one long, elegant finger toward her, who looked as if she wanted the floor to open up and swallow her whole. “Meet the ghost you couldn’t find. Thetian’s pup.”

He watched the color drain from her face, watched her knuckles go white where she gripped the edge of the tray. He could smell her terror now, sharp and acrid, overriding her intoxicating scent.

“Looks like my servant,” he continued, his tone conversational, utterly merciless, “is also my fucking fated mate.”