Darius POV
The guest room’s small mirror reflected the faint dawn light creeping through the window, a pale glow that barely warmed the sparse space. I stood before it, tugging at the collar of my dark shirt, my fingers deft but my mind elsewhere, tangled in the heated words I’d exchanged with Jaxon just moments ago.
His accusation—“You stripped my birthright”—still rang in my ears, a raw wound that stirred old guilt I’d buried deep. I knew how profoundly the banishment had scarred him, how the loss of the Ironclaw Pack, our birth pack, had shattered his world.
His rage was justified, a smoldering fire I’d expected when I stepped into his territory, the Silverthorn Pack, and I braced for the day his fury might erupt into something more—claws, blood, a reckoning between brothers. But I
