Lyra POV
My heart thundered in my chest, a wild, erratic beat that felt like it might claw its way out, each pulse a scream against the suffocating tension in the kitchen. The air was thick with the lingering scent of chamomile from the kettle I’d abandoned, its faint floral notes drowned by the sharper tang of leather and pine radiating from Darius, and the woodsmoke warmth of Jaxon’s presence.
I stood frozen, my body dwarfed between the two Alphas, their towering frames looming like storm clouds ready to clash. Darius’s gray eyes—hauntingly like Jaxon’s but colder, hungrier—glinted with a possessive fire, his leather jacket stretched over his broad shoulders, his stance unyielding. Jaxon, inches away, was a fortress of fury, his dark hair disheveled, his gray eyes blazing, his wolf’s
