Mara’s POV
No one invites me closer.
They stand in a loose semicircle inside the terminal, spaced just far enough apart to break the instinct of pack closeness. No shared heat. No shared ground. Just fourteen wolves who learned, the hard way, that proximity gets you killed.
I recognize all of them.
Some I loved.
Some I feared.
Some I failed.
“You said no chains,” the woman from earlier says again. Her hair is streaked with gray now. Lina. She used to laugh louder than anyone in the pack. “So why is he here?”
Eyes flick past me.
To Declan.
He hasn’t moved. Hands loose at his sides. No Alpha flare. No dominance push. Just presence—and the knowledge of what he is.
“I didn’t bring him as my Alpha,” I say. “I brought him as the man who pulled me out of a warehouse with a bullet in my
