The echo of a true Alpha command doesn't just fade. It sinks into the concrete. It settles into the dust. It presses against the eardrums like a change in atmospheric pressure.
Jane stood perfectly still in the center of the shattered penthouse, the freezing wind from the eighty-fifth floor whipping her loose raven hair across her face. She was completely naked, painted in the arterial blood of the man dying at her feet, and she was vibrating with a terrifying, alien power.
She stared at the operative. He was weeping silently, his throat bared to her in absolute, biological submission. He couldn't look away. He couldn't move. She had crushed his free will with four words.
"Michael," Jane said again, the panic finally cracking through her ice. She didn't look at the beast leaning against
