The click of the deadbolt didn’t just seal the room. It sealed a tomb.
Ryan Thorne, the reigning Alpha of the pack, stared at the heavy steel mechanisms sliding into the doorframe. The color drained from his catalog-perfect face. For the first time in his pampered, stolen life, he finally understood the fundamental rule of the Thorne bloodline.
You don’t lock a monster in a cage. You just trap yourself inside with it.
Michael stood between the doors and the center of the penthouse. He didn’t roar. He didn’t flash his fangs or push his shoulders forward in a display of dominance. He simply stood there in his ruined white dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his knuckles painted in a drying, dark red crust.
He looked at Ryan the way a surgeon looks at a tumor.
"You think yo
