Marked by the Apex.

The bass inside The Obsidian Lounge didn’t just vibrate through the floorboards; it rattled the marrow in my bones. But I wasn’t here for the cheap thrills or the overpriced synthetic blood-wine the upper-crust shifters were throwing back. I was here for a mark. And I had found the motherlode. He was sitting in the VIP alcove, shadowed by two bruisers who smelled like wet dog and cheap muscle. The mark himself, though? He was different. He radiated a quiet, terrifying stillness. He was dressed in a bespoke charcoal suit that probably cost more than my life, but it was the heavy silver-and-onyx signet ring resting on the mahogany table that had my attention. It was a Syndicate relic. Fencing that piece alone would pay off the Bloodhound gang and keep me off the streets for a year. I adjusted the neckline of my stolen silk dress, pasted on a vacant, glittering smile, and timed my approach. The waitress passed. I stepped into her blind spot, letting a drunken Beta in a flashy jacket bump into me. With a perfectly calculated stumble, I crashed directly into the mark’s table. "Oh! I'm so sorry," I breathed, letting my hands scramble over the mahogany surface, my fingers brushing the cold metal of the ring. With a sleight of hand perfected through a decade of starvation, the ring vanished up my sleeve. I went to push myself up, ready to murmur another apology and disappear into the neon-drenched crowd. But a hand locked around my wrist. It wasn't a grab. It was a steel vice. The moment his skin touched mine, a violent, electrical shock ripped up my arm, so intense it snatched the breath from my lungs. My inner wolf—a scarred, silent thing that hadn’t so much as whimpered in five years—suddenly clawed at the walls of my mind, howling a single, terrifying word. Mate. The heavy scent of ozone, dark cedar, and crushed rain crashed over me, suffocating and intoxicating. I forced my eyes up, meeting a pair of irises so deeply black they seemed to swallow the club's strobe lights. This wasn't just a rich mark. This was Kaelen Vance. The Apex of the Northern Syndicate. The most lethal Alpha in the city. And I had just stolen from him. He didn't look at the empty spot on the table where his ring had been. He didn't signal his guards. He just stared down at me, his nostrils flaring slightly as he took in my scent. The shadows in the alcove seemed to lengthen, bending toward his immense, suffocating aura. "You have exactly three seconds," his voice was a low, guttural vibration that bypassed my ears and reverberated straight in my chest, "to empty your pockets, little thief. Before I decide to keep you instead."