THE ALPHA PACT: Five Wolves One Obsession

Chapter 3: Five Dangerous Men

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the fire.

Seraphina held her wrist out in front of her like something that might bite. The silver mark pulsed once, softly, in time with her heartbeat. Five crescents. One new, glowing sixth.

Okay, she said. Nobody panic. I'll do it for all of us.

Nobody is panicking, said Draven. Your jaw says otherwise. He unclenched it. It clenched again.

Kael moved first, because Kael always moved first when there was something to measure. He crossed the room, took her hand with cool, careful fingers, and turned her wrist toward the light. He didn't ask permission. He did, she noticed, check that he wasn't hurting her.

The mark wasn't there four minutes ago, he said. No heat signature on the skin beyond normal inflammation. No residue from the pendant. His grey eyes lifted to hers. Has anything like this happened before? A rash, a dream, a voice, anything you dismissed as stress?

You think I had dismiss a glowing moon? I think you dismiss everything. It's your preferred defence.

She opened her mouth to argue and found she couldn't. Annoying man. Annoyingly right.

There was one dream, she admitted. When I was twelve. A silver wolf standing in a forest. She looked at me. That's all.

She, Kael repeated quietly, and wrote something on his tablet. That's enough, Darius cut in. She's been attacked, she's bleeding, and you're taking notes. Sera, we're leaving. I'll take you home and you can sleep, and tomorrow we'll sort out...

Home isn't safe, said Ronan. Everyone looked at him.

Ronan Ashcroft shrugged one enormous shoulder. Assassin got into the Citadel with a real badge. He knew her name. Somebody knows where she lives, where she studies, what time she gets coffee. Her apartment has one lock and a window. He looked at Seraphina, and his steel blue eyes were not unkind. I'm not saying it to scare you. I'm saying it because it's true.

You could say it more gently. Gentle gets people killed.

Gentle also gets people dinner, Ronan, Lucian drawled from the sofa. He had finally stopped pretending to lounge and now sat forward, elbows on his knees. Little Veyne, ignore the mountain. What he means is that we had all feel better if you stayed somewhere with a great deal of security and a very comfortable bed. A grin flashed, quick and bright. I happen to own several hotels.

No hotels, Draven said. I was only offering. You were flirting. I flirt when I'm worried. It's practically a medical condition.

Seraphina stared at him. Lucian Voss, who had never once admitted to being worried about anything, looked away first. The Wolfe Estate, Draven said. Tonight. Absolutely not, Seraphina said.

It has the strongest wards in Veyloria. It also has you.

A beat. In the corner, someone made a sound very close to a laugh. Soren, she realised, with surprise. He had pressed a hand over his mouth.

Draven turned his head slowly. Something amusing?

Only that she isn't wrong, Soren said, from behind his fingers. His voice was soft and a little rusty, as though he didn't use it often. You are rather a lot, Draven. Thank you, Soren. Very helpful. I try.

Seraphina laughed. She couldn't help it. It came out cracked and slightly hysterical, and Darius put his arm around her, and the laugh turned dangerously close to something else.

Sera, he murmured. I know you hate this. I know you've spent your whole life being told what to do by men who think they know better. But I can't lose you. Please.

She looked up at her brother, at the fear he was trying so hard to hide behind his stubbornness. Then she looked around the room.

Five men. Five completely different kinds of danger. Kael, who saw too much. Lucian, who hid too much. Ronan, who would walk through fire and call it a Tuesday. Soren, who watched her as though she were a word on the tip of his tongue. And Draven, who stood apart from them all with his hands in his pockets and his eyes the colour of a winter lake, pretending he wasn't waiting for her answer.

She noticed something else, then. Each of them stood a little closer to her than they had an hour ago. None of them seemed to know they had done it.

Fine, she said. One night. One. And I keep my phone, my own room, and my own opinions. Done, said Draven, too quickly.

I wasn't finished. I also want the truth. All of it. If any of you know why a stranger with a forbidden pendant tried to kill me, I want to hear it before sunrise.

The five Alphas exchanged a look she couldn't decipher. We'll tell you what we know, said Kael.

That's not the same thing. No, he agreed. It isn't.

She filed that away for later, in the part of her mind she was beginning to label things to be furious about once I'm not terrified.

The group began to move. Darius gathered her bag. Ronan went ahead to clear the corridor. Lucian offered her his arm with a mock bow, and she took it purely to annoy Draven, who noticed and pretended not to.

Only Soren stayed where he was. Soren Nightshade had stopped hearing his wolf at the age of seven.

Not lost it, exactly. It was still there, a still, cold weight at the bottom of his chest, like a locked door in a house he lived in. The healers had called it a childhood trauma. His family had called it a mercy. He had called it nothing at all, because nobody had ever asked him.

Tonight the door had a crack in it. He stood very still in the empty chamber, listening to the footsteps fade down the corridor, and pressed one hand flat against his sternum. Behind it, something stirred. Something old and wary and terribly, terribly tired.

Then, for the first time in twenty one years, his wolf spoke. It wasn't a roar. It was barely a whisper, a voice like wind through a very deep cave, and it said only four words.

The Original has returned. Soren's knees gave out. He caught himself against the mantel, breath tearing out of him, and stared at the fire with wide, unseeing eyes.

Because the voice hadn't sounded afraid.

It had sounded like it was weeping with relief.