NIKOLAI
I stepped closer, the stone still resting in my palm. “How did Alpine Snow Pack get ahold of Sophia?”
His jaw tightened. His silence stretched. My patience thinned.
I pushed out my aura, pressing down on him like a vice. “Answer me.”
Sasha gasped as his control snapped. “I took her,” he admitted, the words spilling out unwillingly. “I gave her to them. She was bait.”
The world stilled.
My breath came slow, measured, but the fury beneath my skin boiled hotter with every second. I had suspected. But hearing it—hearing him say it—made it real. Final.
“You betrayed me,” I said in an eerily calm voice. “You betrayed our pack.”
Sasha said nothing. He couldn’t. I hadn’t given him permission to speak.
“Why?” I asked, forcing as much of my aura into the short question as I could.
