The courtyard is too silent.
Even the wind is holding its breath.
Vera doesn’t need the collar’s constriction to sense it.
The power shift resonates in her bones.
It crackles in the air just beneath her skin, alerting her before the first footfall sounds against the cobblestones.
He walks through the gate as if it is his birthright.
Alpha Marcus.
Hollow Vale’s monster.
Tall. Scarred. Golden-eyed and reeking of territorial challenge.
Vera sees it before she feels it. Rael’s anger.
The man stands at the top of the stone stairs like a marble monument carved from blood and fury, with his muscles tense, chest bare, and his eyes burning.
And Vera?
She kneels by his side.
Precisely where he placed her at the end of the last fight.
Precisely where Marcus sees her now.
She doesn’t fl
