🐺 BOUND BY BLOOD AND SILVER

prologue: The Concrete Pack

The scent of premium diesel, rain-slicked asphalt, and ozone couldn’t mask the raw, metallic tang of blood. High above the neon-drenched grid of New Crest City, Alpha Logan Vance stood perfectly still on the skyscraper’s glass precipice. Down below, the human metropolis buzzed with life, entirely oblivious to the apex predators running the boardrooms, the shipping docks, and the powerful underground syndicates. For ten long years, Logan had ruled the city's vast territory with a ruthless, calculated corporate efficiency.Tonight, that uneasy peace completely shattered. An alarm triggered violently on Logan’s secure comms—a critical breach at the high-security compound bordering the northern mountain perimeter. He didn't even need the digital alert; his hyper-attuned predator senses already picked up the rogue scent slicing through the heavy smog. It was a chaotic, impossible cocktail of wild pine, ancient magic, and lethal silver. The combination sent a warning jolt straight down his spine.He shifted seamlessly mid-air, his bones snapping in a controlled blur as he crashed onto the lower rooftop as an eight-foot, midnight-black wolf. Cornered directly against the chain-link perimeter fence was the mysterious intruder. To his shock, it wasn't a rival enforcer, but a young woman. Her clothes were torn from a frantic run, and her bare hands glowed with the forbidden, violet embers of a medieval realm's displaced sorcery. Logan growled, his amber eyes locking onto her. He lunged across the rooftop, his massive jaws open wide, ready to tear out her throat and defend his concrete territory at all costs.