Sadie's POV
The room went still. Not quiet – still. The kind of stillness that exists in the space between a heartbeat and the next, when everything is suspended and nothing has fallen yet.
Margot's face went pale.
The council members didn't move. Didn't blink. Didn't breathe.
I stopped breathing too.
Taylor sat at the head of the table, his hands flat on the wood, his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance, and he had just declared – formally, publicly, irrevocably – that Lily was his. In a room full of people who would carry that information back to their families, their allies, their networks. In a room where word would spread through the Pack like fire through dry grass.
He hadn't asked me.
He hadn't warned me.
He had just done it.
"Furthermore," Taylor continued, as
