The air in that cramped storage room felt like it was crushing me. Seriously, the stench—rust, dust, and Kael’s wild Alpha scent—hit like a brick to the face. He had me boxed in, my back pressed to freezing cold iron, his body close enough to steal the breath from my lungs. He wasn’t looking at me with any kind of softness. Nope. He stared at me like a guy about to make a move on a chessboard, not a lover. When he’d said “harvesting her,” it triggered something ugly, dredged up memories from Damon’s place, all that fear. Except this? This felt way worse.
“This ritual isn’t about politics, Elara,” Kael said, and man, his voice was sharp enough to slice me open. “It’s about power. That bloodline of yours—the Vancroft line—there’s this Omega energy buried in it, something people barely even
