SOPHIA’S POV
The woman stood before us, her dark eyes gleaming in the moonlight, her stance relaxed—but I wasn’t fooled. **She was dangerous.**
Nicholas had frozen the moment she stepped out, his body going still in that sharp, **predatory way** that told me this was more than just an unexpected encounter.
He knew her.
And from the way her lips curled into a slow, amused smirk—she knew him, too.
“Alpha Hidalgo,” she drawled, tilting her head. “You always had a way of finding things best left buried.”
Nicholas’s jaw clenched. “Vera.”
My stomach tightened. Vera.The way he said her name—low, clipped, edged with something unreadable—sent warning bells ringing in my head.
I studied her. She was tall, and lean, with sharp cheekbones and an elegance that felt **too precise** to
