(Martins' POV)
The first sign that something is wrong isn't sight. It's sound.
A sharp crack—quiet, but deep enough that I feel it before I hear it. The vibration crawls through the council table and up my arm. For a second, I don't understand what I'm feeling. Then the stone splits under my hand, a thin fracture running outward like a spider web.
The room goes silent.
Every elder watches me, still and wary. The air thickens with the scent of power I hadn't meant to release. My wolf pushes forward, restless, claws scraping just beneath the surface of my skin.
"End the session," I say, my voice steady but too low.
Elder Rowan doesn't move. He's seen this before—in others, not in me. His eyes narrow behind those old silver-framed lenses. "Is there a threat, Alpha?"
"Yes." I stand, the chair scraping back against the floor. "Just not one you can see."
No one argues. They've learned that when the calm breaks in my voice, something much older is stirring underneath.
The corridor outside the chamber feels too narrow, like the walls are closing in. I can't breathe right. The pull starts in my chest and drags downward—south, past the borders I haven't crossed in years. It's not instinct. It's recognition.
Her.
The woman from the club.
For weeks, I've tried not to think about her, about the heat of her skin, the way she didn't flinch when I asked for nothing more than one night. But my blood remembers.
I press a hand to the wall as something sharp tears through me—flashes, fragments. Silver light. A heartbeat that isn't mine.
Life.
The word lands heavy. Unforgiving.
An heir.
My pulse spikes. "No," I whisper. "I would have known."
My blood answers with heat, rolling under my skin like a storm.
By the time I push open the doors again, the council is on its feet. The air hums faintly, wards awakening around the chamber. Ancient sigils along the walls flare to life, reacting to power they can't contain.
Rowan is the first to speak. "The bloodlines have shifted," he says carefully.
I know what that means, but I need to hear it. "Say it."
"There has been a conception."
Silence follows, sharp and total.
He looks straight at me. "Alpha-bound."
A low murmur ripples through the others—words half-hidden under the tension in the air. The words claim, leverage, containment drift like smoke.
"And the mother?" I ask.
Rowan hesitates, then lowers his voice. "Rare blood."
The room erupts.
Elders bark over one another—strategies, accusations, plans. Someone suggests surveillance. Another says the word seize. Every syllable drives my temper closer to breaking.
My palm hits the table. The crack becomes a break. The slab splits clean down the center.
"No one touches her," I say, and the quiet that follows is worse than the noise. "No one tracks her. This is my responsibility."
Rowan's jaw tightens. "You can't shield her if the council—"
"Watch me."
Their silence isn't obedience. It's calculation. But I'm already gone.
Outside, the bond pulls tight, alive anent. It burns through every line of defense I've built. I reach along it—not to claim, but to understand.
Meg.
The name surfaces from memory and lands somewhere under my ribs.
For a second, everything else vanishes. Her fear hits me first. Then something else—resolve, hard and bright. Then love. Fierce, reckless, protective.
She's guarding the child.
My chest aches. I can feel the echo of her heartbeat through the bond, steady but thin. "Good," I whisper. "So am I."
And then it's gone. The connection severs.
The world feels quieter after that, and emptier.
Days pass. Sleep doesn't help. I sit through meetings and briefings, hearing words I can't repeat. I eat because my body remembers hunger even when my mind doesn't.
When I dream, it's the same image, her hand over her stomach, silver light trembling in the air around her.
On the fourth night, I wake with a start. Pain drives me to my knees before I can breathe. Not mine—hers.
I don't call for guards. I don't wait for approval. I follow the pull.
The city is loud and human, filled with horns and neon and the smell of rain on asphalt. None of it masks her scent. I track it easily—lavender, rain, and a faint edge of fear.
Then I see her.
She's stepping out of a small clinic, pale but unbroken, one hand braced protectively over her abdomen. For a moment, I forget to move.
Meg.
She looks different in daylight—sharper, stronger. Her eyes find me before I can speak.
"You," she says.
I stop a careful distance away. "You ran."
Her voice cuts clean through the noise of the street. "I survived."
The word hits harder than she means it to.
"You're carrying my child," I say quietly.
Her chin lifts. "And I'm not giving them to you."
For a heartbeat, my wolf rises, ready to assert, to take. But then I see it—the fire in her eyes, the way she shields her body instinctively, even from me.
What fills me isn't anger. It's pride.
"Good," I say. "Neither am I."
Her breath catches, confusion flickering across her face. Before I can explain, the bond screams—a vibration that crawls down my spine like a threat.
Trackers.
Not human. Not hers.
She feels them too. The color drains from her cheeks as power stirs beneath her skin. For a second, her eyes glint silver, like a reflection of the moon caught in stormlight.
"Run," she says. "They're close."
I turn toward the alley, where shadows ripple unnaturally. "No."
The air shifts as my wolf rises fully. The streetlights flicker, reacting to the surge of heat beneath my skin. The scent of rain turns metallic.
"Martins—" she starts.
I glance back at her, and something like a smile finds its way to my mouth. "Tonight," I tell her, "they learn what happens when they hunt what's mine."
The first tracker steps out of the dark, eyes glowing red, the mark of another pack's magic pulsing under his skin. There are more behind him. Their scent is unfamiliar but old—council work.
Meg doesn't move. She doesn't run. She stands her ground, one hand resting on the small curve of her stomach, her wolf watching through her eyes.
That choice—small, deliberate—cuts deeper than the threat in front of me.
Because in that moment, I realize something simple and terrifying.
This isn't just my fight.
This woman, the one who defied me, who walked away without fear, who carries my blood in the body she swore to protect, she's not someone who will ever kneel.
And for the first time since my wolf learned what love costs, I understand that this war won't be won by force.
It'll be won by the two of us, against everyone else.
The trackers close in.
My claws slide free.
Behind me, Meg's breath catches. Power hums through the air, rising like the wind before a storm.
And as I step forward, ready to meet it, I hear the faintest sound—the rhythm of two heartbeats overlapping. Hers and mine.
No, not mine.
Ours.
The streetlight bursts overhead. Darkness falls.
And the night begins to bleed.