He eased his foot off the gas pedal. He knew he couldn’t risk her safety. He couldn’t terrify her any more than he already had. She shot through the iron gates into the Lower District, and he slammed his brakes right at the perimeter line. Staring through the barrier, he watched her rip off her helmet, her slender shoulders trembling violently. She was weeping... warring against her own soul.
She curled inward, appearing so small... as if forged from fragile glass. He surged out of the sports car. The overwhelming urge to breach the gates burned through his core, threatening to tear him apart.
An all-consuming hunger to press her small body against his chest, to soothe her, to keep her warm. To make her realize that the nightmare was over—that she was safe now, that he had found her, and that he would never, ever let her go again.
To look into her eyes... to drown once more in that profound depth she had hidden behind those damned contact lenses. He craved her raw, stripped of all this cruel masquerade. Soul to soul...
Yet if he attempted to force his way through right now, the border guards would restrain him. They would lock him away. And he wouldn’t be able to reach her.
Fuck.
He would do anything. Absolutely anything—if only to ensure he never had to watch her cry again.
***
"What do you mean, you agree?! Magnus, have you lost your damn mind?! You’ve been fighting this off every step of the way! Don’t you realize that taking charge of every single pack means dealing with the government directly? And as far as I recall, your history with them is a complete disaster!"
Magnus sat behind the desk, his expression dark and forbidding, arms crossed tight over his chest.
"Do you have a better idea?" he asked coldly. "Option one: I agree to their terms. Option two: I blow those lower-district gates straight to hell and start a bloodbath with the government’s lapdogs and the Pharean’s pack."
Sayan went silent. Raking a hand through the hair at the back of his neck, he pushed himself out of his armchair and began pacing back and forth across the room.
"That’s the whole damn problem—there are no other options," Sayan muttered. "The Lower District access pass Hugo managed to pull through was scheduled for the anniversary of your mother’s death... which is two months away."
"I’m not waiting two months," Magnus growled. "I need to be inside today."
"Then we really have no choice. We sign this cursed agreement and broadcast the announcement to every pack."
"Then see to it," Magnus said, turning toward the doorway. "I’ll assemble our warriors."
Sayan stared at Magnus’s retreating back as his Alpha willingly slipped a noose around his own neck and pulled the knot tight.
Who could have ever guessed that his true mate had been alive this entire time? And to make matters worse, that clever bastard Pharean had managed to slip a spy right under their noses—something Magnus’s pack had never managed to achieve in return.
Everyone bound to the Pharean’s pack was fiercely loyal and clung to their positions. But loyalty wasn’t the only thing keeping them in line. It was terror. Pharean was lethal, and the entire city feared him.
It made total sense. A weakling would never have survived, let alone led a pack in a city crawling with ruthless scum. Magnus had previously offered them massive sums of money, though he hadn’t pressed too hard since they had no real interest in the internal workings of that pack—a mistake on their part.
Yet Magnus was far from simple. Sayan knew that while Pharean had been refusing him, Magnus had managed to locate the bastard’s hidden wife. He had planned to leverage her exact whereabouts next month in exchange for permission to relocate his mother’s grave.
Now, after everything that had just come to light, Sayan was certain Pharean wouldn’t get so much as a whisper of her location unless he handed Jane over. The situation was escalating rapidly, made far worse by the fact that Magnus was completely unstable. Consumed by jealousy, the suppressants that had kept his aggression in check for five long years were no longer working. It was a serious, volatile problem.
When the paperwork was finally signed and handed over to administration, the government officials practically beamed with smug satisfaction. Sayan felt sick just looking at their bloated, greedy faces.
Bastards. They had dumped every ounce of responsibility onto their pack, sitting back and celebrating like pampered pigs. But Magnus was ready to sign off on anything—agree to any term—just to get his woman back. To an extent, Sayan understood that.
If he had a true mate of his own, he would have completely lost his mind, too.
Everyone did.
True Alphas—men like Magnus, or Sayan’s uncle—guarded their mates with their lives. And considering Jane was an Alpha Breeder who had been forced into hiding for five years, a target hung over her head twice over. Sayan could only imagine the hell his friend was going through inside his own head.
When they arrived at Pharean’s territory and passed into the Lower District without a single hitch—Magnus merely flashing his official decree as Supreme Leader of the Upper District—they immediately deployed their forces, encircling the entire safehouse perimeter.
Pharean pieced it together the moment he saw Magnus at his gates. He granted him entry past the courtyard, but barred the threshold to the house itself.
"What brings you here, Alpha Rainn?" Askold growled, locking eyes with Magnus.
Magnus stared at him, realization dawning. This was the very same damned stray who had been lurking around her all this time.
The name hadn’t been a coincidence...
Magnus was ready to tear him limb from limb on the spot. Askold smelled just like her—as if he had touched her, as if her scent had rubbed off on him.
"You smell like my true mate, Pharean. Where is she?" Magnus demanded, stepping closer.
"I have no idea what you’re talking about, Rainn," Askold sneered, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
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