"Enough." Aysel snapped the word like a command to the universe, her growl low and resonant, vibrating with the restrained fury of the beast prowling inside her. The air itself seemed to flinch. "Do you think that not being the first-or the worst-erases your crimes?" Her voice darkened, thick with contempt. "You speak as though the currents of fate forced your claws to strike. As if you were some tragic puppet of darkness. But all of it-every word-is an excuse to bury your own malice." Anna faltered. Just a beat. Then she laughed, a thin, brittle sound, one that trembled on the brink of hysteria-as if she were daring Aysel to close the distance and tear her apart. But Aysel's eyes, burning with a raw, molten wildness, did not waver. "You never lash out at those who wronged you," Aysel said, her tone shifting to something cold and surgical. "Not at your own kin, who failed you. Not at Conor Sanchez, for your own cowardice. Not even at the man whose greed and lust tore through your family. No, Anna. Your talons have always found the innocent. That is the brand you bear." Anna's smirk twisted, her pretty features curdling into something feral and grotesque beneath the pale moonlight leaking through the broken shutters. "Yes... yes, you are right," she breathed, as though confessing to a priest before striking him dead. "I am a creature of darkness." Then her voice dropped to a venomous snarl."But do you think Magnus is innocent?" Aysel stilled-but only outwardly. Inside, her wolf coiled. Anna leaned forward, eyes gleaming with sick triumph. "Do you know he dared to kill someone... when he was only five years old?" The words hung like frost. Raya of the Sanchez line-the righteous, the untouchable-had fallen under Anna's schemes for years. Manipulated, spied upon, used as leverage. But for this, Anna did not lie. She couldn't. Not about the one creature she feared more than death itself. Magnus, the Shadowbane Alpha. At five winters, he had defended his mother from a predatory gardener with a burning candlestick, driving the searing metal into the man's back without hesitation. The smell of scorched flesh had filled the manor halls. The man perished days later, surgeries failing to halt the spreading flames. The elder Sanchez had buried the incident beneath silver and silence, but the blood-soaked chamber-and the impassive obsidian eyes of the child standing in its center-lived rent-free in Anna's nightmares. From that day on, she avoided the mother and son like plague-ridden ground. Conor Sanchez learned caution. And Magnus's father, Ulric, returned from his travels only to find what remained: a shattered marriage, miscarriages, and a single surviving heir born in fire-Magnus, the wolf-child forged in violence. Aysel's pulse throbbed with the unrelenting rhythm of a wolf on the hunt. "You forced a child to bear arms for survival," she said, her voice a lethal whisper. "Then used it as a weapon to condemn him. Do you think that is noble, Anna?" In a heartbeat, the distance between them ceased to exist. Aysel lunged. Her wolf instincts snapped into perfect, brutal alignment. Anna slammed back against a carved oak table, the impact rattling the ancestral bones of the room. A vase shattered, shards glittering like fangs. A sliver of glass grazed Anna's throat, a breath away from her pulse. "Tell me," Aysel hissed, scent thick with dominance, "where is he?" Anna coughed, pain crackling through her limbs as her spine pressed into the table's edge. Still, her smile slithered back, twisted and sly. "We are not bound by hatred," she rasped. "You despise the family that bore you, do you not? Celestine Ward is prey enough to sate your vengeance." Her fingers trembled-but her voice did not. "We could work together, Aysel. What I offer rivals even Magnus. Following a dangerous Alpha may consume you... but with me, at least the risk is contained."