Chapter 2 2

Elodie POV

Three weeks. That was how long the Lycan King of the Blackwood Pack had been caged in his own penthouse.

I stood perfectly still in the hallway of the Alpha's Aerie, letting the heavy shadows of a massive antique vase swallow me whole. Through the cracked mahogany door of the study, the sheer force of Kingsley's fury bled into the corridor, thick with the scent of cedarwood and ozone.

*Crash.*

A stack of bound reports slammed against the wall. "Nothing? You're telling me a ghost dragged me out of a room full of Alphas?" Kingsley's voice was a gravelly roar, laced with the lingering agony of silver poisoning. The Elders had confined him here under the guise of "protection" while his Lycan healing fought off the neurotoxin, and his inner wolf, *Rage*, was tearing at the bars of its cage.

"The security footage was professionally wiped, Alpha," Arthur, his Gamma, replied, his tone steady but strained. "No scent trail. Just... industrial bleach and cheap catering food. They vanished."

A low, vibrating snarl rattled the floorboards. "The Schmidt Gala is in two days. The Elders are breathing down my neck, Arthur. And to make it worse, I have to parade that useless Silver Creek tribute around."

I held my breath. He was talking about me.

"Keep her out of my way," Kingsley spat, the disgust in his voice absolute. "That wolfless Omega is a liability. Her lack of an inner wolf... the sheer emptiness of her scent makes my stomach turn."

Every word was a blade, but I didn't bleed. Instead, a cold wave of relief washed over me. His contempt was my armor. As long as he saw a pathetic, wolfless wife, he would never look for the ghost in his own home.

One hour later, I was miles away from the penthouse, standing in Room 304 of the Serenity Hills Sanitarium.

The air here reeked of clinical antiseptic and the sour pheromones of unstable wolves. Julian Sterling was tearing at his hair, his eyes wild as he stared at a whiteboard covered in chaotic Pack territory algorithms.

"It doesn't work! The Rogue movements are unpredictable!" Julian snarled at me, thinking I was just another charity volunteer sent to pacify him. "Get out!"

I didn't speak. I walked calmly to the board and picked up a black marker. Moving with a fluid precision no wolfless Omega should possess, I slashed through his flawed equation. I added the missing chaos variable: the lunar phase's gravitational pull on a wolf's aggression index.

The marker squeaked to a halt. Julian stopped breathing.

His manic eyes traced the elegant, weaponized prophecy I had just birthed on his board. The madness in his gaze fractured, replaced by absolute, trembling reverence. He fell to his knees on the linoleum floor.

"Zero," he whispered.

I set the marker down and walked out. I needed that algorithm for the war I was quietly building, and Julian was now my first true soldier.

By the time I slipped back into the Alpha's Aerie, the sterile scent of the sanitarium was clinging heavily to my clothes. I rounded the corner of the black marble hallway and nearly collided with a wall of solid muscle.

Kingsley.

His storm-gray eyes locked onto mine, cold and lethal. He inhaled sharply, and his upper lip curled in instant revulsion. The scent of industrial bleach and medical-grade sanitizer rolled off me-the exact scent of his savior, masked entirely by the context of my supposed weakness.

"Where have you been?" he demanded, his voice dripping with ice.

I lowered my head, playing the submissive Omega, and let the silence stretch.

Kingsley didn't have the patience to wait for a stuttered excuse. He scoffed, stepping around me as if I were a disease. "Stay out of my sight, Elodie. You reek of sickness. It makes me nauseous."

I watched his broad back disappear down the hall. He was tearing the city apart looking for a god, completely blind to the monster standing right in front of him. But his growing obsession was a ticking clock. If I was going to keep my true nature hidden from a Lycan, I needed the one thing that could suppress my latent White Wolf bloodline. I had to go back to the Silver Creek Pack Manor and retrieve my mother's sapphire necklace.