Alaric's POV
The night was loud.
Not by sound, no—by tension.
Something electric rippled through the forest surrounding Evander's mansion, a pulse only ancient creatures like me could sense. It crackled against my skin like static, humming, vibrating, shifting. Wolves were restless. Magic was unsettled. And somewhere inside that towering mansion of stone and ego…
A human girl was dying.
I stood a good hundred meters away, cloaked in shadow, leaning lazily against an old cedar tree as if I were admiring the architecture instead of stalking chaos. The moonlight barely touched me. It never did. It never dared.
My lips curved.
"Such commotion," I murmured. "Evander, Evander… what a mess you've made."
I didn't need to see inside the mansion to know what was happening. I could smell it through the walls. Odette's pain. Evander's panic. The metallic bite of wolf venom burning through human veins. And beneath all that, buried in the layers of scent…
Her blood.
