In the deepest, most secure ward, a place marked only with a simple, biohazard symbol and guarded by two men with the hard, empty eyes of professional killers, I found him.
I dealt with the guards silently, two precise, economical movements in the shadows, two bodies slumping to the floor without a sound. The override code Marcus had provided for the main lock worked flawlessly. The heavy door hissed open, and the full, overwhelming scent of a caged Alpha's pain and rage washed over me.
The cell was a cube of polished, engraved silver, and it hummed with a low, painful energy designed to suppress a Lycan's healing and strength. The air was thick with his agony.
He was chained to the back wall, his massive body slumped in a drugged, unnatural sleep. Even in this degraded state—drugged, wounded, burned by the silver that surrounded him—his power was a palpable thing, a coiled, dormant volcano. His fur was the color of jet, matted with sweat and dried blood. His frame was immense, a study in raw, untamed strength that even the heavy, silver-lined chains couldn't diminish. This was a king.
He had been captured while investigating the disappearance of his pack member, Lyra. He had followed the trail here, to this clinic, and had walked straight into a trap laid by the spider himself.
As I stepped into the cell, my boots silent on the grated floor, he seemed to sense me. His head, which had been bowed in a drugged stupor, lifted slowly.
His eyes, when they fluttered open, were the color of molten gold, and they burned with a fire that hadn't been extinguished by drugs or silver or endless days of pain. They were the eyes of a warrior who had not yet surrendered.
He didn't see me clearly, his vision blurred by the sedatives, but he knew something was there. A low, warning growl rumbled in his chest, a sound of profound, unbroken defiance.
This was Kaelen, Alpha of the Black Moon Pack.
And our story had just truly begun.