KAEL POV
Ember's heartbeat is wrong.
I've been standing outside her door for three hours, and her heart hasn't slowed once. It's racing like she's being chased by something I can't see.
"She said she's fine," Asher reminds me from his post by the stairs. "Maybe actually trust her for once?"
"Her pulse is at 140. That's not fine."
"She almost got murdered today," Damon adds from the other end of the hallway. "Of course she's not fine."
But it's more than that. Something shifted when she opened her phone. I heard the change—the skip in her breathing, the spike of fear so sharp I could taste it through the door.
She's hiding something.
My wolf paces restlessly, demanding I break down the door and force her to tell me what's wrong.
I don't. Because I'm in control. Always in control.
Even when control is the last thing I want.
"We should sleep in shifts," I announce. "Someone watches her door at all times."
"Already planning to," Damon agrees.
"I'll take first watch," Asher volunteers. "You two actually sleep. You look like death."
I want to argue, but he's right. I haven't slept properly in days. Not since the mate bond started forming. Every time I close my eyes, I see Ember—small and fragile and mine in ways that terrify me.
Father trained weakness out of me with fists and cruelty. "Alphas don't feel," he'd say while I bled. "Alphas don't break."
So I learned not to feel. Not to break.
Until a tiny redheaded girl walked into my life and made me feel everything.
I force myself to walk to my room. To lie down. To close my eyes.
Sleep doesn't come.
Instead, I'm fifteen again, standing over my mother's body. Cancer had eaten her from the inside, but Father wouldn't let me cry. "She was weak," he'd said. "The pack is better without weakness."
I learned that day that loving someone just gave them power to destroy you.
So I stopped loving. Stopped caring. Became exactly what Father wanted—a perfect, emotionless weapon.
But Ember...
Ember gets up every time she falls. Takes every cruel word and keeps breathing. Survives murder attempts and still has the strength to tell us off.
She's not weak. She's the strongest person I've ever met.
And that terrifies me more than anything.
A scream rips through the house.
I'm moving before I think, crashing through Ember's door. Damon and Asher are right behind me.
Ember's on her bed, eyes wide but not seeing. Her body is rigid, mouth open in a silent scream. Her wolf—Seraphina—is trying to emerge, gold light crackling under her skin.
"What's happening?" Asher demands.
"I don't know!" Her eyes focus on us suddenly. "I can't control her. She's trying to—"
Ember's scream cuts off as her body convulses. Her back arches, bones starting to crack and reshape.
She's shifting. But it's too fast, too violent. First shifts take hours. This is going to tear her apart.
"Help me!" Ember gasps. "Please, it hurts—"
I'm on the bed before I can think, pulling her against my chest. "Breathe. Focus on my heartbeat."
"I can't—"
"Yes, you can." My hand cradles her head. "Match your breathing to mine. In. Out. In. Out."
Damon sits behind her, hands on her shoulders, lending his strength. Asher grabs her hand, squeezing tight.
We're touching her. All three of us at once.
The mate bond explodes.
Power rushes through all four of us like lightning. I can feel my brothers—their thoughts, emotions, wolves—like they're part of me. And Ember...
Ember is the center of everything. A sun we all orbit. Her power doesn't just match ours—it amplifies it, creates something bigger than the sum of its parts.
This is what a True Omega bond feels like.
And it's terrifying.
Ember's shift slows, reverses. Her bones settle back into place. The gold light fades.
She collapses against me, gasping. "What... what was that?"
"The bond," Asher says quietly. "When we all touched you at once, it... completed something."
"I could feel you," Ember whispers. "All of you. Your thoughts. Your wolves. Everything."
Panic flashes across her face.
"What did you see?" I ask carefully.
"Nothing. I saw nothing." But she's lying. I can feel it through the bond now.
"Ember—"
"Let me go." She pushes away from me, scrambling to the other side of the bed. "This is too much. You're in my head now? I can't—I need space. I need—"
"You need to tell us what's really wrong," Damon says. "Because that shift wasn't natural. Something triggered it."
"I'm fine!"
"Stop lying!" The command slips out before I can stop it. Alpha voice. Compulsion.
Ember's mouth opens, words forced out against her will: "Someone sent me a message. They threatened to kill my mom if I tell anyone. They want to harvest my organs for the black market. They said the real hunt starts tomorrow."
Horror floods the room.
"Show me the message," I demand.
"I deleted it."
"SHOW ME."
Her hand trembles as she picks up her phone. Opens the trash folder. Hands it to me.
I read the messages and my vision goes red.
"You weren't going to tell us." My voice is deadly quiet.
"They threatened my mom!"
"So you were just going to let yourself be hunted?" I stand, towering over her. "Let yourself be killed because you didn't want to risk your mother?"
"What else was I supposed to do?"
"TRUST US!" The words explode out. "We're your mates! Your pack! You don't face threats alone anymore!"
"I've faced everything alone my whole life!" She's on her feet now, tiny but fierce. "I survived nineteen years without you. I don't need—"
"Yes, you do." I grab her shoulders. "You need us whether you like it or not. That's what the mate bond means. We protect you. We die for you if necessary. But we can't do any of that if you hide from us!"
Tears stream down her face. "I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to trust people."
The words break something inside me.
Because I don't either.
"Then we'll learn together," I say quietly. "But right now, we have bigger problems."
"The threat," Asher is already on his phone. "We need to increase security. Move your mother here where we can protect her. And figure out who sent those messages."
"Can you trace them?" Damon asks.
"Already trying." Asher frowns at his screen. "But whoever this is, they're using serious encryption. This isn't some random pack member. This is a professional."
"What does that mean?" Ember asks.
"It means," I say grimly, "someone hired a hunter. Someone who specializes in trafficking rare shifters."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I recognize the phrasing. 'Worth more dead than alive.' 'The right buyer.' That's Collector speak."
"Collectors?" Ember's voice is small.
"Black market traders who hunt and sell rare supernatural creatures," Damon explains. "They're the worst kind of criminals. Completely without mercy."
"And one is after me."
"One is in our territory," I correct. "Which means they're dead. They just don't know it yet."
My phone buzzes. A message from an unknown number.
I open it.
My blood turns to ice.
It's a photo. Taken tonight. Through Ember's window.
Of all four of us on her bed. The moment the bond completed.
The caption reads: "Beautiful. The buyer will pay triple for a True Omega with an active bond. Thank you for making her more valuable. The hunt begins at dawn. Try to make it interesting."
I look up at Ember's window.
The curtains are open.
Someone has been watching us this entire time.
"Get down!" I roar, tackling Ember to the floor.
The window explodes inward.
A dart embeds in the wall where her head was a second ago.
"They're here," Damon snarls, already shifting.
Alarms start blaring throughout the house.
"How many?" Asher demands.
I smell the air. Count the distinct scents.
My wolf howls in rage.
"Twenty," I say. "Professional hunters. Military-grade weapons."
"For one girl?" Ember whispers from beneath me.
"For a True Omega worth millions." I meet her eyes. "Welcome to being the most valuable creature in the supernatural world."
"What do we do?"
"We fight." I help her up. "And Ember? This time, you don't face it alone."
Another window shatters. This time downstairs.
They're coming from all sides.
The real hunt has begun.