Ashina Claw has spent eight months believing in Darren Kale's promises, giving him her heart, her body, and her trust. So when the legendary Alpha Kendrick Ridge reveals himself as her true mate at the annual Gathering, she does the unthinkable she rejects him publicly, choosing Darren over fate itself.
But Kendrick Ridge isn't a man who accepts defeat. The cold, ruthless Alpha has waited twenty-seven years for his mate, and he knows something Ashina doesn't: Darren has been using her, and the heartbreak she's fighting to avoid is inevitable.
When Darren proves himself the coward Kendrick always knew he was, and the mate bond threatens to tear Ashina apart, Kendrick makes a controversial choice he forcibly marks her, binding them together permanently.
Now Ashina must navigate life in Moonlit Pack as the unwilling mate of an Alpha she's determined to hate, even as her heart begins to recognize what her mind refuses to accept: that sometimes fate knows better than we do or will she run from fate.

Sarah's team returned on a Thursday, eight days after they'd left, and the report they brought back was not the one Kendrick had been hoping for.


He received Sarah in his study with Ryker present, which was how he handled field intelligence. Ryker had a particular capacity for identifying the gaps in a report, the things that hadn't been said that were as significant as the things that had, and Kendrick had learned over years of working together to want him in the room when information arrived that would require decisions.


Sarah had been a scout for six years and she reported the way good scouts did, sequentially and without editorializing, laying out what she had observed in the order she had observed it and reserving interpretation for the end when the facts were fully established.


Chapter 64 - The First Threat