The heavy steel door clicked shut, followed by the grinding sound of a deadbolt sliding home.
The noise was too deliberate, too final.
Elara didn't look up immediately.
Her fingers were deep in a pile of blackened slag, teasing out a vein of silvery dust that smelled faintly of ozone.
She knew that smell.
It was potential energy.
"You have nimble fingers for a traitor," a voice boomed, bouncing off the metal walls.
Elara wiped her hands on her ruined dress and turned.
Augus stood by the door, flanked by two Rogues who looked like they chewed gravel for breakfast.
The Second-in-Command was massive, a slab of muscle and scar tissue, his eyes burning with the self-righteous fury of a fanatic.
"I'm working," Elara said, her voice flat.
"Draven gave me a deadline."
"Draven is compromised," Augus spat, stepping forward.
His heavy boots echoed on the grate.
"He let a pretty face and a sob story rot his brain. But I'm the immune system of this pack. I kill the infection."
He cracked his neck.
"Admit you're a mole for the Silas family, and I'll make it quick. Resist, and I'll peel you like a fruit."
Elara sighed, glancing at the pile of sorted refuse.
"I don't have time for your insecurity, Augus. Move."
The disrespect was the spark.
"Kneel!" Augus roared.
The air in the room suddenly warped.
It was the Alpha Command—a weaponized projection of dominance that hit the physical world like a sledgehammer.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the reinforced glass of the observation booth.
Beakers on the nearby shelves exploded, showering the floor in glittering shards.
The two lackeys behind Augus flinched, instinctively dropping to their knees, their wolves whimpering in submission under the crushing weight of their superior's aura.
Augus smirked, waiting for the sickening crunch of the girl's femurs snapping under the pressure.
Elara blinked.
A loose strand of hair fluttered across her cheek, disturbed by the sudden displacement of air.
She reached up and tucked the hair behind her ear.
"Are you done breaking things?" she asked, genuinely annoyed.
"That glassware was usable."
Augus's smirk froze.
His eyes bulged.
He pushed harder, his veins bulging in his neck, pouring every ounce of his killing intent into the air.
The pressure was strong enough to flatten a Beta, strong enough to make a grown man cough up blood.
Elara frowned, looking around the room.
She felt...
a draft?
It was like standing in front of an open fridge on a hot day.
A little chilly, slightly annoying, but hardly lethal.
"If you're trying to intimidate me," Elara said, turning back to the table and picking up a jagged strip of metal, "you should know that Elder Marcus used to shout louder when his tea was cold."
"Impossible," Augus whispered, his worldview fracturing.
"You're an Omega. You should be paste."
Panic replaced arrogance.
The unknown was terrifying to a creature of instinct.
If spiritual pressure didn't work, physical violence was the only answer.
"Die, witch!"
Augus launched himself.
He moved with the speed of a freight train, claws extended, aiming to rip her throat out.
Elara didn't panic.
In that split second, the world slowed down.
She didn't see a monster; she saw a mass of chaotic, screaming energy hurtling toward her.
She didn't try to block.
She couldn't overpowering him was physics-defying.
Instead, she did what she had done to Draven.
She opened the "void" inside her.
Just as Augus entered her striking range, Elara "pulled."
She didn't pull him physically.
She pulled the ambient energy he was riding on.
It was like pulling the rug out from under a sprinter.
Augus expected resistance from the air, from her fear, from the atmosphere itself.
Instead, he hit a vacuum of absolute nothingness.
His center of gravity pitched forward.
His lethal lunge turned into a clumsy stumble.
Elara side-stepped.
A simple, efficient pivot.
As Augus flailed past her, his momentum carrying him uncontrollably toward the heavy metal sorting table, Elara's hand moved to her waist.
Her fingers closed around the hilt of the black-steel dagger she had swiped from Draven's office during the chaos.
She didn't slash.
She thrusted.
With surgical precision born of desperation, she drove the blade into the soft flesh of his inner thigh, aiming for the femoral artery, and used his own forward momentum to drive the point deep into the wooden tabletop.
Thunk.
"Arghhhhh!"
Augus slammed into the table, pinned like a butterfly in a display case.
Bright red arterial blood sprayed across the slag heap.
Elara stepped back, breathing hard, her hands shaking not from fear, but from the adrenaline dump.
The two lackeys by the door were paralyzed, their jaws on the floor.
They had just watched a malnourished laundry girl take down the pack's brutal enforcer in three seconds.
"Next time," Elara said, her voice trembling slightly as she wiped a speck of blood from her cheek, "knock first."
"Impressive."
The shadow in the corner of the room detached itself from the darkness.
Draven stepped into the dim light.
He hadn't just arrived; he had been there the whole time.
He walked past the trembling lackeys, his eyes fixed on Elara.
He didn't look angry.
He looked...
hungry.
Not for meat, but for the victory she radiated.
He stopped in front of the screaming Augus.
"Draven!" Augus gasped, clutching his leg.
"She... she's a monster! She didn't bow! She—"
Crunch.
Draven's heavy combat boot came down on the handle of the dagger, driving it deeper into the wood and twisting it.
Augus's scream cut off into a gurgling whimper.
"She didn't bow because you aren't a King, Augus," Draven said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
"And you broke my equipment."
Draven leaned down, his face inches from his subordinate.
"You used an Alpha Command on a pack member inside the safe zone. That is a violation of the Founding Code. As of this moment, you are stripped of your rank. If you survive the blood loss, you can scrub the latrines."
Draven straightened up and turned to Elara.
She braced herself, expecting a reprimand for stabbing his lieutenant.
She gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white.
Draven reached out.
His large, rough hand cupped her face.
His thumb brushed over her cheekbone, wiping away a smear of Augus's blood.
"You missed a spot," he murmured.
The touch was electric.
It wasn't gentle—he didn't know how to be gentle—but it was acknowledging.
He pulled a heavy ring from his pinky finger.
It was black gold, inlaid with a jagged obsidian wolf.
The seal of the Underworld's second-in-command.
He took Elara's hand.
Her fingers were stained with soot and grime, her nails broken.
He slid the ring onto her thumb—it was too big for her finger—and closed her hand into a fist around it.
"Anyone who questions you, show them this," Draven addressed the room, though his eyes never left hers.
"From this moment on, her word is my word. Her kills are my kills."
He looked at the shocked minions by the door.
"Get this trash," he gestured to the bleeding Augus, "out of her laboratory. She has work to do."
As the room cleared, leaving them alone in the sudden silence, Elara looked up at him.
She opened her mouth to thank him, but the words died in her throat.
Draven was standing too close.
And he was...
vibrating.
A fine tremor ran through his massive frame.
His skin radiated a heat that rolled off him in waves, smelling of scorched earth and ozone.
When he blinked, the gold in his eyes didn't just swirl; it boiled.
He pulled his hand away from her face abruptly, as if her skin burned him.
"Finish the stabilizer, Elara," he rasped, his voice sounding like gravel grinding together.
"Tonight."
He turned and stormed out of the room without looking back, his stride jerky and uneven, leaving Elara standing in the cold room, clutching the heavy ring, staring at the empty doorway where a predator was clearly losing the war against himself.