Chapter 1 1

Oliver POV

Three warnings. That's all Aunt Skylar gave me before I left tonight.

Don't stir up trouble. Remember what leadership costs. Stop picking fights with men stronger than you.

I didn't listen. Now I'm buried under Denver soil, dirt in my teeth, praying the tunnel holds one more minute.

Nobody turns down a job this size. When a crew needs the best thief alive, they call Oliver Carter. That's the rule.

Nobody knew the real reason I said yes. A debt. Old, unpaid, and about to get settled  one way or another.

I ripped the earth open with both hands, sealed it shut behind me the second I passed through. No way back. Only forward. If it worked, they'd remember my name. If it didn't, they'd bury it with me.

Last night I ran myself half to death under a full moon, wolf form, until my legs buckled and my magic tank filled to the brim. I needed it all tonight  every last drop.

Million auras. That's what sat behind the vault door ahead of us. Enough to make my Clan untouchable for a generation. Enough to make my name mean something again.

If I lived long enough to spend it.

The bank's wards were built to stop an Earth Elemental cutting straight through the floor  so we didn't. We cut in beside it, close enough to finish above ground. The only reason we went under at all was where this bank sat: Eastmoon Team land. Carters weren't welcome here. Hadn't been in years, no matter what people said had "changed" since Cole Aaron took the throne.

Behind me, Levi swore in the dark.

"Widen it, Oliver. I'm not built like you."

I glanced back. Shifterslight burned orange across his face. His job was keeping us breathing down here, and he did it well. Problem was, his dragon frame needed twice the tunnel his cousin gave him.

I turned to answer  and the ground under me gave out.

"Careful, that armor's a little snug these days." I dug him free, smirking. "Marriage catching up to you?"

"My wife stopped noticing my weight the day I convinced her I was worth keeping." He kept crawling. "She's stuck with me now."

"Doesn't mean she won't notice the extra pie."

A jolt of lightning snapped across my backside, his Thunderwing magic, sharp and petty. I let it go. Levi was the one Alpha alive who could actually beat me, and neither of us had ever dared find out for sure.

My watch buzzed. We'd arrived.

"Showtime." My wolf clawed under my skin, hungry for blood it wasn't getting yet.

I tore through the last stretch of stone, knuckles first, then my whole arm, hauling myself into the alley behind the bank. I threw a silence bubble around us before Levi even cleared the hole.

He surfaced cursing. I grabbed his hand and pulled.

The sky cracked open. Levi laughed as his storm broke loose  one blinding flash, a bolt straight into the fuse box in his hands. Every light in the bank died at once. He didn't stop there. Bolt after bolt tore into the power lines down the block until the whole street went black.

"Words are down!" I shouted through the rain, stripping off my ruined sweater.

"Guess we'll see." Levi pulled a silk pouch from his pocket, pinched out a fistful of black stardust, and threw it skyward.

The alley vanished. Stars swallowed us whole.

My boots hit the solid floor. Vault. We'd made it.

Gold bars floor to ceiling on one wall. Locked boxes lining the other  Denver's most dangerous Shifters trusted this place with secrets I didn't want to imagine.

Levi's light swept the room and stopped dead.

"Oliver." His voice dropped to something I'd never heard from him before. "That's not on the blueprint."

A steel case sat alone on its own pedestal. No dust. No lock. Fresh.

I crossed it before I could think better of it and wiped the surface clean.

My own name was carved into the lid. Not Oliver Carter, my real name. The one only four people alive still knew.

Then the case started ticking.

And somewhere above us, through three feet of vault ceiling, I heard the unmistakable sound of a hundred boots hitting marble floor  and Cole Aaron's voice, calm as death, telling his men to seal every exit.

We weren't robbing this vault.

We'd been let in.

Cracking every lock in this vault would take years. We only needed one to work.

Levi's eyes were already running down the wall, hunting numbers. "Three-eighteen. That's ours." Behind him sat a pile of aura notes nobody had bothered locking up properly, free money he wasn't even going to touch yet.