Chapter Six: The Wolf in the Dark

Alpha Kael

No wolf walked into my territory with treachery in their heart and left alive.

If they did, it meant I hadn’t seen them.

And that never happened.

But tonight, one did.

She crossed my threshold, and in that instant, she became mine.

Her scent hit first, moss and river fog, threaded with wildness. It wasn’t soft or tamed; it was raw, alive, untethered. It slashed through the smoke, the perfume, the sweat-soaked air of Obsidian and slammed into me like a pulse.

No fear. No submission.

She walked into my den like she belonged.

That was her first mistake.

Spies always underestimated the Thorn brothers. And she was a spy, I could feel it in my blood.

If she’d come to dismantle what we’d built, she’d leave in chains, or in pieces.

Our informant at the ACSC had warned us: there was movement in the dark. Someone was sending a woman, a distraction, a snare, a weapon shaped like a temptation. They thought they could unravel me with silk and skin.

They didn’t understand me.

I wasn’t a man undone by flesh.

I was the wolf who hunted it.

The crowd parted as I made my way to the mezzanine. Alphas, betas, enforcers, each of them stepped aside on instinct. I carried no crown, but power bled from me, thick as iron, and they felt it.

Below, the room pulsed in rhythm with the bass, wolves pretending to be human, losing themselves in the blur of lights, bodies, and sin.

I stopped above the stage.

And there she was.

Preparing for her first act.

Confident. Clueless.

Already standing in the wolf’s mouth.

Silverfang wasn’t built on diplomacy. We didn’t follow the Council, we bent it. The Thorn legacy wasn’t charm; it was fear refined into order. Power wasn’t brute strength. It was leverage. Secrets. Control.

And Obsidian?

Obsidian was my throne.

Every sin, every secret in Silverfang spilled here beneath my lights.

They thought the dark made them invisible, but the moment they entered my house, they stripped themselves bare.

Tobias Thorn might have laid the foundation, but my brothers and I fortified it. We didn’t inherit wealth. We weaponized it.

Obsidian wasn’t a club.

It was a fortress.

A hunting ground.

And I was its architect of shadows.

They called me ruthless. Dangerous.

They didn’t know the half of it.

I wasn’t just Alpha Kael Thorn.

I was the fang. The enforcer. The one who made nightmares real.

“A full house tonight,” Jaxson’s voice drawled behind me, smooth, amused, too calm for the chaos we ruled.

My older brother. The strategist. Always counting the profits, never the bodies.

“The Alphas are out in force,” I muttered, scanning the mezzanine. “Half the southern packs are here.”

“Council’s in session,” he said with a lazy smirk. “They needed an outlet. Obsidian provides. Rare wine, bonded flesh, sins with no witnesses. Where else would they go?”

“You sound cheerful,” I said.

“Profits doubled. No audits. For once, Kael, I’m enjoying myself.”

He clapped my shoulder, the ghost of a grin on his lips, and disappeared back into the crowd, already sealing another deal before the ice melted in his glass.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I should indulge.

But indulgence didn’t quiet the whisper that had reached me earlier: ACSC raid.

Unconfirmed. Dangerous.

And silence, that was always the loudest warning in our world.

If they stormed Obsidian, even on false grounds, fractures would spread through the empire.

I couldn’t allow that.

At the bar, Geena slid a tumbler toward me, the amber liquid catching the light. “The new girl’s up next,” she said. “Looks nervous. Wants to impress.”

A slow smile curved my mouth.

“She will,” I murmured. “Just not how she expects.”

The lights dimmed.

The music swelled.

Obsidian came alive, the bass, the murmurs, the pulse of wolves hungry for escape. Shadows deepened, the scent of lust and danger thickening like smoke.

And then, she stepped into the light.

She didn’t walk. She arrived.

Blonde under the stage glare, young, fluid as water. Her body moved like music had claimed it, but there was a stiffness underneath. Every motion was too clean, too choreographed.

Every sway of her hips screamed precision, not pleasure.

Her fear was buried deep, hidden behind practiced grace.

She wasn’t feeding on the rhythm.

She was surviving it.

And in that instant, I knew.

She wasn’t one of mine.

“We need to talk, Kael.”

Malric’s voice, low, rough, and impatient, cut through the haze.

My younger brother. The bloodhound. Paranoid, precise, too sharp for comfort.

“What now?” I asked, not taking my eyes off her.

“We’ve got a problem.”

I lifted the glass, letting the scotch burn down my throat. “Be specific.”

“The spy.”

My lips curved. “Expected.”

Malric scowled. “Expected? You’ve been sitting on this?”

“I’ve been watching.”

“Watching?” he hissed.

“Eliminating options.”

I finally turned toward him, my gaze slicing through the dim. “She’s on stage right now.”

His head snapped toward her, eyes narrowing. “Her?”

“Rhea Black,” I said. “Or that’s the name she used on her file. Willows Grove Dancers.”

“Willows Grove doesn’t exist,” he muttered.

“I know.”

She was a lie wrapped in silk.

Her résumé was flawless, too flawless. The way her body moved, the confidence, the calculated glances, it was the kind of perfection that only came from training. Not experience. Not instinct.

“She’s a faux blonde,” Malric said, his nose twitching. “Early twenties. Trained. But she’s not sweating. She’s dancing to hide, not to feed.”

Exactly.

“You think she’s ACSC?”

“Could be. Or Worthmore’s pet. Or Rikshaw Syndicate, they’ve been sniffing around lately.”

He cursed under his breath.

I drained the rest of my drink, the ice clinking like teeth in a growl. “Whoever she belongs to, she lied.”

And in my world, lies weren’t forgiven.

They were claimed.

Broken.

Devoured.

I turned back toward the stage, ready to calculate her next move, when something shifted.

The air around me thickened.

My wolf stirred.

Not in warning. Not in rage.

In recognition.

The moment her eyes lifted, just for a heartbeat, across the crowd, across the smoke and chaos, my chest constricted. That same wild scent that had hit me when she crossed the door now flooded my senses, sharper, richer, laced with something impossible to ignore.

The kind of scent that didn’t belong to a stranger.

Didn’t belong to a spy.

It belonged to fate.

Mate.

The word thundered through my mind, shaking the walls I’d spent years building.

My wolf lunged inside me, snarling, desperate, clawing toward her. Ours. The voice wasn’t mine, it was ancient, instinctive, absolute.

I gripped the railing until the steel bit into my palms.

Control.

I forced the wolf down, breath steady, muscles rigid. This wasn’t the time. This wasn’t the place.

Accepting a mate bond here, now, was suicide.

Every eye in Obsidian was watching. Every rival, every would-be usurper, every Alpha who’d love to whisper that Kael Thorn, Silverfang’s Alpha, had gone soft over a woman.

Acknowledging a bond was a weakness.

A crack in armor I’d spent a lifetime forging.

I would not be ruled by instinct.

Not tonight.

But my wolf didn’t agree. His growl rippled beneath my skin, a vibration I could barely contain. He could smell her, his scent intertwined with hers, a magnetic pull that defied logic.

She didn’t even know.

Or maybe she did. Maybe that tremor I saw beneath her flawless mask wasn’t fear, it was recognition.

The way she moved, the subtle hitch in her breath when her gaze skimmed the mezzanine, it wasn’t performance anymore. It was reaction.

She felt it too.

Ours.

The word pulsed again, harder this time.

I ground my teeth, shoving the urge back into the dark.

No.

Not here. Not now.

I couldn’t afford to lose control.

My wolf prowled beneath the surface, teeth bared in frustration. His instinct screamed to reach for her, to claim, to mark, to shield.

But Kael Thorn didn’t yield to instinct.

I’d built an empire on the corpses of men who did.

So I watched her instead, each turn, each sway, the defiance in her stillness, the way she danced like survival itself was an art form.

She wasn’t prey.

She was something else.

Something dangerous enough to make the wolf in me kneel.

And that terrified me more than the ACSC ever could.

Malric followed my gaze, jaw tightening. “You’re staring,” he said, suspicion cutting through his tone.

I didn’t look at him. “Observing.”

“Feels like more than that.”

“She’s mine,” I said quietly.

Malric stiffened. “What do you mean, ”

“Not in the way you think,” I interrupted, eyes narrowing as she finished her final spin. The applause hit like thunder, sharp and hollow.

But I wasn’t hearing it.

I was hearing her heartbeat.

Fast. Erratic. Familiar.

My wolf pressed harder, restless, hungry.

I forced a slow exhale, crushing the tremor threatening to break free.

“I’ll handle her,” I said.

Malric frowned. “Kael, ”

“Not a word,” I growled, the edge in my voice silencing him instantly.

I straightened, the façade of calm sliding effortlessly back into place as the lights dimmed and the stage went dark.

The wolf inside me still seethed, pacing, snarling, aching for what he already knew was his.

But Kael Thorn didn’t break for fate.

Not when the game had just begun.

And tonight,

she had just become mine.