[POV: Dominic]
The passage was exactly where Talia had drawn it—a maintenance tunnel beneath the packhouse's western foundation, sealed with a rusted iron grate that hadn't been opened in decades.
I melted the lock with a whisper of shadow magic and slipped inside while five hundred wolves tore each other apart above me.
The sounds of the siege filtered down through the stone: muffled roars, the crack of splintering wood.
My army, my distraction. Every wolf Damian committed to this assault was a piece I'd arranged months ago, and every one of them was expendable.
Shadow magic coiled around me, swallowing my scent, my heartbeat, my footsteps. The packhouse was empty. Aaron had pulled every interior defender to the eastern gate hours ago, exactly as I'd predicted when the third wave hit.
"Predictable," I murmured as I emerged into a deserted ground-floor corridor. "Loyal wolves always are. They'll sacrifice everything to hold the line, never thinking about what's walking through the back door."
The hallways smelled of healing salves and old cedar, and beneath it—Atlas. Pine needles, threaded through the stone like he'd become part of the architecture.
"He was never welcomed like that at home," a voice whispered from somewhere I didn't want to examine.
"Shut up," I said aloud, and climbed the central staircase.
Draven's private quarters occupied the entire eastern wing of the third floor. The door was unlocked. I pushed it open and stepped inside, and the mingled scent of Atlas and Draven hit me so hard my stride broke.
Their bond was everywhere. In the two sets of boots by the door. In the way the blankets on the bed were tangled, the fabric shaped by two bodies that had memorized each other.
A home built for two people who belonged to each other so completely it saturated the walls.
"Look at this," I said softly, running my fingers along the doorframe. "Look at what he has. What he stumbled into through sheer pathetic luck while I clawed for every scrap of recognition our parents ever offered."
I pulled the shadow-forged blade from the sheath at my hip. The black steel consumed light, its surface swallowed the torchlight like a void given form.
"You were always the special one, weren't you, brother?" I knelt in the center of the bedroom floor and pressed the blade's tip to the hardwood.
"The prophecy child. The silver wolf. The one Mother whispered prayers over while Father taught me that love was earned through blood and obedience."
The first rune split the wood with a hiss of dark energy. Shadow magic bled from the cut, pooling in the groove and hardening into obsidian lines.
"They never told you the full prophecy, did they?"
I carved the second rune, then the third.
"Two brothers born under the moon's shadow. One to bring ruin, one to bring glory. But they left out the binding clause—the twins' power was never meant to be divided but held by one vessel. The stronger one."
The fourth rune connected to the first, and the circle hummed to life.
"I trained every single day of my life," I continued, the blade carving faster, the dark magic guiding my hand.
"Shadow manipulation and combat. Political strategy. I made myself into the perfect weapon, sharp enough to lead, ruthless enough to do what needed doing. And what did you do, Atlas? You ran and you hid. You trembled in corners and let the world feel sorry for you, and somehow that was enough."
The seventh rune. The eighth. The circle was nearly complete—twelve runes connected by shadow-hardened obsidian, pulsing with hungry energy.
"Somehow you stumbled across a border and landed in the arms of the most powerful Alpha in the North."
My voice dropped lower, rougher, the edges fraying despite my control.
"And he looked at you—broken, half-starved, barely able to shift—and decided you were worth protecting. Worth loving and building his entire future around."
The blade paused. My hand was trembling.
"Do you know what I would have given for someone to look at me that way?" The question scraped out of me raw and unplanned.
"Just once, Atlas. Just once in my entire life, to have someone see me and decide I was worth staying for. Parents looked at me and saw a tool—useful, sharp, disposable the moment something shinier came along."
"That's what this is really about," the voice whispered. "Not power. Not the prophecy. You want to be him. You've always wanted to be him."
"I said shut up." I drove the blade into the tenth rune with vicious force, splitting the wood in a spray of dark energy. "This is about power. The only currency that matters. The only thing that can't be taken away once you hold it tight enough."
"Liar. You want his life. The mate who holds him through nightmares. The pack that chose him when his own family threw him away. You want to know what it feels like to be loved the way Atlas is loved, and you hate yourself for wanting it, and you hate him for having it."
My jaw locked so tight the tendons in my neck stood out like cables.
The eleventh rune carved itself. My hand moving on its own, the ritual's momentum carrying me forward even as the voice peeled back every layer I'd spent twenty-two years building.
"I don't want to be loved," I snarled at the empty room. "I want to be feared. Fear is reliable. It doesn't leave. Fear doesn't look at your twin brother and decide he's the one worth saving while you rot in the shadow he cast."
The twelfth rune clicked into place.
The circle flared—a ring of black light that pulsed like a heartbeat—then settled into a steady glow. The shadows in the room bent toward it, drawn to the ritual's gravity like moths to a dark flame.
I stood and sheathed the blade. The circle hummed at my feet, waiting for twin blood, the only key that could unlock the transfer.
When Atlas entered this circle, the runes would activate and the blade would siphon his ancestral power through our shared blood, binding it permanently to my body.
His gift, his connection to the moon, the centuries of extinct power the Hollow Stones had poured into him—all of it would become mine.
The sounds of battle outside were growing distant.
Draven's reinforcements had turned the tide. It didn't matter. The siege had served its purpose. Every wolf fighting and dying on that field had bought me exactly what I needed: an empty room and the time to prepare the trap.
Atlas would come. He'd feel the pull of the twin bond the moment he entered the building: the resonance amplified by the circle, drawing him upward.
He'd come because he was Atlas: brave, foolish, incapable of walking away from a confrontation even when it was the only sane option.
I settled into the chair by the window, the blade across my knees, and watched the smoke rising from the battlefield below.
"Come home, brother."