Chapter 3

Seraphina POV:

The Toyota stopped outside a weathered red-brick apartment building on 42nd Street in Queens. I paid the driver, grabbed my duffel bag, and climbed three flights of creaking wooden stairs.

I unlocked the rusted deadbolt and entered apartment 3B. The cramped studio smelled faintly of damp plaster and warm air from the old radiator—a world away from the billion-dollar luxury of Black Stone Castle.

Yet my chest felt lighter than it had in years. I dropped my bag onto the frayed sofa, drew the yellowed curtains shut against the neon streetlights, and set my military-grade laptop on the wobbly wooden coffee table.

When I pressed the power button, pale blue light washed over my face as lines of encrypted code scrolled rapidly across the screen. I placed my fingers on the keyboard, drew in a steady breath, and began typing at blinding speed, reconnecting to the dark web's neural hub I had abandoned seven years ago.

Once the highest-level security protocols verified my biometrics, the handle "Lanyin" appeared online across the network's most secure nodes. Within three minutes, I created a phantom routing script that bounced my IP address across twelve offshore servers, making it extremely difficult for Black Stone Group's cybersecurity division to trace my signal.

Leaning back against the sofa cushions, I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a palm-sized mechanical wolf sentinel forged from dark steel and topped with a tiny red metal hat.

Julian had forged this sentinel himself seven years ago as a wedding gift. It was the only thing of his I had brought with me. Looking down at its cold metal shell, I pressed the rune-carved switch on its chest.

"I do not love you."

The mechanical voice box repeated the same flat, emotionless recording it had played every night for the past seven years.

A dry laugh escaped my throat. Without blinking, I tossed the red-hatted mechanical wolf into the wire trash basket beside the table.

I looked down at my left ring finger, where a plain moonstone band gleamed dull white in the dim room. Gripping the band with my right thumb and forefinger, I pulled it over my knuckle, leaving a pale indentation on my skin, and dropped it onto the coffee table beside me.

I picked up my phone, logged into Black Stone Group's internal HR portal using my employee ID, and submitted my immediate resignation as Senior Data Analyst. Then I dialed an encrypted European number I hadn't dared to call in seven years. It belonged to Helaine Parks, the Supreme Elder of the White Wolf bloodline and head of the couture house Aethelgard.

The moment her stern, aged voice answered, my eyes stung. "Grand-aunt, it's Sera. I'm ready to come home to Aethelgard."

Julian POV:

At eleven o'clock at night, I turned my black Range Rover into the gated drive of Black Stone Castle, with Finn snoring softly in the passenger seat, his tablet beside him.

I killed the engine, lifted my sleeping son out of the SUV with one arm, and strode through the brightly lit front doors into the main foyer.

I inhaled instinctively, expecting to catch that faint, familiar trace of warm cotton that meant Seraphina was waiting for me by the stairs. Instead, the vast marble hall was silent.

"Seraphina?" I frowned, letting a ripple of Alpha Dominion roll through the ground floor. No one answered.

Martha hurried out from the side corridor, bowing her head under the pressure of my aura. "Alpha, the Luna left with a travel bag three hours ago. She said you sent her to the West Coast on pack business."

"I sent her to the West Coast?" My cold grey eyes narrowed into slits. After handing Finn over to a nanny, I took the stairs two at a time and shoved open the master bedroom doors.

On the glass vanity, the obsidian supplementary card and her brass keys sat side by side under the chandelier light. I yanked open the closet doors. Every couture gown and diamond set remained untouched; only her cheapest human clothes were gone.

My gaze shifted to the nightstand, and my pupils contracted. The red-hatted steel wolf sentinel was missing.

My hand closed around the titanium lighter in my pocket, my Alpha strength denting the heavy metal casing as I clenched it. A violent snarl rumbled in my chest—how dare a scentless, wolfless woman play this pathetic runaway game with me!