SERAPHINA’S POV

Jack lasted thirty-seven hours.

I wasn’t surprised by the impatience.

Men like Jack Draven did not know how to endure humiliation quietly. They could survive losses. They could tolerate setbacks. They could even endure pain if it gave them something to rage against.

But being cornered publicly? Being named, exposed, and abandoned by the very chaos he had tried to weaponize?

That was different.

When the first perimeter alarm screamed through Nightfang’s command center, I almost burst into laughter.

I was standing beside Kieran, over a table covered with route maps, surveillance reports, and troop placements, when the sound cut through the room like a blade.

Every conversation stopped.

Maya froze with one hand pressed to her headset. Corin lifted his head from the tactical feed. Ethan’s eyes sharpened instantly across the table.

Kieran did not move for half a second.

Then his gaze met mine, and a silent conversation passed between us.

’There it is.’

“Location.” Kieran’s voice reverberated through the room.

Gavin’s voice came through the speaker system, calm but edged with urgency. “Eastern industrial corridor. Three groups approaching from different access points. Mostly rogues, armed. They’re trying to split our response.”

“Numbers?”

“Initial count is forty-eight,” Maya answered from the surveillance station, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “No, correction—sixty-two. They’re using scent blockers and false heat signatures.”

“They want us confused,” Ethan said grimly.

Kieran’s mouth hardened. “Then disappoint them.”

The command center erupted into motion.

No panic.

No shouting for the sake of shouting.

Just movement, fast and clean, everyone slipping into the positions we had rehearsed because we had known Jack would come.

He must have believed his surprise attack would fracture our coalition before we finished consolidating.

Instead, he was walking straight into the net we had built for him.

I pushed away from the table, pulse racing wild, feeling silver warmth begin to stir beneath my skin.

“I’m going to the eastern line.”

Kieran’s hand caught mine before I took a step.

His eyes searched mine with fierce urgency, gold already bleeding through the dark—a plea laced with fear and love.

“Stay safe.”

I lifted our hands and pressed a kiss to the back of his knuckles.

"You too."

“If Jack is there—”

“I know,” I said softly.

We needed him alive.

For evidence. For names. For routes. For everything Catherine and Marcus had buried behind layers of blood and fear.

Kieran’s jaw flexed once.

Then he released me.

The night outside pressed in, thick with heat and smoke, every breath burning my lungs and every shadow sharpened by the taste of coming violence.

Los Angeles stretched beyond Nightfang’s controlled territory in a glittering sprawl of distant lights, but here, near the eastern industrial corridor, the world had narrowed to concrete, warehouses, chain-link fences, and the metallic scent of violence waiting to happen.

The first wave hit before I reached the forward line.

Rogues surged from between abandoned loading bays, moving fast beneath the cover of smoke bombs and wolfsbane-laced irritants.

Their formation was rough but not mindless. They had been drilled well enough to strike in layers.

Too bad for them, we had drilled harder.

“Left flank, hold,” Kieran ordered through the speakers, his voice steady enough to cut through the chaos.

“Frostbane, Shadowmoon, close the southern gap. Seabreeze, Bloodspire, suppress the rear units. Nightfang, advance on my mark.”

The allied response snapped into place with brutal precision.

Frostbane and Shadowmoon wolves slammed into the southern attackers before they could break through the barricade.

Seabreeze and Bloodspire fighters, lean and swift, moved like water through smoke, cutting off retreat paths with nets soaked in neutralizing compounds Alois had prepared.

Nightfang warriors held the center, disciplined and unyielding, forcing the rogues into narrower lanes where their numbers became less useful.

I lifted my hand.

Silver pressure unfurled from me in a controlled wave, sweeping toward the first cluster of attackers.

My mind brushed theirs.

Fear. Rage. Orders repeated until they became instinct.

Jack’s voice in their memories, promising survival through violence.

My power sharpened.

Sleep.

The command struck cleanly.

A dozen rogues dropped instantly, collapsing across the pavement before they could reach our front line.

Then something hit back.

A psychic barrier rose across the battlefield, invisible but unmistakable, catching my next wave and splintering it apart before it reached its targets.

Pain sparked behind my eyes as I staggered half a step.

Corin appeared beside me immediately, his sea-salt-and-citrus scent cutting through smoke and blood.

“There,” he said, eyes narrowed toward the north warehouse roof. “Not one psychic. A team.”

I followed his gaze. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

At first, I saw nothing.

Then I stopped looking with my eyes.

There—figures positioned along the rooftop, each standing at a separate point around a faintly glowing sigil array.

Five of them.

They moved their hands in perfect unison. Their psychic pressure locked together like interlaced blades.

“Jack brought specialists,” I muttered.

Corin’s expression darkened. “There are at least two Dominators in that mix.”

Another wave of pressure slammed toward us.

Corin raised his hand, and the air bent.

His psychic shield met theirs with a deep, silent impact that made the ground beneath my boots tremble.

“They’re disrupting targeting,” he said through clenched teeth. “Every time you extend, they split the path and scatter the command.”

“Then I’ll narrow it.”

I pushed forward again, this time shaping my power into a thinner thread instead of a wave.

The silver line shot across the battlefield toward the nearest rooftop psychic.

For one breath, it worked.

Then the entire team shifted.

One shielded.

Two redirected.

Two amplified.

The thread fractured inches from its target, recoiling with such violence my vision went white, and pain screamed through my skull.

I could feel Kieran’s fury burning from across the field.

“Sera!”

“I’m fine!” I forced out.

I wasn’t fine. My hands shook, and I could taste copper at the back of my throat.

But I was still standing, and that was enough.

Amid the chaos, a new focus cut through the confusion. Across the battlefield, Jack finally appeared.

He emerged from the smoke near the central access road, flanked by heavily armed rogues and wearing a grin sharp enough to cut.

Even from a distance, I felt the hatred in him when his gaze found mine.

“There you are!” he shouted, voice carrying over the chaos. “The righteous little Luna.”

Kieran snarled. Power rolled off him in a dark, lethal wave, and every wolf nearby felt it.

Jack’s grin widened, but there was a strain beneath it.

“You should have stayed quiet, Seraphina!” Jack called. “You should have let the world burn the way it was meant to.”

I stepped forward despite Corin’s warning hand near my arm.

“The world was burning because men like you kept lighting matches and blaming the smoke on everyone else.”

Jack’s face twisted, his attention narrowing on me so completely that he forgot the battlefield was larger than his hatred.

The rooftop psychics shifted with him, their synchronization tightening around his position as if protecting his rage had become part of their formation.

I felt Kieran before I saw him move.

One moment, Kieran stood at the edge of the front line, golden-eyed and deadly.

The next, Ashar, massive and golden, tore into the night.

The ground seemed to recoil beneath Ashar’s paws as he launched himself through the fractured center lane, moving with such speed that even Jack’s guards reacted too late.

The psychic team sensed the shift and tried to redirect.

Corin smiled coldly.

“My turn.”

His power struck upward like a tide.

At the same moment, I threw everything I had into one silver burst—not at the rogues, not at Jack, but at the space between the rooftop psychics, disrupting the rhythm that held them together.

Their perfect sync faltered for a heartbeat.

But a heartbeat was all Ashar needed.

Jack turned too late.

Ashar hit his guards first, scattering them like bodies thrown by a storm. One rogue slammed into a truck hard enough to dent the door.

Another dropped beneath Nightfang restraints before he could rise.

Jack shifted halfway, claws bursting free as he lunged.

Ashar took the blow across his shoulder but did not slow.

He drove Jack into the pavement with a snarl that shook through the entire field.

Jack fought like a trapped animal, all teeth, claws, and vicious desperation, but Kieran’s wolf was not fighting to kill.

Every movement had purpose.

Every strike disabled.

Every bite restrained.

Every ounce of violence bent toward control.

I ran toward them as allied wolves closed the remaining gaps around us.

The rooftop psychics tried one last time. Their combined pressure gathered overhead, jagged and unstable now.

I lifted both hands.

“No.”

Silver light erupted outward.

The psychic assault shattered above the battlefield like glass under moonlight.

When silence fell, it arrived in pieces.

The last rogue forced to his knees.

The final weapon kicked away.

The rooftop psychics bound under Corin’s crushing pressure.

And Jack Draven pinned beneath Ashar’s massive paw, bloodied and furious.

Kieran shifted back slowly, one hand locked around Jack’s throat as silver restraints snapped into place around his wrists.

Jack spat blood onto the pavement and laughed.

“You think this ends with me?”

I crouched in front of him, close enough to see the madness burning behind his eyes. Behind me, Kieran’s presence settled warm and lethal at my back.

“No,” I said quietly. “I think this starts with you.”

For the first time since the attack began, the bravado in Jack’s face cracked.

As the dust settled and allied forces moved to secure the field around us, I smiled at Jack Draven—captured and unable to hide behind anyone else.

One monster down, two to go.