The gala was held in a private ballroom downtown.
It smelled like old wolf money, vintage champagne, and bloodline politics dressed up as charity.
The moment Silas and I stepped through the gilded doors, the room went quiet.
Not because the Alpha King had arrived.
Because his hand was resting firmly on the small of my back.
The board members who had survived yesterday's near-feral boardroom disaster stared at me without bothering to hide it. Twenty-four hours ago, I had been the forgettable secretary in a gray suit. Tonight, I was draped in silver and walking beside the apex predator like I belonged there.
I could feel the question moving through the room.
Who is she?
Silas's touch at my spine wasn't decorative. It was directional. Possessive. Every time an Alpha or an ambitious Beta drifted too close, his fingers flexed once, and they changed course without even seeming to know why.
We stopped near a cluster of investors.
I recognized Rowan Kade immediately—maritime shipping, old family money, the kind of Alpha who looked polished until he opened his mouth.
"Silas," Rowan said smoothly. Then his eyes moved to me. "So this is the miracle from the boardroom."
His smile turned sharper.
"I expected someone more... exotic. Though I suppose human pets are easier to train."
The air around us dropped ten degrees.
Silas's hand left my back.
That was the warning sign.
The last polite second before violence.
Before he could break Rowan's jaw in front of half the city's wolf elite, I reached out and placed two fingers lightly on his wrist.
His skin was hot. His muscles were already tightening.
I looked at Rowan and smiled.
A perfectly professional, dead-eyed smile.
"It's always interesting hearing you talk about training, Mr. Kade," I said, loud enough for the people nearest us to hear. "Especially with Kade Maritime's Singapore exposure hanging by a thread."
Rowan's smile slipped.
Good.
I didn't stop.
Five minutes earlier, near the bar, his CFO had been thinking loudly enough for me to pick apart the whole problem without him ever opening his mouth.
"You're overleveraged on three shipping routes the market still believes are insured," I continued. "But your reinsurer has been quietly renegotiating risk after last quarter's port seizures. If that paperwork goes public before Monday, your stock won't need enemies. It'll choke on its own debt."
A woman beside him inhaled sharply.
Rowan's face lost color fast.
"You should be careful who you call a pet," I said softly. "Some of us bite back in numbers."
Silence hit the group like a slap.
Then someone behind us coughed into a champagne flute, very obviously covering a laugh.
Rowan took one step back.
Then another.
Humiliation always looks uglier on men who mistake arrogance for power.
I turned slightly and found Silas watching me.
The expression in his eyes was far more dangerous than anger.
Dark amusement. Approval. Something almost like pride, if pride had teeth.
He didn't just want me.
He was interested in me.
That might have been the more dangerous thing.
Rowan muttered something that sounded like an excuse and retreated toward the bar.
I let him go.
"Balcony," I murmured.
I needed air I couldn't smell and distance I definitely couldn't trust.
Silas studied my face for half a second, then nodded once and guided me through the glass doors.
The winter air hit hard.
Cold wind lifted my hair and skimmed bare skin along my back and arms. For three seconds, I stood there and let the cold cut through the heat of the ballroom.
Then someone brushed past me.
Male. Tall. Deliberate.
He didn't stop. He didn't look at me. The movement was too smooth to be accidental.
As his shoulder grazed mine, he leaned in just enough for his voice to reach my ear.
"Aster vael en silvera."
My blood turned to ice.
The words struck deep and ancient, hitting some buried place in me hard enough to stop everything else.
Silver Coven.
The old language.
A language that was supposed to have died in fire ten years ago.
The last moon still remembers.
My body locked.
My pulse slammed once, hard enough to hurt. The skin along my arms went cold so fast it felt unnatural.
Inside the ballroom, music kept playing.
Glasses still clinked.
Someone laughed.
But behind me, Silas moved.
He reached me in two long strides, his hand closing around my bare arm before I had fully turned. Not gentle. Not brutal. Just absolute.
He had felt it.
Without the overload tearing through his senses, he was too attuned to every shift in me now—the drop in my skin temperature, the sudden spike in my pulse, the split-second loss of control I had worked years to erase.
His gaze cut toward the man disappearing back into the crowd.
Then snapped back to me.
His gray eyes were lethal.
"What," Silas growled, his Alpha aura flaring sharp in the winter dark, "did he just say to you?"