The Silent Alpha's Ransom

r tablet, her fingers trembling just enough to be annoying. She was a professional. She was the woman the high-society wolves called when a stray bo

an whose suit cost more than her college education-a beta for the Obsidian Syndicate. He hadn't spoken since they left the

ce. "I scrub the server, I delete the GPS pings from the night of the fourteenth, an

ers have changed, Ms. Thorne. The Al

to the Syndicate's main estate. My contra

ile touching his lips, "has been bought. A

he floor had just dropped out from under her life. Her father, a man who had spent his life hun

nse forest like a scar. The trees here were old, their branches clawing at the moon, and the air grew heavy

in front of a brutalist concrete structure built into the side

pened the d

was palpable. They didn't look like security; they looked like soldiers in the middle of a war. They escorted her th

door at the end of the hall. The beta sw

iting," he whispe

enter of the room stood a man with his back to her. He was tall, his shoulders broad enough to block out the glow of the screens, his hair a dark sh

stood there, staring at a frozen frame on the m

asked, her voice echo

his eyes a piercing, stormy gray that seemed to vibrate with an unspoken intensity

e hit the cold steel of the door. Caelum didn't stop until he was inches away. He was so close she could feel the unnatural heat roll

ll, silver device on the s

ry," she snapped, trying to rec

ploded inside Lyra's head. It wasn't a voice-it was a roar of grief, a jagged wave

er skull, though his lips n

n a screen, months ago, her hands flying across a keyboard as she wiped the logs of a security hub. She had tho

burning. "I was just doing my job. I didn

gripping it with a firm, terrifying heat. He didn't need words to tell her she was his p

growl vibrating in her very bones. You will find them, Lyra Thorne. You will find the

ilence in the room was deafening now, heavier than any shout. Caelum Vane t

re cold. She was trapped in a mountain with a silent god who wa

a ghost in the house of a monster. And as the moon rose over the mountain, Lyra realized that the worst part wasn't the collar