The night did not bring sleep. It brought fire.
Aria stood in the bathroom of the East Wing suite, the lights dimmed to a low amber glow. The shower was running full blast, churning out clouds of steam, but she wasn't in it. She was gripping the edge of the marble sink, her knuckles white, staring at her reflection in the mirror.
She didn't recognize the woman staring back.
Her skin, usually a pale ivory, was flushed with a strange, luminescent heat. It wasn't the sweaty, sickly fever of a flu; it was the radiant burn of a nuclear reactor starting up inside her chest. Every vein in her neck pulsed with a rhythm that was too fast, too strong for a human heart.
But it was the eyes that terrified her.
For the third time in an hour, her hazel irises had bled away, swallowed by a milky, terrifying white.
*Matriarch.*
The word the vault system had used. The word that had made Damien pause.
"Stop it," Aria hissed at her reflection. She splashed cold water on her face, the liquid hissing as it hit her burning skin. "Not now. Not here."
She couldn't shift. Not in the middle of a hostile takeover. If she shifted into *that*—whatever *that* was—she wouldn't just break the furniture. She would tear through the steel-reinforced walls of the penthouse. She would expose herself to Damien, and if he knew what she was becoming...
He wouldn't just see her as a wife. He would see her as a weapon.
The white faded from her eyes, retreating like a tide. Aria let out a shaky breath, turning off the shower. She dried her face and pulled her black tactical turtleneck back on. It felt suffocating against her overheated skin.
She needed air. She needed to patrol.
She stepped out of the bathroom. The suite was quiet. Leo was asleep on his cot—or pretending to be—clutching the new Sinclair-Phone like a teddy bear. Mia was stable, the soft *beep-beep* of the heart monitor the only sound in the room.
Aria checked the lock on the door. Engaged.
She slipped out into the main hallway.
The penthouse was massive, a sprawling kingdom of glass and shadows at 3 AM. The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a panoramic view of Manhattan, a grid of golden lights that looked beautiful and indifferent to their plight.
Aria moved silently, her bare feet making no sound on the hardwood. She was heading for the kitchen to get ice water, but she stopped dead when she reached the living area.
She wasn't alone.
Damien was there.
He was sitting on one of the leather sofas, surrounded by a sea of holographic displays projected from the coffee table. The blue light washed over his face, highlighting the exhaustion etched into his sharp features. He had discarded his suit jacket and tie hours ago. His dress shirt was unbuttoned halfway, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms corded with muscle and... scars.
Aria froze in the shadows. She had seen him naked a thousand times during their marriage, but she didn't remember *those* scars.
There was a jagged, ugly line running down his left forearm. Another one peeked out from the collar of his shirt, tracing toward his heart. They weren't battle scars from claws. They were silver burns. Wolfsbane scars. Chemical torture.
*Five years,* Aria thought, a pang of unwanted emotion hitting her chest. *You've been bleeding too.*
Damien didn't look up, but his hand moved to the empty whiskey glass on the table.
"You're loud when you think, Aria," he said. His voice was rough, like gravel grinding against velvet.
Aria stepped out of the shadows, crossing her arms. "I thought I was being quiet."
"You walk like a ghost," Damien admitted, swiping a hand through the air to minimize a window filled with stock market graphs. "But your scent is... agitated. You smell like ozone and burnt sugar."
Aria stiffened. That was the scent of the White Wolf power leaking out. She forced herself to walk casually to the fridge, putting distance between them.
"It's been a long day. I almost killed your fiancée. I think I'm allowed to be agitated."
Damien let out a dry chuckle. "Ex-fiancée. I received a notification from the legal department ten minutes ago. Elena has filed a cease-and-desist order against the Sinclair Group, and her father has frozen our joint assets in the Cayman Islands."
Aria grabbed a bottle of water, pressing the cold plastic against her overheating wrist. "You sound remarkably calm for a man who just lost millions."
"Money is renewable," Damien said. He turned his head to look at her. In the blue light, his grey eyes were bottomless. "Family is not."
The word hung in the air between them. *Family.*
Aria leaned against the kitchen island, keeping the marble slab between them as a shield. "Don't do that. Don't rewrite history. You kicked your 'family' out five years ago."
"I sent you away," Damien corrected sharply. "There is a difference."
"Not to the person packing the bags."
Damien stood up. The sudden movement made the holograms flicker. He walked toward her, not with the predatory stalking of earlier, but with a slow, tired gravity. He stopped at the island.
"Do you know why I never filed the divorce papers?" he asked softly.
Aria gripped the water bottle. "Because you forgot. Because you were too busy building your empire."
"No." Damien looked down at his hands—the hands that could crush a throat or sign a billion-dollar check. "I kept them in the top drawer of my desk. Every morning for five years, I looked at them. I told myself to sign them. To let you go. To let you be happy in Paris."
He looked up, his gaze locking onto hers.
"But I couldn't. Because as long as those papers were unsigned, you were still mine. Legally. Spiritually. Even if you hated me... you were still my wife."
Aria felt her heart hammer against her ribs. This was dangerous. This vulnerability was a trap. It was harder to fight than his anger because part of her—the treacherous part that remembered his touch—wanted to believe him.
"You're drunk," she said dismissively.
"I'm sober," Damien countered. "And I am terrified."
Aria blinked. "The great Damien Sinclair doesn't get scared."
"I do when there are Russian mercenaries circling my home," Damien said grimly. "And when my son looks at me like I'm a monster. And when my wife comes back from the dead looking like she's hiding a grenade in her chest."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"What is happening to you, Aria? You're burning up. I can feel the heat from here."
Aria flinched back. He was too perceptive.
"It's the stress," she lied. "Or maybe it's the allergy to your bullshit."
Damien's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "There she is. The girl from the Underground."
Before he could push further, a high-pitched *chirp* echoed from the hallway.
It wasn't a bird. It was a digital alert.
Both of them snapped into combat mode instantly. The vulnerability vanished, replaced by the cold efficiency of soldiers.
"That's Leo's phone," Aria said.
"No," Damien said, glancing at his wrist display. "That's the internal network monitor. Leo set a trap."
They sprinted down the hall.
Leo was already awake. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hallway, the black Sinclair-Phone glowing in the dark. His hair was a mess, but his eyes were wide and hyper-focused behind his glasses.
"Dad!" Leo shouted—the first time he had used the word. He didn't even notice he'd said it. "Someone is pinging the HVAC system!"
Damien dropped to a knee beside his son. "Show me."
Leo turned the screen. A wall of scrolling red text filled the display.
"They aren't attacking the firewall," Leo explained, his fingers flying across the virtual keyboard. "They're bypassing it. They're using a maintenance backdoor in the ventilation software. The same one Mom used to get in."
Aria felt a chill that had nothing to do with her fever. "They're using my route?"
"They're trying to overheat the building," Leo said, his voice trembling slightly. "Look. They sent a command to the climate control unit in the West Wing. They set the target temperature to 110 degrees."
"They're trying to flush us out," Damien growled. A low snarl ripped from his throat, his eyes flashing silver. "If the core temperature rises, the serum degrades. Mia's treatment will be ruined."
"Can you stop it?" Aria asked, crouching beside them.
"I... I can't block them," Leo stammered. "Their script is polymorphic. It changes every time I try to kill it. It's military-grade, Mom. It's way better than my stuff."
Damien looked at the screen. He recognized the code structure. He had seen it before, in classified Council briefings.
"It's not the Russians," Damien said, his voice ice-cold. "It's Vance. That's a Council override code."
"Elena's father," Aria realized. "He's attacking the building?"
"He's trying to force a failure," Damien said. "If the serum spoils, I have to open the vault to get more. If I open the vault, the lockdown lifts. If the lockdown lifts... they come in."
The temperature in the hallway was already rising. Aria could feel the air getting stuffy.
"Leo," Damien said, his voice calm and commanding. "Don't try to block the script. They expect resistance. If you fight it, they'll just push harder."
Leo looked up, confused. "So we just let them cook us?"
"No," Damien said. A dark, ruthless smile spread across his face. "We invite them in."
He pointed to a specific line of code.
"Redirect the thermal command," Damien ordered. "Let the system think it's heating the penthouse. But send the actual voltage spike to the external security grid's transformer on the street level."
Leo's eyes widened. He understood immediately. "You want to blow the transformer?"
"If the transformer blows, the street loses power," Damien said. "The cameras go down. The streetlights go out. And those black SUVs outside lose their surveillance feed."
"Blind them," Aria whispered. "Smart."
"Do it," Damien commanded.
Leo grinned—a feral, sharp-toothed grin that was 100% Sinclair. He tapped the screen. "Executing redirection... in three... two... one."
*BOOM.*
A muffled explosion shook the building. Even forty floors up, they felt the vibration in their teeth.
Through the windows, the city block below plunged into darkness. The streetlights died. The glowing red taillights of the idling SUVs vanished into the black abyss of the sudden blackout.
"Target down," Leo whispered, looking at his phone with awe. "Whoa. I just blew up a city block."
"You tripped a circuit breaker," Damien corrected, standing up and buttoning his shirt. "But yes. Effective."
He looked at Aria. The shared adrenaline was electric. For a moment, they weren't enemies. They were a team. A pack.
"They won't try that again tonight," Damien said. "They'll assume the power surge was an accident caused by their own hack."
"We bought time," Aria said. "But not much."
"Enough for breakfast," Damien said dryly. "Go back to sleep, Leo. Good work."
Leo beamed. He actually beamed. He scrambled back into the room, clutching the phone like a trophy.
Aria stayed in the hall with Damien. The crisis had passed, but the tension remained.
"You're good with him," Aria admitted grudgingly. "You didn't treat him like a kid."
"He isn't a kid right now," Damien said. "He is a soldier in a siege. He needs to feel useful, or he will panic."
He stepped closer to Aria. The smell of ozone and burnt sugar was fainter now, masked by the scent of victory.
"We need to talk about your eyes, Aria," Damien said quietly.
Aria froze. "What about them?"
"When the power dipped," Damien said, "your eyes didn't dilate like a human's. And they didn't glow gold like a Wolf's."
He reached out and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed her skin, and a jolt of electricity arced between them—so strong it actually made a visible *snap* of blue light.
Aria gasped and pulled back, rubbing her cheek.
Damien stared at his fingertips, then at her. His expression shifted from suspicion to something deeper. Something like awe.
"White," he whispered. "I saw white."
Aria backed away, her heart pounding harder than it had during the explosion. "You're seeing things, Damien. It's the fatigue. Go to bed."
She turned and fled into the guest suite, locking the heavy door behind her. She leaned against the wood, breathing hard, her hands trembling.
She had survived the Council's hack. She had survived the blackout.
But she didn't know how much longer she could survive the man on the other side of the door.
Or the monster waking up inside her skin.