The sound of the vault door opening was the loudest thing Aria had ever heard.
Clang. Hiss. Grind.
The massive steel gears rotated slowly, breaking the airtight seal that had separated them from the world for the last hour. Aria stood up from the cold floor of the vault, pulling Leo and Mia behind her. Her body was vibrating, the White Wolf inside her pacing frantically, sensing the lingering stench of the intruder.
The door swung outward.
Damien stood there.
He looked like a ruin. His tie was gone. His dress shirt was unbuttoned to the sternum, revealing the sheen of cold sweat on his skin. But it was his eyes that stopped her breath. They weren't the cold, calculating eyes of the CEO she knew. They were haunted.
"He's gone," Damien said. His voice was raw, as if he'd been screaming, though the penthouse had been dead silent.
Aria didn't ask if he was okay. It was a stupid question. Instead, she asked the only thing that mattered.
"What did he want?"
Damien didn't answer immediately. He stepped aside, gesturing for them to leave the vault. "Leo. Take your sister to the bedroom. Put on your noise-canceling headphones. Do not come out until I come to get you."
Leo looked at his father, then at Aria. He saw the terrifying seriousness in their faces. He didn't argue. He nodded, grabbed Mia's hand, and dragged her toward the bedrooms.
When the children were gone, Damien walked to the wet bar. He poured a drink, his hand shaking slightly—a tremor so faint only a Wolf with Aria's heightened senses would notice.
"He wants you," Damien said, staring at the amber liquid. "He knows what you are."
Aria walked into the room, hugging her arms around herself. The air still smelled faintly of Volkov—formaldehyde, dry ice, and old blood.
"And what am I, Damien?" she asked quietly. "Because ten minutes ago, I was just your ex-wife. Now I can bend silver and scare Alphas."
Damien turned. He set the glass down without drinking.
"You are a ghost story," he said. "Sit down."
Aria sat on the edge of the velvet sofa. Damien remained standing, pacing the room as if guarding a perimeter.
"Three hundred years ago," Damien began, his voice low, "there was a civil war within the werewolf species. On one side, the Council and the elemental Alphas. On the other, the Argenti. The Silver Walkers."
He looked at her hands.
"Wolves are creatures of the moon, Aria. But the Argenti... legends say they were creatures of the star. Their biology was different. They didn't just resist silver; they absorbed its energy. They were the judges. The executioners. If an Alpha became corrupt, an Argenti was sent to kill him, because only they could wield the silver blades without dying."
Aria stared at her palms. "So we were... police?"
"You were kings," Damien corrected. "And that terrified the Council. They feared a power they couldn't control. So they launched the Great Purge. They hunted the Argenti down. Men, women, pups. They burned the records. They rewrote history to say the Argenti were demons, monsters who ate their own young."
He stopped pacing and looked at her with a heavy, tragic intensity.
"I thought they were all gone. Everyone did. Until tonight."
"Volkov called it a bloodline," Aria whispered. "He said I could cure the rot."
"He means inbreeding," Damien said bluntly. "The werewolf gene pool is stagnant. We are getting weaker with every generation. That's why Mia is sick. That's why Alphas are going mad. Volkov believes your blood—your ancient, uncorrupted DNA—is the key to creating a master race. He wants to breed you, Aria. He wants to chain you to a bed in Siberia and make you the mother of his army."
Aria felt bile rise in her throat. It was a violation so deep it made her skin crawl. The thought of that cold man touching her, using her...
"So," she said, her voice trembling. "He gave you an ultimatum."
"Twenty-four hours," Damien confirmed. "Tomorrow night is the Winter Solstice Gala. Every major Alpha in the hemisphere will be there. The Council. The press. Volkov wants me to hand you over publicly. A transfer of 'assets'."
"And if you don't?"
"He leaks the evidence of Leo's hack to the FBI," Damien said. "He sends federal agents to arrest a four-year-old for cyber-terrorism. Then he burns this tower to the ground with us inside."
Silence stretched between them.
Damien reached into his pocket and pulled out a black key card. He tossed it onto the coffee table. It skidded across the glass surface and stopped in front of her.
"There is a helicopter on the roof," Damien said. "It's fueled. The pilot is my personal guard. He will take you and the children to a private airfield in Jersey. From there, a jet will take you to a safe house in Patagonia. Volkov's reach is long, but he doesn't own South America yet."
Aria looked at the card. Then she looked at him.
"You're sending us away."
"I am saving you," Damien said fiercely. "I will stay. I will go to the Gala. I will distract Volkov. I will take the fall for the hack. I will buy you time."
"He will kill you," Aria stated. It wasn't a question.
"Probably," Damien admitted. He shrugged, as if his death were a minor inconvenience compared to her safety. "But you will be free. You and the children."
Aria stared at the man she had loved, hated, and mourned for five years. He was offering to die for her. Again. Just like he had tried to protect her by sending her away five years ago with that cruel divorce.
But she wasn't that girl anymore. She wasn't the weak, latent human who needed to be smuggled out in the dark.
She was the White Wolf. She was the Silver Walker.
Slowly, Aria reached out. She picked up the black key card.
Damien let out a breath, his shoulders sagging in relief. "Good. Go pack. You have ten minutes. Don't wake the kids until the last second."
Aria stood up.
And snapped the key card in half.
Crack.
The plastic splintered in her hand. She dropped the jagged pieces on the expensive Persian rug.
Damien stared at the broken plastic, stunned. "Are you insane? That was your way out!"
"No," Aria said, her voice rising, gaining the steel resonance of a Luna. "That was your way out. That was you trying to be the martyr again, Damien. I am done running."
She stepped closer to him, invading his space. She could feel the heat radiating from his body, the confused arousal of his wolf responding to her dominance.
"If I run to Patagonia, Volkov will just hunt me down," she said. "He will hunt Leo. He will hunt Mia. We will spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders, waiting for the shadows to move. I am tired of looking back."
"So what is your plan?" Damien shouted, losing his composure. Veins bulged in his neck. "You want to fight him? He is an Ancient! He has an army! You have... what? A sewing kit?"
"He has leverage," Aria corrected. "He has the hack. So we take away his leverage."
"How?"
"We don't hide," Aria said. Her eyes flashed, the white bleeding into the hazel. "We go to the Gala. Both of us. Publicly."
Damien looked at her as if she had grown a second head. "You want to walk into a room full of wolves who want to eat you? A room where Volkov is waiting?"
"I want to walk into a room full of witnesses," Aria said. "Volkov operates in the shadows. He relies on fear and secrets. If I appear at the Gala as your wife—as the Matriarch of the Sinclair pack—he can't touch me without starting a war with the entire American Alliance. He can't blackmail us if we own the narrative."
"He owns 51% of the company!" Damien argued.
"He owns the shares," Aria snapped. "He doesn't own the legacy. The Sinclair name is older than his money. And the Alliance follows strength, not stock prices."
She grabbed Damien's lapels, yanking him down so their faces were level.
"You said I am a queen, Damien. Start treating me like one. Stop trying to stash me in a vault and let me stand beside you."
Damien froze. He stared into her eyes—those terrifying, beautiful white eyes. He saw the fire there. The same fire that had kept her alive in the Parisian underground. The same fire that had birthed his children alone in a foreign country.
For the first time in five years, he didn't see a victim. He saw a partner.
Slowly, Damien's hands came up. He didn't push her away. He rested his hands on her waist, his thumbs pressing into the soft curve of her hips through the silk of her blouse. The touch was possessive, heavy.
"If we do this," he growled, his voice dropping to a dangerous rumble, "there is no going back. Once you walk into that ballroom, you declare war on the Council, on Volkov, on the world."
"Good," Aria whispered. "I have a lot of anger to work through."
Damien searched her face for a moment longer. Then, a slow, dark smirk spread across his lips—the smile of the Devil of Wall Street, the smile that had made him the most feared businessman in New York.
"If we are going to war," Damien said, "you cannot wear a turtleneck."
He released her and walked to the wall panel, pressing a button for the intercom.
"Get me the styling team," he ordered into the mic. "Yes, the emergency team. Wake them up. And tell them to bring the Vault Collection."
He turned back to Aria. His eyes traveled over her body, not with lust, but with tactical appraisal.
"Volkov expects a victim," Damien said. "He expects me to hand over a trembling, broken girl."
He walked over to the safe behind his desk. He punched in a biometric code. The heavy door popped open. He reached inside and pulled out a small, black velvet box. He didn't open it immediately. He just held it, testing its weight.
"Tomorrow night," Damien said softly, "we are not going to give him a victim. We are going to give him a nightmare wrapped in silk."
He tossed the box to her. Aria caught it.
She opened it.
Inside sat a necklace. But not just any necklace. It was a choker made of pure, gleaming silver, studded with raw diamonds that looked like shards of ice.
It was lethal to any normal Wolf. To wear it would be suicide. It would burn the throat out of an Alpha in minutes.
"The Sinclair Collar," Damien explained. "My grandmother wore it. No Luna has been able to wear it for sixty years because the bloodline became too sensitive to silver."
Aria ran her finger over the cold metal. It didn't burn. It hummed against her skin, a low, singing vibration that resonated with her bones.
"If you walk in wearing that," Damien said, "every Wolf in the room will know what you are. You won't just be my wife. You will be the Alpha of Alphas."
Aria snapped the box shut. She looked at him, her lips curving into a smile that matched his—sharp, dangerous, and utterly fearless.
"Call the stylists," she said. "We have a gala to crash."