The staircase was marble, wide enough for six men to walk abreast, but Aria and Damien walked alone.
They descended into the silence.
It was a physical weight, that silence. It pressed against Aria's eardrums, heavier than the water in the Seine. Below them, the ballroom was a sea of frozen faces, five hundred predators caught in a moment of prey-like stillness.
Every step Aria took sent a ripple through the room.
Click. Click. Click.
Her heels on the stone were the only sound in the cavernous cathedral.
With every step, the scent of the Sinclair Collar rolled down the stairs ahead of them like a invisible, toxic fog. Aria watched the reaction. It was fascinating. The wolves in the front row—mostly young heirs and debutantes—didn't just look uncomfortable. They looked sick.
A woman in a green silk gown clapped a hand over her mouth and stumbled back, knocking into a waiter. A tray of champagne flutes crashed to the floor.
Smash.
The sound broke the spell.
A low murmur started, buzzing like a disturbed hive.
"It's silver..."
"Look at her neck..."
"How is she standing?"
"She should be dead."
Damien tightened his grip on her arm. His fingers were hot against her cool skin, grounding her.
"Keep your eyes on Volkov," Damien whispered, his lips barely moving. "Don't look at the Council. They are just dogs barking at thunder. Volkov is the lightning."
They reached the bottom of the stairs.
The crowd parted. They didn't step aside out of respect; they scrambled away out of biological panic. The silver collar created a ten-foot dead zone around Aria. No Wolf with a standard genome could tolerate the proximity. Their survival instincts screamed at them to run.
Aria walked through the path they cleared. She felt powerful. She felt untouchable. For five years, she had been the one running, the one hiding in the corners. Now, she was the sun, and they were just shadows burning away in her light.
At the center of the room, under the weeping crystal of the chandelier, Konstantin Volkov waited.
He hadn't moved. The circle of sycophants around him had widened, leaving him isolated, but he looked comfortable in the solitude.
He was wearing a white tuxedo that matched his hair and his skin. He looked like an ice sculpture. As Aria approached, he took a slow sip of his red wine, his black eyes tracking the silver collar around her throat.
Damien stopped five feet away. The air between the two men crackled with aggression—Alpha against Ancient.
"Damien," Volkov said. His voice was smooth, cultured, and utterly unimpressed by the theatrical entrance. "I see you brought a pet."
He turned his gaze to Aria.
"And you've put a collar on her. How... domestic."
It was a bait. A cheap insult designed to make her angry, to make her snap and prove she was just an emotional woman.
Aria didn't bite.
She let go of Damien's arm and took a step forward, closing the distance. She breached the comfort zone. She stood two feet from Volkov.
The silver at her throat was humming so loudly now it sounded like a high-tension wire.
Volkov's nostrils flared. Just once. A microscopic twitch.
"Mr. Volkov," Aria said. Her voice was calm, metallic, amplified by the collar. "It is not a collar of ownership. It is a safety measure."
Volkov raised an eyebrow. "Safety? For you?"
"No," Aria smiled. It was a cold, razor-sharp expression. "For you."
She gestured to the room, to the hundreds of terrified wolves pressing themselves against the walls.
"If I take it off," Aria lied smoothly, "the raw energy I leak might sterilize every Alpha in this building. My husband insists I wear it to protect the... weaker bloodlines."
A gasp went through the crowd. She had just called the entire American elite "weak."
Damien let out a short, sharp laugh. He couldn't help it. He looked at her with a mixture of shock and pride.
Volkov didn't laugh. He stared at her, his black void eyes analyzing her, dissecting her. He was looking for the lie. He was looking for the fear.
But the White Wolf inside Aria was awake, and it didn't fear the leech.
"You have a sharp tongue, Ms. Sinclair," Volkov murmured. "Let us hope your blood is as potent as your wit."
He stepped closer, ignoring the silver radiation that must have been burning his sinuses.
"I expected a victim," Volkov whispered, low enough that only she and Damien could hear. "But you... you are a mutation. An anomaly."
"I am the cure," Aria corrected him, quoting his own words from the penthouse.
"We shall see." Volkov raised his glass in a mock toast. "Enjoy the party, Damien. Drink the wine. Eat the food. Tomorrow, when the clock strikes twelve, this company is mine. And she..."
He looked at Aria one last time, his gaze lingering on her throat.
"...she will be in a cage in Omsk, breeding the next generation of gods."
Damien growled—a deep, chest-vibrating sound that made the floorboards tremble. He stepped forward, his hand going to the hidden knife in his waistband.
"Touch her," Damien snarled, "and I will tear your throat out with my teeth, laws be damned."
"Gentlemen!"
A booming voice cut through the tension.
An old man stepped out of the crowd. He was wearing the crimson robes of the High Council. He carried a cane made of ebony and gold. It was Elder Thorne—the head of the North American judiciary.
He looked furious. And he looked scared.
"What is the meaning of this?" Thorne demanded, pointing his cane at Aria. "That is Class A contraband! Pure silver weapons are banned under the Treaty of 1894! Seize that woman!"
He gestured to the security guards—four massive wolves in tactical gear.
They hesitated. They looked at Aria, then at the lethal silver collar, then back at Thorne. They didn't want to get close to her.
"I said seize her!" Thorne screamed, spit flying from his lips. "She is a walking violation of the Code!"
Aria turned to face the Elder.
"The Treaty of 1894," Aria said clearly, her voice cutting through the room. "Article 4, Section 2."
Thorne froze. "What?"
"Article 4, Section 2," Aria repeated, reciting the law she had memorized in the library of the orphanage, back when she was just a 'useless' latent who did nothing but read. "*The ban on silver weaponry applies to all wolves of the Common Genome. It does not apply to those of Royal Blood, nor does it apply to the Argenti, who are the designated Judges of the Council.*"
Silence. Absolute, stunned silence.
"The Argenti are extinct!" Thorne sputtered. "They are a myth! A fairy tale!"
Aria reached up and tapped the collar. Clink.
"Then arrest me, Elder Thorne," she challenged. "Come here and put handcuffs on me. But be warned... if you touch this silver with your common hands, you will lose them."
She held out her hands, wrists together, waiting.
Thorne stared at her. He looked at the silver. He looked at the white glow beginning to bleed into her irises.
He knew. Every wolf in the room knew. If he touched her, he would burn.
Thorne lowered his cane. He stepped back, his face turning a mottled purple. He couldn't arrest her without proving he was weak. He couldn't attack her without violating the very laws he claimed to uphold.
"This... this is a trick," Thorne muttered, retreating into the crowd. "We will convene a hearing."
"You do that," Damien said dismissively.
The orchestra, sensing the violence had passed, nervously started playing again. A waltz. *The Blue Danube*.
Damien didn't waste a second.
He grabbed Aria's hand and pulled her into the center of the empty floor.
"Dance with me," he commanded.
"Damien, everyone is staring," Aria hissed, though she let him pull her close.
"Let them stare," Damien said. He placed his hand on the small of her back—on the cold metal mesh of her dress. "Let them see that I am the only man in this room strong enough to hold you."
They began to move.
It wasn't a gentle dance. It was aggressive. Damien led with a force that bordered on violence, swinging her into wide, sweeping turns. Aria matched him, her body rigid and powerful, the metal dress swirling around her like a storm cloud.
"You were good back there," Damien murmured in her ear as he dipped her. "Article 4? Really?"
"I read a lot," Aria breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs. The adrenaline was starting to fade, leaving her shaking.
"Volkov isn't done," Damien warned, pulling her back up. "He's testing us. He wanted to see if the silver was real. Now he knows."
"What will he do?"
"He will escalate. He can't take you by force here, not with the cameras and the Council watching. So he will try to break you psychologically."
Damien spun her, his grey eyes locking onto hers.
"Do not leave my side, Aria. Not for a second. Not to go to the bathroom. Not to fix your makeup. If you are alone for even a minute, he will take you."
"I know," Aria said.
The music swelled to a crescendo. They were the only two dancing, a dark blur of tuxedo and gunmetal in a sea of frozen statues.
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
Once. Twice.
The music died with a grotesque screech as the sound system shorted out.
Darkness fell over the cathedral.
Screams erupted from the crowd. The panic was instant. Wolves couldn't see in total darkness, but they could smell fear.
"Damien!" Aria cried out, reaching for him.
"I've got you," Damien's voice was right beside her. He grabbed her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. "Stay down!"
A spotlight clicked on.
A single, harsh white beam cut through the darkness. It wasn't pointed at Aria.
It was pointed at the balcony—the one they had just descended from.
Standing there, bathed in the light, was a figure.
It wasn't Volkov.
It was a woman. She was old, her hair long and white, her face a map of deep, ancient wrinkles. She was dressed in rags, barefoot, holding a staff made of twisted bone.
The crowd fell silent again.
"The Oracle," Damien whispered, his voice laced with genuine horror. "Volkov brought the Siberian Oracle."
The old woman opened her mouth. Her voice didn't need a microphone. It projected with a supernatural resonance that made Aria's teeth ache.
"The Silver Walker returns,"* the Oracle rasped. *"But she walks on a grave."
She pointed a crooked finger down at Aria.
"The child you hide... the boy with the machine mind... he will be the key. But the girl... the sick one..."
Aria's blood froze. *Mia.*
"The girl carries the rot,"* the Oracle shrieked. *"And tonight, the rot blooms."
Aria's phone buzzed in her hand. It was a distinctive vibration. The emergency alert from the penthouse security system.
She looked at the screen.
ALERT: BIOMETRIC CRITICAL. MIA SINCLAIR. HEART RATE: 220 BPM. SEIZURE DETECTED.
Aria looked up at Damien, terror washing away her arrogance.
"Mia," she choked out. "She's... something is happening to Mia."
From across the dark room, in the shadows of a pillar, the tip of a cigar glowed red.
Konstantin Volkov smiled.
He hadn't needed to kidnap the children. He hadn't needed to hack the vault.
He had simply waited for the genetic time bomb in Mia's blood to go off—a bomb he likely knew how to accelerate.
"Checkmate," Volkov whispered into the dark.