Zain didn’t just shift his attention to Maelra; he changed his entire stance. In a fraction of a second, the vulnerable, wounded mate vanished, replaced by the terrifying warlord who had ruled the northern territories with an iron fist. He didn’t look at the three shifted wolves with fear; he looked at them like a man sizing up insects he was about to crush beneath his boot.

He stepped sideways, deliberately shifting his massive frame to completely shield me from the line of sight of Maelra and her guards.

The air between all of us felt like it could snap at any moment.

"Maelra..." I started, but she cut me off.

"Violet, move."

Her tone wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It carried the kind of certainty that made the wolves behind her shift their weight, ready to lunge at the slightest command.

Zain let out a low, dangerous laugh.

"You brought backup," he said, voice calm in a way that made my skin prickle. "For me?"

"You’re not welcome here," Maelra replied. "Not like this."

"Like what?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. "A mate coming for what’s his?"

"Maelra, stop!" I yelled, trying to step around Zain’s broad shoulder, but he extended an arm, his grip clamping around my waist like a vice, anchoring me firmly behind him. "Get back to the camp! You don’t understand what you’re doing!

"I know exactly what I’m doing, Violet," Maelra replied, her eyes never leaving Zain. She raised her silver blade slightly, the tip pointed directly at his chest. "I am protecting one of our own. He tracked you like prey. He attacked you. We heard your scream from the camp."

"He didn’t attack me!" I lied, the words tasting like ash in my mouth because, technically, his wolf had pinned me. But the nuance, the fragile, broken recognition that followed, was something these wolves would never understand. "It’s the bond, Maelra. It’s complicated. Just lower the weapons."

My chest tightened. "Stop it. Both of you."

No one listened.

Zain stepped forward.

The wolves tensed instantly.

Maelra’s blade lifted just a fraction. "One more step—"

"He’s not your enemy," I snapped, stepping between them before Zain could move again. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

"There is nothing complicated about a monster cornering a pregnant woman," Maelra said coldly.

At the word pregnant, the three shifted wolves behind her let out a collective, low growl, their ears pinning back. Information like that in a fragmented, paranoid camp was like throwing a match into a powder keg.

Zain let out a sound that wasn’t human. It was a dark, rumbling vibration that rattled the fillings in my teeth.

"You speak of my mate, and you speak of my child," Zain whispered. His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried a lethal, freezing weight that seemed to drop the temperature in the clearing by twenty degrees. "If any of those mutts step one foot closer to her, I will tear their spines out through their throats and hang them from these branches. Lower your steel, old woman, before I forget that Violet cares for you."

"Zain, stop it!" I slammed my hands against his back, feeling the muscles beneath his shirt bunching and rippling as his wolf fought to break through the surface again. "You promised me you wouldn’t hurt anyone!"

"I promised I wouldn’t provoke them," Zain shot back over his shoulder, his golden eyes flashing dangerously. "I did not promise to stand still while they threaten my family. Look at them, Violet. They aren’t trying to protect you. They are looking at you like you’re infected."

He was right. When I looked past Zain’s shoulder at Maelra’s face, I didn’t see the maternal, protective gaze she usually gave me. I saw calculation. I saw fear. And worse, I saw disgust. Nora’s death had broken something in this camp overnight, and my connection to the Demon Alpha was no longer a secret they were willing to tolerate.

"Violet," Maelra said, her voice dropping to a hard, commanding register. "Come to us. Walk away from him. If you stay behind him, we will take it as a declaration of war from the hunter’s daughter."

"I am trying to keep you all alive!" I screamed, frustration tearing at my throat.

Everything happened in a heartbeat.

One of the shifted wolves—a massive, scarred gray beast—succumbed to the suffocating pressure of Zain’s Alpha aura. The sheer weight of his dominance was too much for a lesser wolf to bear; it triggered a primal, fight-or-flight panic. With a desperate, echoing snarl, the gray wolf launched itself forward, claws tearing up the damp earth as it flew across the clearing toward Zain.

"No!" I shrieked.

Zain didn’t even flinch. He didn’t shift. He didn’t need to.

As the wolf reached him, Zain sidestepped with blinding, supernatural speed. His hand shot out, catching the three-hundred-pound beast by the throat mid-air. The impact cracked like a whip through the trees. With a terrifying display of raw, physical strength, Zain slammed the wolf down into the dirt, burying its head into the mud.

The wolf yelped, a pathetic, broken sound, but before Zain could bring his heavy boot down to crush its skull, I threw myself onto his arm.

"Zain, NO! Don’t kill him!" I begged, wrapping both hands around his bicep, pulling with everything I had. "If you kill him, there’s no turning back! Please!"

Zain’s chest was heaving, his jaw clenched so tight I thought his teeth might shatter. He looked down at the panting, terrified wolf beneath his hand, then up at me. The conflict in his golden eyes was agonizing—the absolute instinct to eradicate a threat warring against the desperate urge to appease me.

With a harsh growl, he flung the gray wolf away. It rolled violently across the clearing, scrambling to its feet, limping and whimpering as it retreated to Maelra’s side.

"That was your warning," Zain snarled, wiping the wolf’s saliva from his hand onto his trousers.

But the restraint didn’t de-escalate the situation; it only proved how dangerous he was. Maelra’s face hardened into a mask of pure fury.

"Kill him," she ordered.