Harrison had no interest in going to the mayor’s mansion– after the shit he faced with Caleb earlier this morning . The invitation was more of a summons, dressed up with flowery words and a bullshit title: A Decade of Safety Commemoration. He knew exactly what that meant. Ten years of hunting down "criminals"—which really meant werewolves and anything else that didn't fit the mayor’s idea of clean and civilized.Meanwhile, actual crime hadn’t gone anywhere. Murder, rape, extortion—same as always. But the mayor had decided the real threat wasn’t the ones stealing from the poor or bleeding the city dry. No, the real enemy were the things hiding in the dark, things like Harrison and Marcus and Auston. If the mayor had even a clue about Harrison's origin, he'd be rotting in a ditch, not playing king of the city.When Harrison arrived that evening with Wilson, the place was packed with the usual crowd—wealthy men who shook his hand but never trusted him, women who whispered his name like

Auston's POV.You ever feel like you’re just a walking bag of cash? Yeah, me neither—until tonight, it’s not the kind of adrenaline rush you sign up for. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it might crack a rib, and my fingers? Yeah, they were trembling like I’d just downed ten shots of espresso. Chris was bleeding out on the floor, his life pooling around him in a dark, sticky mess. My face was locked on the ground, my inner wolf clawing at the edges of my mind, begging me to let it out. But fear? Fear’s a bitch. It wraps around your spine and squeezes until you’re paralyzed. The guy with the gun—no name, no introduction, just cold, calculated menace—rested the barrel on the armrest of the chair like he was waiting for me to make a move. “Auston, you can’t outrun a bullet,” I muttered under my breath, my voice barely a whisper. “And don’t even try to play the hero.” The killer shifted in his boots, the leather cr