CHAPTER TWO

The beast rumbled a guttural warning, jaws snapping mere inches from the immaculately dressed man's face. Yet he didn't so much as flinch.

"Down," Jonathan commanded with a soul-shaking timbre.

To Sophia's shock, her monstrous protector withdrew his raised fist and slowly lowered his other boot from the fallen creature's skull.

With visible reluctance, he backed away, allowing the shredded beast to stagger upright.

Jonathan's authoritative presence seemed to smother the very air as he zeroed in on Sophia.

"You. Step forward, now," he said, his tone brooking no argument.

Trembling, she shook her head and pressed back against the door. "W- Who are you? What's going on?" she asked.

A muscle ticked in Jonathan's chiseled jaw, eyes flashing with condensed impatience. "I am Jonathan Davenport, Alpha of the Manhattan Pack. And you—" He whirled around her, sniffing in her scent.

But rather than getting annoyed at the act, her breath hitched, and her body was almost responsive to him. A feeling she couldn't quite apprehend.

"No wonder why he came for you... the Moon Maiden. I smell it," Jonathan growled, his voice reverberating through her body and sending unsettling thoughts to her head.

She didn't even understand why she was so attracted to a stranger she had just met. Sophia's brows knit. "T-The what? I don't know what you're talking about!" she protested.

Jonathan's lips peeled back, revealing a hint of razor-sharp fangs. "Of course, you don't," he said with a touch of disdain.

He started forward, only for the beast in human form to intercept with a warning growl.

Jonathan froze, pale eyes turning to ice as he met the other's animalistic glare.

"Is that insubordination I detect, Marcus?" Jonathan demanded, each consonant dripping with lethally restrained fury.

Marcus said nothing, simply holding his Alpha's stare as Sophia watched an unspoken battle of wills unfold.

"She is to be treated with the utmost reverence," Jonathan gritted out between clenched teeth. "Stand down," he ordered.

For a long, charged moment, Marcus remained unmoved, his hulking form still braced protectively.

At last, he gave the barest dip of his chin. "Yes… Alpha," he said, the title ground out reluctantly.

With a huff of irritation, Jonathan brushed past him.

Sophia shrank back against the door, heart pounding wildly as Jonathan stopped within arm's reach.

His presence was overwhelming—innately powerful and dominating. Every fiber of her being alerted her that she was in the presence of an apex predator.

"I will explain everything," Jonathan stated in a tone that broke no argument. "But first, we must—"

THWACK!

The crack of shattering glass whipped their heads around as a figure sailed through the open window.

It twisted lithely in mid-air, raining glass shards, before landing in an impossibly controlled crouch between them and the recovering rogue beast.

"Well, well…" the intruder said as he slowly rose, shadows bleeding away to reveal a dark-haired man with penetrating graphite irises. "I thought I caught the scent of a little family squabble."

Danger and arrogance rolled off him in dizzying waves, putting Jonathan's palpable authority somehow in the shade.

Sophia's breath caught with the realization that whoever this stranger was… he outranked Jonathan.

To underscore this, as twin spheres of obsidian fixed on her, his lips peeled in a lethally sensual sneer. "And the lovely Moon Maiden herself," he said, his tone dripping with dark allure.

Marcus issued another warning growl, shifting to shield her—but Jonathan waved him off with a curt flick of his wrist. "Damien," Jonathan said.

The one called Damien spared Jonathan a withering glance. "Hello, Jonathan. Yet again, you're late to the dance," Damien drawled.

Jonathan bristled like an angry grizzly bear spying on an encroaching predator on his territory. "The rogue pack fell upon my territory. Well within my domain," Jonathan said, his voice taut with frustration.

"And yet here I am, mopping up your mess," Damien said with exaggerated nonchalance, pacing with a liquid prowl that commanded the enclosed space and all attention. "As usual," he added.

A thick tension bore down, laced with clashing egos and simmering undertones. Primal power swelled between the two men until it saturated the very air.

Sophia shrank further against the door, feeling impossibly minuscule amid these two juggernauts despite their human visages.

Jonathan's jaw knotted, pale eyes smoldering with outrage that demanded violence as retribution. "You overstep your boundaries," Jonathan said.

"And you remain shockingly unprepared," Damien said, raising a perfectly manicured brow that seemed to further shift the power dynamic in his favor. "You're all fang and no follow-through, old friend," he taunted.

The crippled rogue beast gurgled a pitiful sound and tried staggering away, perhaps sensing the escalating clash between these two certified alpha males.

They both snapped predatory glares its way, freezing it in its tracks.

"You dare insult me?" Jonathan demanded with deadly calm.

Damien chuckled, deep and taunting. "Please. Preening around like a territorial house cat screeching at the neighbor's tabby," he said.

His smoldering gaze lasered to Sophia, pinning her in place with lurid promise and something else—something ancient and undeniably magnetic.

She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.

"We both know I'm the real alpha here," Damien purred. "A fact the Moon Maiden herself will soon understand," he said.

Jonathan moved with blinding speed, standing toe-to-toe with Damien, towering over him yet falling just short of overpowering him.

Glacial chips of ice met onyx granite as they stared each other down at point-blank range.

"Over my dismembered corpse," Jonathan uttered with sepulchral calm.

A heavy, electrified moment stretched out with the rising threat of violence before—

"M-MERCY! Please, masters! Mercy!" the rogue beast suddenly pleaded. The collective menace deflated as all eyes snapped back to the rancid creature still groveling on the kitchen tiles.

Marcus snarled, muscles bunching as he prepared to deliver the killing blow.

But Damien raised a hand, pausing the violence with just a subtle gesture.

He pivoted slowly until facing the writhing creature fully, his expression inscrutable.

"Speak quickly, wretch," Damien instructed.

The thing bobbed its fractured head, spewing a mix of coherent words and slobbering howls. "Forgive us… our disrespect… sires. We scented the Lunar Might and—akh—" It hacked, spraying viscous phlegm. "And thought to claim it for… Mikhail," it said.

Low growls instantly thrummed from both alphas at the mention of that name like a vile curse.

"We live… to serve his will," the rogue whined through inflamed vocal cords.

"No…" Damien abruptly dropped into an ominous crouch beside the trembling beast. His honeyed voice descended into something dangerously silken as he leaned close. "You live only because I allow it," he said, his tone chilling.

With a speed that shouldn't have been possible, his hand whipped out and clamped iron-hard around the rogue's trachea.

It gurgled, claws scrabbling frantically as a dark fire blazed in Damien's stare.

"If you have any wisdom left in your pathetic mind, tell your master that the Davenport and Westin Packs now stand together under the law of the Moon Maiden," Damien said, punctuating each core word with debilitating pressure. "His war ends here and now," he finished.

The rogue's beady eyes rolled up into its skull, limbs going limp.

Jonathan crossed his arms and exhaled an irritated huff… yet made no move to interfere as Damien squeezed the final life from the rogue's throat.

Only once the foul body had collapsed into a lifeless heap did Damien release and rise fluidly to his feet.

Marcus shifted, shooting Jonathan a loaded look. But Damien waved him off, as casually as if discussing the weather.

Clean up this mess," Damien instructed.

Understanding the dismissal, Jonathan glanced his way, then back to Sophia where her doe-eyed stare still registered shock.

She simply couldn't process everything she'd seen and heard—all the raw, feral violence exploding out of nowhere into her once mundane world.

This wasn't anything she'd ever known existed.

Yet based on the grave lines scoring Jonathan's expression… her world had just forever changed.

"Come," Jonathan commanded without preamble, already turning for the ruined door. "We depart now," he said.

Bewildered and overwhelmed, Sophia stood paralyzed as Damien watched her through veiled eyes laced with calculation.

His voice washed over her psyche like a low, smooth caress. "Soon, sweet Maiden. Once you know your rightful place… I shall return," Damien promised.