The underground gambling den beneath Aethelgard smelled like stale ale, cheap magic, and sweat. It was the kind of place noble shifters came to lose their gold, and shadow-mages came to buy things that didn’t officially exist.I kept my hood low over my face, the heavy wool resting against my shoulders as I moved through the crowded subterranean hall. My fingers twitched near the pocket of my coat, right where my silver etching needles rested. Just get Toby, pay off the debt, and leave. That was the plan. It was supposed to be simple.Then the air went ice-cold.The heavy oak doors at the top of the stone stairs shattered—not with a boom, but with the sharp, terrifying crack of compressed mana breaking like glass.Conversations died instantly. The entire den went deathly quiet.He walked down the stairs slowly, as if he owned the very air we were breathing. Crown Prince Kael Draven. The High Warden of Aethelgard, and the undisputed Alpha of the Ironfang Throne.He was broad-shouldered, draped in dark high-court armor and a heavy cape that dragged slightly over the blood-stained stone. He smelled like winter frost, ozone, and pure, suffocating dominance. But it was his eyes that locked every single person in the room into place—luminous, burning amber, glowing with a beast that was barely held behind his ribs.I tried to pull back into the shadows of the archway, holding my breath, hoping my scholar’s cloak would blend into the dark stone.It didn't work.Kael stopped mid-step at the bottom of the stairs. His head snapped in my direction, his nostrils flaring slightly as if he’d just caught the scent of something rare—something he’d been hunting his entire life. The golden aura around his frame flared, violently bright for just a fraction of a second, before he suppressed it.His dark gaze locked onto mine, burning straight through the hood, straight through my skin, right down to my soul.In that single, quiet moment under the rotting stone of the under-realm, I knew two things: my brother’s debt was no longer the most dangerous thing in this room, and I was never going back to my quiet life at the Academy.