It was the question that mattered. It was the question that might explain what was happening.

Nicholas, who had begun to rise from the chair, paused. He looked back down at Garrett, and there was something in his expression that suggested he found the question amusing.

"What did you say?" Nicholas asked, his voice soft and dangerous.

Garrett swallowed hard, but he pressed forward. This was his pack. This was his responsibility.

"Why are you requesting for her?" Garrett asked. "You gave me your word that she has completed the payment. You said you won’t hold us accountable for her father’s debt anymore. You gave me your word."

Nicholas looked at him for a long moment. Then a smile played at the corners of his mouth.

He adjusted his wrist watch slowly, deliberately, without looking up at Garrett. When he finally spoke, his voice was measured and precise, like a predator explaining itself to prey before delivering the killing blow.

"I never told you that I would be going back on my word, Garrett," Nicholas said slowly. "Shadowmere has paid back the blood debt you owed us. I haven’t called for additional payment. I haven’t demanded that you hand over more pack members or resources. The debt is settled. That part of my word stands."

He looked up at Garrett, and the alpha could see the calculation in Nicholas’s dark eyes.

"I only requested for the omega because, if you noticed, when we got here, my youngest brother nearly had an episode," Nicholas continued. "His wolf recognized something, maybe a threat in this territory. And because he is not familiar with the omegas in your pack, I wouldn’t want him to go on a killing spree and kill some of them in his desperation."

Sebastian smirked from his position against the wall.

"But we are familiar with that omega," Nicholas said, his voice becoming almost conversational. "At least we fucked her for more than two weeks without killing her. So she should be safe around him for the duration of our stay here."

The statement was crude. Deliberately crude. Designed to make it clear what Lilith had been to them during the contract.

Nicholas stood from the chair and walked toward Garrett, his movements slow and deliberate.

"So what do you say?" Nicholas asked, his voice dropping to something almost reasonable. "Will you assign her to us? Or would you prefer to have my brother lose control and kill a couple of your omegas? Well, maybe a little over a dozen of your omegas before we leave?"

He paused, letting the threat sink in.

"Pick one," Nicholas said simply.

Then he walked toward the office door. He didn’t wait for Garrett’s response. He didn’t look back. His certainty that he would get what he wanted was absolute.

Sebastian pushed away from the wall and followed his eldest brother. But when he reached the doorway, he stopped and looked back at Garrett. His dark eyes were cold, predatory, filled with barely suppressed violence.

"Listen to my brother and send her to our quarters, Garrett," Sebastian said, his voice carrying the weight of a promise. "And listen to this: if you don’t, every single omega in this pack becomes a target."

Then he walked out of the office, closing the door behind him with a soft click that somehow sounded like a death knell.

Garrett stood alone in his office.

For a long moment, he simply stood there, processing what had just happened. The sheer manipulation of it. The brilliance of the threat. They hadn’t demanded anything that would break the blood debt agreement. They’d simply requested something that seemed reasonable, an omega they were familiar with.

But the underlying threat was undeniable: Give us Lilith, or Lucian will kill your omegas.

It was blackmail wrapped in reasonable logic. It was a threat masked as concern. It was the kind of power play that only alphas at their level could execute so perfectly.

Garrett looked down at his hands and realized he was shaking.

He was sweating. He could feel the perspiration on his forehead, on his palms, all over his body. His heart was racing. His alpha instincts were screaming at him that he’d just been outmaneuvered by three of the most dangerous alphas in the werewolf realm.

He stood there for a while longer, just trying to process. Trying to understand what had just happened. Trying to figure out what to do.

But in his heart, he already knew.

He couldn’t refuse. Refusing meant risking the lives of his omegas. Refusing meant that Lucian, barely contained as it was, would lose control. Refusing meant disaster.

So he had only one choice.

Garrett sent out a mindlink, his voice sharp with authority despite his internal turmoil.

"Dora, bring Lilith to my office now."

The response came immediately: "Yes, Alpha. Right away."

Garrett moved to the window and looked out at the compound below. Warriors were settling into their positions. The Summit would continue. The political maneuvering would continue. Everything would appear normal.

But nothing was normal anymore.

The Blackwood alphas had come to Shadowmere for a reason. They’d come for Lilith. And they’d gotten what they wanted through nothing more than a carefully executed threat and the implication of violence.

He had no idea why they wanted her so badly. He had no idea what had changed since they’d released her from the contract. But it didn’t matter. The outcome was the same.

Lilith was about to be handed over to them.

And there was nothing Garrett could do to stop it without putting his entire pack at risk.

He stood at the window and waited for Dora to bring Lilith to his office.

Outside, the afternoon sun continued its arc across the sky, indifferent to the power plays and manipulations happening beneath it.

***

Dora found Lilith in the guest quarters on the third floor.

She was scrubbing baseboards, her movements precise despite the exhaustion that hung over her like a weight. Her hands were raw from two weeks of extra work, her body was running on minimal sleep, but her focus was absolute.

The pull she’d felt earlier, whatever it was, had faded into a constant, low-level awareness that she was trying her best to ignore.

"Lilith," Dora said from the doorway.

Lilith looked up immediately, recognizing the tone in Dora’s voice. That was the voice she used when something significant was happening.

"The Alpha wants you in his office. Now."

Lilith’s stomach dropped.