Blood on the Sterling Estate
Margot’s apartment door clicked shut behind them with the finality of a cell locking. Sebastian didn’t look back. His hands were already checking the SIG at his hip—thirteen rounds, one in the chamber, no silver. The magazine clicked home with a sound like a bone setting.
Aurora moved beside him down the stairwell, her breathing measured, her boots silent on the concrete. She had taken Margot’s switchblade, folded it into her jacket pocket. A gesture of defiance, not strategy. He’d let her keep it.
“Cole’s staging at the north treeline,” Sebastian said, checking his phone one last time before powering it off. “The estate’s perimeter sensors have a four-second blind spot between sweeps. He’s mapped the rotation.”
“That’s the plan? Run through the woods and hope Beckett doesn’t see us coming?”
Sebastian stopped on the landing, turned to face her. The stairwell’s fluorescent hum was the only sound between them.
“The plan is to walk through the front gate. Beckett wants an audience. He wants to see my face when he tears up the deed.” He paused. “He’ll get what he wants, and then he’ll get what he deserves.”
Aurora held his gaze. Her eyes were dry, but he could see the calculation behind them—the same cold arithmetic that had kept her alive in the years before he’d met her. She was mapping exits, counting seconds, measuring the distance between herself and Milo in every room she entered.
“One condition,” she said. “When this goes sideways—and it will—you don’t stop for me. You get Milo. You run. I’ll find my own way out.”
Sebastian’s jaw did not tighten. He let the silence stretch for three full seconds, let the weight of her words settle in the space between them.
“Agreed.”
He meant it about as much as she believed it.
—
The Sterling mansion rose from the manicured grounds like a mausoleum designed by an architect with a grudge against the living. Black iron gates, ivy that had been trained to spell the family crest along the stone walls, and windows that caught the dying sun like animal eyes.
Sebastian drove through the open gates without slowing. The driveway curved through old oaks, their branches interlaced above them like clasped hands. He parked directly in front of the main entrance, killed the engine, and stepped out.
Aurora was at his side by the time his boots hit the gravel.
The front doors opened before they reached them. Two men in tactical vests—Sterling security, not the local police Beckett controlled—stepped out, hands resting on sidearms. They were professionals. That meant they were paid to die on cue.
“Mr. Winslow. Ms. Waverly.” The taller one stepped aside, gestured into the foyer. “Mr. Sterling is expecting you in the ballroom.”
Sebastian walked past him without acknowledgement. He counted the steps to the ballroom entrance—forty-seven across imported marble, past two more guards at the corridor junctions, beneath a chandelier that probably cost more than the apartment he and Aurora had shared for three years.
The ballroom doors were open.
Beckett Sterling stood at the far end, a crystal tumbler in his hand, backlit by floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the rear garden. He was dressed for a gala—charcoal suit, pocket square, hair swept back with the kind of precision that cost four hundred an hour. He looked like he’d been born in that room, and maybe he had.
“Sebastian,” Beckett said, the name dripping with theatrical warmth. “And Aurora. How delightful. I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about little Milo.”
Aurora’s hand twitched toward her pocket. Sebastian caught her wrist, a fractional touch, and she stopped.
“Where is he,” she said. Not a question. A demand.
Beckett smiled, raised his glass toward the ceiling. “Upstairs, resting. The sedation was necessary—he fought the nurses quite impressively for a boy his age. You should be proud.” He took a sip, let the moment stretch. “He kept calling for you. Screaming, actually. They had to increase the dose.”
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Sebastian counted the seconds. Three. Four. Five. The room had four exits: the main doors behind them, two service doors flanking the windows, and a staircase at the far left that led to the mezzanine above.
“The deed,” Sebastian said. He pulled the folded document from his inner jacket pocket, held it up. “Signed. Notarized. Every acre, every mineral right, every access easement. It’s yours.”
Beckett set down his glass. The smile didn’t waver. “You think I care about land?”
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a remote control, and pressed a button. Behind him, a section of the ceiling retracted, and a platform descended. On it, strapped into a medical chair, was Milo.
The boy’s head lolled. His eyes were half-open, unfocused, the black irises ringed with a faint gold that flickered like dying embers. An IV line ran from his arm to a bag of clear fluid hanging beside him.
Aurora made a sound—a choked breath, a swallowed scream. Her hand found Sebastian’s arm and held on.
“He’s eight years old,” Sebastian said. His voice came out flat, measured. “The shift is years away. Whatever you’re drugging him with, it won’t trigger the change. It’ll just kill him.”
Beckett shrugged. “That’s the fun part. I don’t know what it’ll do either. The compound is experimental—a cocktail of werewolf blood samples, neurostimulants, and a few proprietary ingredients my R&D team cooked up. He might shift early. He might die. He might become something entirely new.” The smile widened. “Either way, I get to watch.”
Sebastian held up the deed. “Take it. Let him go.”
Beckett looked at the paper like it was a used napkin. Then he reached out, took it, and slowly, deliberately, tore it in half. Then again. Then again. He let the pieces flutter to the floor.
“I never wanted your land, Sebastian. I wanted you on your knees. I wanted her to watch.” He gestured to Aurora. “I wanted to see what happens when a wolf loses everything.”
The air changed. Sebastian felt it in his chest—a pressure shift, a gathering storm. The gold in Milo’s eyes flickered brighter, responding to something primal, something that recognized its own kind.
Sebastian looked at Aurora. She was already moving, already understanding. She stepped left, drawing the guards’ attention, her hands empty and visible.
“Beckett,” she said, her voice steady. “You want a show? You’ve got one. But you’re going to have to come down here and watch it up close.”
Beckett laughed. “You think I’m stupid enough to—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
Sebastian moved.
The shift tore through him like a wave breaching a seawall. Bones cracked and reformed, muscles twisted into new configurations, and the world went sharp—every scent, every sound, every flicker of movement resolved into perfect clarity. His spine arched, his jaw elongated, and when he hit the ground on all fours, he was no longer a man.
The first guard reached for his sidearm. Sebastian took his throat out before the weapon cleared the holster. The second guard fired twice—Sebastian felt the rounds punch through his flank, felt the heat and the blood, and kept moving. Pain was information. Pain was fuel.
He hit the third guard mid-stride, driving him into the marble floor, and then he was at the stairs, claws gouging the wood as he launched himself up toward the mezzanine.
Beckett was running. He was fast, trained, prepared—but he was human. He made it three steps before Sebastian’s weight hit him from behind, driving him into the railing. The wood splintered. Beckett’s legs went over the edge, and he hung there, one hand gripping the broken rail, the other flailing for purchase.
Below, Aurora had reached the medical chair. She was working the straps, her fingers bloodless, her voice low and steady as she spoke to Milo. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. Stay with me.”
The fire extinguisher was mounted on the wall beside the service door. She saw it, calculated the distance, and made her choice.
Sebastian had Beckett pinned, one paw on his chest, the other raised, claws extended. He could end it here. One swipe. The problem would cease to exist.
“Do it,” Beckett gasped, blood at the corner of his mouth. “Kill me. The entire Sterling board knows I’m here. You’ll never leave this country. They’ll hunt you, they’ll hunt her, they’ll hunt the boy until they find a way to put a bullet through his skull.”
Sebastian’s ears flattened. He could hear the sirens now, distant but growing closer. He could hear the whine of another drone somewhere overhead.
And then he heard the click.
Aurora had pulled the fire extinguisher free. She didn’t swing it. She didn’t throw it. She aimed the nozzle at Beckett, braced her feet, and pulled the trigger.
The blast of CO₂ hit Beckett in the face—white, freezing, disorienting. He screamed, let go of the railing, and fell.
He hit the ballroom floor with a sound that Sebastian felt through the bones of the building. A snap. A wet pause. Then silence.
Sebastian forced himself back into human form, the shift grinding through him like sandpaper across raw nerve. He was on his knees, naked, bleeding from the two bullet wounds in his side, when Aurora reached him with Milo in her arms.
“He’s breathing,” she said. “His pulse is weak, but he’s breathing.”
Sebastian took his son. The boy weighed nothing. His skin was hot, too hot, and the gold in his eyes had dimmed to a faint glow.
“Cole,” Sebastian said into the open channel. “Status.”
“Perimeter’s hot,” Cole’s voice crackled back. “Four vehicles inbound, two minutes out. I’ve got a window at the east garden wall, but you’re going to have to move.”
Sebastian stood. His legs held. They would have to.
He looked at Aurora. Her face was streaked with blood—not hers, not Milo’s, just the spray from the guards—and her hands were shaking. But her eyes were clear.
“Together,” she said.
He nodded.
They made it three steps toward the service door before the lights came on.
Every fixture in the ballroom blazed to life, washing the room in cold white light. The chandelier hummed. The shadows fled.
And from the mezzanine above—the same platform that had held Milo—a voice spoke.
“Shift back, Winslow, or I put this through your pup’s heart.”
Flynn Sterling stood on the mezzanine, a silver revolver in his hand, the barrel aimed directly at Milo’s unconscious form. The patriarch was older than Sebastian remembered, his hair white, his face lined with years of calculated cruelty, but his hand was steady. The hammer was back.
Sebastian stopped. Aurora stopped. The world stopped.
Flynn’s eyes met Sebastian’s across the impossible distance, and there was nothing in them but the cold certainty of a man who had already decided he would die before he lost.
“The boy stays,” Flynn said. “You leave alive, for now. That’s the only offer I’m making.”
Sebastian looked at his son. At Aurora. At the blood on the marble floor.
He did not shift back.