Chase Bennett stood outside the gate with his sister's words still ringing in his skull like a bell that would not stop. Five women chasing another man for six months under their husband's roof. He had watched the screaming and the chaos from the outside and assumed the husband was the monster. He had never once considered that five unfaithful wives might have been the cause."I'm not leaving." Chase straightened his military jacket and set his jaw with fresh determination. "If this man is really what you say he is, then I want to show him that the Bennett family stands behind you. He should know what kind of support you bring."Chloe looked at her brother with the flat, tired expression of a woman who had been managing him since childhood. She said nothing. There was nothing to say. Chase was already pressing the doorbell.The butler robot opened the front door and led them through the entrance hall into the living room. Chase walked in with his shoulders squared and his chin high, r

Maxver held up the fourth plaque with his name on it and looked at all three of them with the serene confidence of a man who had just discovered the perfect negotiating tool. "My name stays in. Final decision. No appeals."Nobody argued. Autumn's fox ears were still flat from the self inflicted disaster of five minutes ago. Sienna kept her face perfectly neutral. Chloe stared at the four plaques like she was computing the exact probability of the worst outcome.Maxver shuffled the plaques behind his back, spread them face down on the coffee table, and pointed at one without looking. He flipped it over.Sienna Blake.Her red orange eyes blazed. A smile cracked across her composed face so fast it looked like something breaking free from a cage. She was off the sofa in half a second and had Maxver in her arms in the next.His feet left the ground entirely and the living room blurred past as she carried him up the staircase with the speed and precision of a woman who had been waiting two

Maxver stopped the first staff member he saw in the corridor. "I need to see Wyatt Jansen before my two o'clock. Can you take me to his room?"The young man's face went through three distinct emotions in under two seconds. Surprise, then recognition, then the particular kind of nervous dread that came from imagining two S Rank males in the same room when every StarNet headline for the past week had painted them as rivals."Mr. Cole, I'm not sure that's advisable." His voice wobbled slightly. "Mr. Jansen is in the middle of his own preparation and Marshal Sloane's purification cannot be delayed under any circumstances.""I'm not going to fight him." Maxver kept walking. "I'm going to ask him a question. Which room?""Third door on the left." The staff member trailed behind him with the energy of a man following a lit match toward a gas leak.Maxver knocked twice and opened the door without waiting for a response. Wyatt Jansen was sitting on the sofa inside his private purification room

Maxver stood at the edge of the purification platform and looked down at the woman bound to it. Reagan Sloane's amber eyes stared back at him through a haze of pain and exhaustion, one percent of a human being holding on behind the body of a wounded beast."Marshal Sloane, I need you to do something for me before I start." He kept his voice low and gentle, the way someone talks to a person standing on a ledge. "Relax your body. Stop fighting the restraints. And open your mental world so I can enter without forcing my way through. It will hurt less if you let me in willingly."Reagan blinked. The tiger ears pressed flat against her skull twitched once. Something shifted behind her amber eyes, a flicker of surprise that cut through the animal fury like sunlight through storm clouds.She had been handled by military doctors and combat medics for weeks. Every single one of them had spoken to her in commands, in clinical protocols, in the language of procedure and urgency.Nobody had spoke

Autumn looked at his hand pressed against her bare side, then looked at his face. His eyes were half closed with exhaustion but the intention behind his touch was unmistakable. Nothing about the position of his fingers said fox form. Nothing about the warmth radiating from his palm said purification."Master Cole." Her voice was careful and clinical despite the flush climbing up her neck. "Five minutes ago you said you wanted to sleep with the little fox. Your hand is telling me something very different.""I changed my mind." His thumb moved once against her skin, slow and deliberate.Autumn's golden eyes searched his face. What she found there made her breath catch. He meant it. Completely and without pretense."You just burned ninety percent of your Mental Power purifying a nine star beastwoman." Her doctor's instincts surged to the front, pushing past everything else. "Your body needs rest. Let me transform and you can hold the fox while you recover.""If you don't want to, I can c