Chapter 227

• Third Person's POV
• Tonight's den was alive with the scents and howls of the Empire's most powerful Packs. Almost every Alpha and matriarch of the capital's top families had converged, their furs gleaming under the lanterns, eyes alert to every ripple of power. Yet Aysel found her gaze drawn elsewhere-not to the glittering cliques or to the Shadowbane Alpha Magnus, though he was ever-present at her side-but to a figure she had long heard of but never truly seen: Magnus's elder brother, Derek Sanchez.
• Derek, the only son of the Sanchez first line, had been raised solely by his mother, Ulva, a cunning and disciplined she-wolf. His presence radiated both authority and restraint. Were it not for Magnus, the rogue genius of the Shadowbane Pack, Derek would have been the undisputed heir of the Sanchez lineage. Before Magnus's storming rise, it was Derek who received the lion's share of the elder Alpha Bastien's attention, training, and favor. Fate, however, allowed only one crown, and Bastien's eye fell upon Magnus.