Corvine had always prided himself on being ready for anything life could throw at him. Years of navigating brutal pack politics, backstabbing betrayals, and total chaos had trained him to keep a cool head no matter how bad things got. But this? This hit him like a freight train he never saw coming.
For what felt like forever, he just stood there staring at Jasmine, his mind reeling as it tried to wrap itself around the bombshell she'd just dropped. The room felt suffocatingly quiet. Finally, he let out a long, shaky breath and rubbed a hand over his jaw, trying to ground himself.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he said, his voice low and rough with raw disbelief. His eyes bored into hers, searching for any sign that this was some kind of twisted joke. "You really understand what you're saying here, right?"
