Chapter 15
At sundown the following evening, they carried Leena through the inner grounds.
No announcement had been made beyond the stronghold. No council members waited beneath the trees, and no curious civilians crowded the gates to witness the queen’s burial. Only those she had loved were permitted inside the wards.
The old royal crypt stood beyond the far edge of her garden, half concealed by ivy and climbing roses she had planted with her own hands. Lanterns burned along the stone path, their flames bending beneath a wind too slight to disturb anything else.
Leena lay inside a black stone coffin dressed in white, her dark hair arranged over her shoulders and her hands folded peacefully above her abdomen. Death had removed the pain from her face but left behind a stillness none of them could mistake for sleep.
Sule walked beside her.
He carried Norse against his chest beneath a white blanket, one hand supporting the child’s head while the other remained pressed against the coffin as though he could guide Leena by touch.
Dax, Cole, and Malakai followed behind him.
Rhen came last.
He had not spoken since they left the stronghold. Black clothing concealed the final traces of Leena’s blood, but nothing could conceal what her absence had done to him.
Inside the crypt, Sule placed Norse briefly into Mary’s waiting arms before approaching the coffin.
He touched Leena’s cheek one final time.
The flesh beneath his fingers was cold.
Real.
Dead.
His mouth tightened, but he did not look away.
“I will find you,” he whispered.
The brothers heard him.
None attempted to answer.
Sule stepped back only when the stone lid began to lower. Its weight settled into place with a grinding finality that reverberated through the crypt and into the earth beneath them.
Leena’s body remained sealed beyond it.
The woman they had loved was gone, and no promise, title, or quantity of blood could change what lay inside that tomb.
Sule rested one palm against the stone.
“This is not where you end.”
Rhen’s gaze lifted sharply toward him.
Sule gave no explanation.
He took Norse from Mary and walked from the crypt without looking back.
The others followed gradually, leaving the lanterns burning beside Leena’s grave.
Rhen remained after every footstep had faded.
He stood before the sealed coffin until the last flame guttered and darkness claimed the crypt.
Then he left her body beneath the earth.
Later, the sound of fists striking punching bags rolled through the cavernous training center,
each impact ricocheting from steel and reinforced concrete until the air itself seemed to vibrate. Sweat and old leather hung heavily in the room, undercut by the antiseptic bite of disinfectant, as though the space had been scrubbed a thousand times and still refused to feel clean.
The brothers had gathered underground in a room built for one purpose: control. Reinforced concrete enclosed the space, while iron beams crossed overhead like the ribs of a cage. Heavy bags hung from chains, weapon racks lined one wall, and state-of-the-art equipment occupied the other.
It was less a gym than a place where violence could burn itself out before it reached the floors above.
Cole struck first.
He drove both fists into the bag in a punishing rhythm, each impact precise enough to be practiced and brutal enough to be honest. Strength had never been the problem. He possessed more of it than most creatures would survive encountering.
What he needed was somewhere to put the pressure that had nowhere else to go.
Leena was gone, yet the compound continued holding its breath around the shape she had left behind.
Cole did not know how to mourn quietly. He knew how to endure, and he knew how to keep moving until whatever lived inside his chest either burned away or hardened into something he could aim.
Malakai watched from beside the weapons rack.
He did not strike the bags or touch the weights.
He stood with his shoulders set and his expression distant, his eyes following the bag’s movements as though he were reading a pattern in every swing.
Malakai had always been the quiet observer among them, the one who studied a fracture before deciding where it would spread.
Even he looked wrong now.
Malakai waited until Cole glanced toward him before raising his hands.
Everything feels wrong without her.
Cole drove another fist into the bag before catching it on the return. He kept one hand against the leather while turning enough for Malakai to see him.
“Everything is wrong,” he answered, signing with his free hand. “There is no walking this back.”
Malakai nodded once.
Leena’s death had not merely taken Sule’s mate or the clan’s queen. She had been the quiet center of a brotherhood built from blood, obligation, and centuries of violence. Her presence had steadied them so naturally that none of them had admitted how heavily they depended upon it.
Now the fractures were no longer small enough to ignore.
Metal hissed through the air behind them.
Dax was running combat drills against a weighted dummy, his blade moving in controlled, lethal arcs.
His form remained economical and precise, built for killing rather than display.
He finished the sequence, planted the tip of the blade against the floor, and turned toward the others, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt.
“We have survived wars, purges, and hunts,” he said, repeating the words with his hands for Malakai. “We survive this too.”
Malakai’s gaze remained fixed on him.
This is not a war. This is Leena.
Dax’s mouth tightened. He dragged one forearm across his brow as though he could wipe away what her name did to the room.
“I know,” he said roughly. “But standing still inside the grief will not bring her back.”
Cole released the bag and drove his fist into it again, harder than before.
“No one is standing still.”
The chain above the bag groaned beneath the force.
Dax lifted his blade from the floor.
“That was not what I meant.”
“It sounded close enough.”
“Then hear the rest before deciding I have forgotten her.”
Cole stopped.
The bag swung between them, gradually losing momentum.
Dax held his gaze.
“She was family. She was the center of this place, and every corridor feels wrong without her in it. I know exactly who we lost.”
His voice roughened, but he did not look away.
“I also know she left a son upstairs, and grief will not protect him.”
The tension in Cole’s shoulders shifted without disappearing.
Malakai studied both males before signing.
Leena had not only been Sule’s mate and queen. She made this place a home.
Neither brother argued.
She had softened edges honed sharply enough to cut anyone who came near them. She had made room for care inside males who usually had none to spare and had seen humanity in places where even they had stopped searching for it.
Now she was gone, and every one of them was discovering what her absence exposed.
Dax turned back toward the weighted dummy, but his next sequence lacked its previous control. His blade moved in wider, harsher arcs, carrying frustration more than form.
“We focus on what comes next,” he said. “Anyone looking for leverage will know there is an heir upstairs. We cannot let grief consume the clan while the wards are compromised.”
Malakai’s expression darkened.
He waited until Dax faced him again.
Marcella will not forget the heir. When she moves, it will be a test, a message, or both.
Cole caught the bag and held it still.
“When she moves?”
Not if.
The certainty in Malakai’s hands settled heavily over the room.
Dax lowered his sword.
“Then she will discover that losing Leena has not made us easier to kill.”
“No,” Cole said. “It has made us angry.”
“That too.”
The faint trace of Dax’s usual humor disappeared almost as soon as it surfaced.
Cole stepped away from the bag and wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one wrist.
“What about Rhen?”
The question entered the room like a blade being drawn slowly from its sheath.
Rhen had been absent from the training center since Leena died. He had returned to the newly turned woman because the tether made her his responsibility, but none of them mistook duty for stability.
The maker tether had formed in crisis, without the woman’s consent or the clan’s counsel, and it had become another point of strain inside a house already close to breaking.
Malakai folded his arms before answering.
The tether is new, Leena is dead, and Rhen is carrying both without allowing anyone near him. We give him room.
Dax’s jaw clenched hard enough to show the tendon beneath his skin.
“Room is the last thing we should give him.”
He set the blade onto the nearest rack with more force than necessary, then faced Malakai fully and signed as he continued.
“You saw him after she died. He was barely inside his own skin.”
Cole’s gaze lowered briefly.
They had all seen him.
Leena’s blood drying over his hands. His body left on the floor after Sule took her from his arms. The emptiness in his face as though something fundamental had been torn out and left nothing capable of bleeding behind.
“If Rhen breaks,” Cole said quietly, “he will not do it gently.”
Malakai’s expression tightened.
Cornering him will make it worse.
“And leaving him alone might give him enough time to decide there is nothing left worth controlling,” Dax replied.
Cole looked between them.
Neither was wrong.
Rhen had always understood discipline as a leash placed upon violence, not a cure for it. Leena had been the only person he allowed close enough to touch that leash without losing the hand.
Now she was gone.
“The newly turned female is another risk,” Cole said.
“If she loses control while Rhen is already unstable, the tether becomes another point of pressure inside a fractured house.”
Malakai’s gaze shifted toward the entrance as though he expected Rhen to appear there, silent and bloodstained, drawn by the sound of his own name.
We watch him, Malakai signed. We do not corner him.
Dax folded his arms.
“For how long?”
Malakai held his gaze.
Until watching is no longer enough.
The training center fell silent except for the slow creak of the punching bag’s chain.
Cole looked at the bag, at the shallow dents his fists had left in the leather, and then toward the reinforced doors separating them from the compound above.
The heir remained upstairs without his mother.
Sule was locked inside a grief that had already become a vow.
Rhen was carrying a tether he had never wanted alongside the one loss capable of stripping restraint from him, and somewhere beyond the weakened wards, Marcella was waiting for the right moment to move.
Leena’s death had not created a single fracture.
It had revealed all of them.