Chapter 30
Sylas
The fortress churned with controlled chaos—guards running damage reports, healers triaging the wounded, council members demanding explanations that Sylas had neither the time nor the patience to provide.
Smoke still curled from the eastern wing where the manufactured breach had torn through the perimeter grid.
Somewhere in the distance, the howling of contained Fallen echoed off stone walls—a reminder of how close they’d come to true disaster.
Sylas moved through it like a blade through water, Elsa tucked against his side, her weight barely registering against the adrenaline still screaming through his veins.
She was hurt. The bond told him that in vivid detail—the throb of her split lip, the hot ache spreading across both her cheekbones where those vile animals had struck her.
Every pulse of her pain echoed through him like a second heartbeat, wrongness layered over fury layered over something darker.
Something that wanted to go back down into those tunnels and kill them all over again.
But they were dead. The satisfying crunch of bone still resonated in Sylas’s memory, the way the priest’s eyes had gone dim and empty. Both threats were eliminated.
About a dozen more remained. At the very least. He wouldn’t stop until his fortress was purged of those vile animals. Until even the fortresses walls remembered who the Alpha King was, and what would happen if dared to challenge him or harm what was his.
Ryxin met them at the infirmary doors, Ari pressed close against his side. His brother’s black fur was matted with blood—not all of it his own—and his cyan eyes held the same cold calculation that Sylas felt coiling in his own chest.
“The grid’s stabilized,” Ryxin reported. “Vor’s team contained the Fallen breach—manufactured, as we suspected. Three of Vask’s males were caught opening the perimeter gates.”
“Alive?”
“For now.” Ryxin’s lips curled back from his teeth. “They’re...cooperative. Gave us names before I even had to ask.”
Sylas felt the list settling into his mind like stones dropping into water. Council members. Knights. Servants who had fed information to the priest’s network for months. The rot went deeper than he’d allowed himself to believe—spreading through his walls while he’d been distracted.
Distracted by her.
He should regret it. Should see Elsa as the weakness his enemies had named her, the vulnerability they’d exploited to tear his kingdom apart from the inside.
Instead, he tightened his grip on her waist and felt the bond pulse warm between them.
“How many names?” he asked.
“Fourteen confirmed. Possibly more.” Ryxin’s gaze flicked to Elsa, then back to Sylas. Something shifted in his expression—not quite approval, but close. “She fought well. Attacked with nothing but a chain and her own stupidity.”
“Courage,” Sylas corrected, the word coming out rougher than intended. “Not stupidity.”
Elsa made a sound that might have been a laugh if her lip hadn’t been split. “Pretty sure it was both.”
The infirmary doors swung open, and Yarx appeared—amber eyes sharp, already cataloging injuries with the efficiency of a male who had seen too many battlefield wounds. He took one look at Elsa’s face and his ears flattened.
“Bring her in,” he ordered, stepping aside. “The others too. I’ve cleared the main ward.”
Sylas carried Elsa through the doors himself, ignoring her protest that she could walk.
The bond thrummed between them with every step—her exhaustion bleeding into him, his barely leashed violence bleeding into her.
He felt her flinch at the edge of it, the part of him that wanted to hunt and kill and tear until nothing remained that could threaten her.
She didn’t pull away.
The infirmary was quiet—too quiet for a fortress that had just survived a coup attempt.
Mia was already settled in a bed near the window, her wrists wrapped in clean bandages, her breathing steady with exhaustion.
Rowan and Milo had been taken to a separate ward, their injuries more severe but survivable.
Sylas laid Elsa on the nearest bed with care that felt foreign in his battle-roughened paws. He arranged pillows behind her, adjusted the blanket over her legs, and found himself lingering—unwilling to step back, to let the distance grow between them.
“You’re hovering,” she said, but her hand found his fur and curled into it like she didn’t mean the words.
“I’m assessing.”
“You’re stalling.” Her blue eyes met his, seeing too much as always. “You have to go hunt them down, don’t you? The ones Vask left behind.”
The bond shivered with her understanding. She could feel what he needed to do—the violence coiled inside him, waiting. The names that burned in his mind like embers.
“Yes.” He covered her hand with his, engulfing it entirely.
“Fourteen conspirators still in my walls. In my fortress. They opened gates that let the Fallen breach our perimeter. They fed Vask information about you, about the other humans, about every weakness they could exploit.” His claws flexed against the blanket. “They have to be purged.”
“Purged,” she repeated. Not a question. Not a judgment. Just the word, sitting between them like a stone.
“I need you to stay here.” He leaned closer, pressing his forehead to hers, breathing in her scent—Frosted Tears and blood and something warm underneath that belonged only to him. “Be a good pet, Elsa. Let Yarx heal you. Don’t follow me, don’t try to help, don’t save anyone else tonight.”
“Sylas—”
“I need to know you’re safe.” The words came out cracked, raw.
“I can’t hunt with the bond screaming your pain at me.
I can’t think when you’re bleeding and I’m not there to—” He stopped.
Swallowed. “I can’t lose you. Not after tonight.
Not after watching Vask and his enforcer put their hands on you and knowing I almost wasn’t fast enough. ”
She was quiet for a long moment. Through the bond, he felt her weighing his words—testing them for control, for manipulation, for the possessive hunger he’d wielded over her since the moment he’d claimed her as his pet.
She found only truth.
“I’ll stay,” she said. “On one condition.”
His ears flicked. “You’re bargaining with me. Now?”
“I learned from the best.” Her mouth curved—the ghost of a smile despite the split lip. “Promise me you’ll come back.”
“Elsa—”
“Promise me.” Her grip tightened on his fur. “Promise that when you’re done being the monster they need you to be, you’ll come back to me. Not to your throne. Not to your council. To me.”
Something cracked in his chest. A wall he hadn’t known he was building, crumbling under the weight of her demand.
She wasn’t asking for safety. Wasn’t asking to be freed. She was asking for him—the monster who had claimed her, caged her, marked her. The king who had killed for her tonight and would kill again before dawn.
“I promise,” he said.
He kissed her.
Not gentle. Not careful. He was past gentle—had been past it the moment Vask’s hand connected with her face.
His mouth found hers with the same hunger that pounded through his veins, mindful of her injured lip but unable to hold back the desperate need that had been building since he’d seen her wrapped in chains in that tunnel.
She opened for him. Tasted of copper and warmth and something he didn’t have words for. Something that felt like belonging.
The bond flared bright between them—her pain, his rage, and underneath it all, want. Desperate, impossible, terrifying want that he had tried to deny since the first moment he’d caught her scent.
He pulled back before he forgot himself entirely. Her split lip was swollen now, her eyes dark with something that made his chest ache.
“Stay,” he said against her mouth. “Be here when I return.”
“I will.”
He made himself step back. Made himself turn to Yarx, who had arrived at a respectful distance and stood waiting with the careful patience of a healer who knew better than to interrupt.
“Protect her,” Sylas commanded. “Protect all of them—the humans are under my protection. Anyone who touches them answers to me personally.”
Yarx dipped his head, amber eyes solemn. “On my life, my king.”
“Lux Sabers to this door. No one enters without my explicit permission. No one.” Sylas paused at the threshold, looking back at Elsa one final time.
She watched him with those pale blue eyes that saw too much, that demanded too much, that had somehow become the center of everything. “I’ll return before dawn.”
Then he was gone, and the hunt began.
The first conspirator died in the eastern barracks.
Sylas found him packing—frantically stuffing supplies into a satchel, hands shaking, the stink of fear rolling off him in waves.
The male had been a quartermaster, responsible for inventory and supply chains.
He’d skimmed Moon Tears to fund Vask’s operation, had thought himself clever and hidden and safe in his small corruption.
He looked up when Sylas’s shadow fell across him. His muzzle went pale beneath his fur.
“Alpha King, I can explain—”
Sylas didn’t let him finish.
The second died in the council chambers, still gathering documents she’d thought would protect her.
She’d been one of Vask’s informants—feeding him schedules, patrol routes, the movements of the human females.
When Sylas found her, she tried to bargain.
Tried to offer information he already possessed.
He killed her mid-sentence.
The third fell in the servant tunnels—a young knight who had opened the gate that let Vask’s males slip through. The fourth near the kitchens, where he’d been positioning himself to poison the morning stores. The fifth tried to fight. Sylas appreciated the effort before tearing out his throat.