Chapter 30 #2
Sylas moved through his fortress like a shadow with teeth, and the bond pulsed steady in his chest—Elsa’s pain fading as Yarx worked, her fear settling into something calmer. Safer. She was healing. She was protected.
He could hunt.
Blood matted his fur by the time he finished with the sixth. The seventh. The tenth. His claws ached from the work, and something dark and satisfied purred in his chest with each name crossed from his mental list.
This was what he was built for. Not politics. Not compromise. Not the careful dance of court that required him to smile at males who plotted his downfall. This—the hunt, the kill, the cleansing of threats from his territory.
His fortress. His walls. His Elsa.
The thought snagged. Caught.
When had she become that? When had the human pet—the fragile, furless creature who had stumbled into his world through a crash and a curse—become something he would slaughter for? Something he would die for?
The bond hummed in answer, but it gave him no clarity. Only the steady warmth of her presence, distant but real. An anchor in the dark.
He found the eleventh conspirator trying to flee through the winter gardens, footprints stark in the snow. She was a courtier—had smiled at him a hundred times across the throne room, had bowed with perfect grace at every formal function. Tonight, she ran with terror rolling off her in waves.
Sylas caught her at the garden’s edge, where the trees grew thick and dark.
“Please,” she gasped, turning to face him. “I only passed messages. I never wanted anyone hurt—”
“You passed the location of my human females to males who intended to use them as leverage against me.” Sylas’s voice was flat.
Empty. The rage had burned through him somewhere around the eighth kill, leaving only cold certainty behind.
“You helped Vask orchestrate a breach that let the Fallen into my fortress. People died tonight because of messages you passed.”
She opened her mouth to argue.
He didn’t let her.
The twelfth had barricaded herself in a storage room—as if wood and iron could stop him.
Sylas tore through the door like it was paper, and the female beyond screamed as he dragged her into the corridor.
She’d been a servant in the kitchens, feeding information about mealtimes and schedules to Vask’s network.
“I have children,” she sobbed. “Please—my children—”
Sylas paused. Something flickered in his chest—not mercy, but calculation.
“Your children will be cared for. They’ll never know what you did or how you died.
” He leaned closer, letting her see the blood on his fur, the death in his eyes.
“That’s more than Vask would have given the humans if he’d succeeded. ”
It was quick, at least. He owed her that much.
The thirteenth begged—a council member who had voted in Sylas’s favor a dozen times while feeding intelligence to the priest’s faction. The fourteenth didn’t get the chance to say anything at all.
When it was done, Sylas stood in the lower archives, surrounded by the weight of his people’s history, and felt the cost of the night settle into his bones.
Fourteen dead. His own people—traitors, yes, but Yzefrxyl who had served in his halls, eaten at his tables, sworn oaths to his crown. He had killed them without mercy. Without hesitation. Without the trial or judgment that law demanded.
His father would have called it necessary. His mother would have wept.
The court would whisper. They were probably whispering already—news traveled fast in a fortress this size, and fourteen deaths in a single night would have every tongue wagging before dawn.
The council would question his right to execute without trial.
The Lux Priests would demand justification, would cite ancient laws and sacred protocols that he had shattered with his claws tonight.
Let them.
He would face them all. Would stand before the court with blood on his fur and death in his eyes and dare any of them to say he’d been wrong.
Vask had tried to steal his mate, had orchestrated a breach that endangered his entire fortress, had struck Elsa hard enough to split her lip and bruise her cheekbone. His enforcer had done worse.
For that alone, Sylas would have burned the world.
He had done monstrous things tonight. Had become the creature his enemies feared—the king they warned their children about, the beast who stalked through sacred halls with death in his claws and judgment in his eyes.
Part of him wondered if he should feel guilt. Horror at how easily the violence came. Shame at the satisfaction that still purred beneath his skin.
He didn’t.
The only thing he felt was the bond pulling him back toward the infirmary. Toward her.
He would do it again. A hundred times. A thousand. Whatever it took to keep her safe in a world that wanted to use her, break her, steal her away.
That was the truth of it. The ugly, undeniable truth that had been growing in him since the moment he’d first caught her scent.
He was hers.
Not the other way around.
The Lux Sabers at the infirmary door parted without a word.
Inside, Ryxin’s voice hit him before the scent of healing salves did.
“I don’t care about your protocols.” His brother stood at the center of the ward, fur bristling in aggressive ridges, every line of his body a threat aimed squarely at Yarx.
Ari sat on the nearest bed behind him, her wrists bandaged, exhaustion carving shadows beneath her eyes.
Ryxin had positioned himself between her and the door like a barricade.
“She’s not staying here. Not in a wing that’s already been breached once tonight. ”
Yarx’s ears were flat against his skull, but his voice held steady. “My prince, all patients require observation after—”
“Your observation didn’t stop them from being taken in the first place.” Ryxin’s cyan eyes burned. “I want her in my wing. Under a female healer’s care. Away from all of this.”
Sylas stepped fully into the room, and both males went still.
The blood on his fur announced what he’d spent the last hours doing.
Fourteen kills left their own kind of silence—the bone-deep quiet of a predator who had sated himself and returned to his den.
Every Yzefrxyl in the room could smell it on him: death, dominance, the chemical signature of spent feral rage.
Ryxin recovered first. His nostrils flared, reading the evidence, and something flickered across his face—not surprise, not horror. Satisfaction. The cold, hard kind that came from knowing the threat had been answered in the only language their enemies understood.
“All of them?” Ryxin asked.
“All fourteen.”
His brother dipped his chin. No other questions needed.
Sylas turned to Yarx. “Report.”
The healer straightened, professional enough to pivot from argument to briefing without missing a beat.
“The female Ari—bruising, exhaustion, minor abrasions. Nothing critical. Mia is stable and sleeping.” He gestured toward the window, where Mia’s breathing rose and fell in steady rhythm.
Then his expression darkened. “It’s the two human males who concern me.
Rowan and Milo. Whatever that priest was doing to them in the pits…
internal damage, infection, wounds that festered too long without treatment.
” His amber eyes met Sylas’s. “I’ll need to use the Tear Domes for them, or they won’t survive the night. ”
“Do it. Whatever they need.”
Sylas looked at his brother. Something passed between them—an understanding forged in blood and years of fighting side by side. The feral rage still coiled beneath Sylas’s skin, but beneath it was something steadier. Trust. The knowledge that Ryxin would hold the line while he couldn’t.
“Take Ari to your wing.” He held up a claw before Ryxin could speak.
“And you’re in charge of the guard tonight.
Take your most trusted soldiers and secure the fortress.
Every gate, every corridor, every access point.
Patrols doubled. Anyone acting suspicious gets detained for questioning.
” His lips curled back from his teeth. “There may be more rot in our walls. Find it.”
Ryxin’s eyes gleamed. “With pleasure.”
He crossed to Ari and gathered her against his side with a possessiveness that mirrored Sylas’s own.
She went without protest—too exhausted to argue, or too smart to try.
On the way past, Ryxin paused at the door and glanced back at Sylas.
At Elsa, still sitting upright in the bed across the ward, watching everything with those pale blue eyes.
Something shifted in his brother’s expression. Not quite approval. Closer to recognition.
Then he was gone, Ari tucked against him, the door closing behind them with a quiet click.
The ward settled into silence. Just the soft lap of the Lux Tear energy humming through the walls, the faint sweetness of purified healing essence, and Mia’s steady breathing near the window.
And Elsa.
She sat up straighter when his gaze found hers. The bruise on her cheek had faded to pale yellow under Yarx’s care, her split lip sealed. Her golden hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, catching the low lamplight, and her eyes held something that made his chest ache.
Through the bond, her relief washed over him. Like warmth after a winter patrol. Like the first breath after drowning.
“You came back.”
“I promised.” He crossed to her bed, aware of the blood crusted in his fur, the death that clung to his claws. He should clean himself. Should make himself presentable before touching her.
He didn’t.
He gathered her against his chest, pressing his muzzle into her hair, breathing in her scent until it drowned out the copper and violence coating his tongue.
She fit against him—small and warm and impossibly alive.
Her heartbeat fluttered against his chest, quick and light compared to the heavy pound of his own.