Chapter Forty-Seven
Savage
In all the history of Frostcrag, the throne room had never felt so heavy with consequence.
The grand hall had been built to swallow sound, to make every footstep and breath feel insignificant beneath stone, iron and ancient law.
Tonight, it held only me and the hush of waiting.
And in a few minutes, it would crown a queen. My Moon Crowned queen.
Beyond the doors, the fortress suddenly shifted.
The distant groan of hinges, the muted calls of sentinels along the outer walls and a faint, frantic cadence of footfalls clamoring up the stairs vibrated the entire fortress.
I could just make out two sets of footsteps.
One struggling, uneven, forced forward by sheer will and the other fast, ruthless, and closing in.
Calista.
I had known it was her before the first sound. I had watched her for days… Her fate had become the hinge on which my realm might swing.
She had invoked the Blood Hunt with her chin lifted and her voice steady, and something in me had gone cold enough to crack stone. Not because of the danger, though there had been that too. But because she had dared to demand more than survival.
Moon Crown, not Bride Crown. Legitimacy, not possession.
Calista was owed three edicts, not a gilded cage.
She had challenged me with what I loved most, the law, without ever raising steel to my throat, and it had been infuriating. And worse. It had been… right.
My hands rested on the arms of the throne. I did not move. It felt like I hadn’t been able to do so in hours. I had forced stillness into my bones until I felt like part of the chair itself. But beneath the iron mask, my jaw locked so hard my teeth ached.
I had seen her across the river. I watched as the Mistvale daughter’s smile turned sharp and saw Calista lift her crescent with a body that was barely holding together. I saw the way she kept fighting anyway, even when the snow should have swallowed her and the Hunt should have killed her.
I watched her in other moments, ones I preferred to ignore. Quiet ones. Dangerous ones. Even now the memories of them burned. Burying the traitorous musings as I had been for five moons now, I returned my thoughts to the Hunt still raging outside my door.
The daughters had been ruthless and clever. Calista had been stubborn and nearly dead. That thought gutted me. The only reason I hadn’t torn down the walls yet and dragged her into safety was because I was the damned king.
And because the Blood Hunt was law. And because she had asked Selraya for this. But the beast inside me did not give a single frost-damned thought about law. My Wolvryn paced beneath my skin, restless and furious, teeth scraping at restraint. Every instinct screamed the same savage demand.
Protect.
Claim.
Crown the wolfless queen.
My Wolvryn surged at the thought of her, at the memory of her taste on my tongue, not merely lust, but something like ownership rooted in ancient magic. Like Frostcrag itself had decided she belonged here, and my body had simply agreed.
I hated it. And yet… I couldn’t live without it.
I stared at the doors and forced myself to breathe.
I never wanted a mate. I despised the idea of a tether. I had no use for weakness draped in silk.
Then Calista Vale had walked into the Alpha’s courtyard in Hollowcrest with defiance in her spine and desperation in her eyes, and she had made me want things I had spent years starving out of myself.
She had spat fire at my Court members. She had glared at my laws. She had demanded the right to stand as a true queen rather than lie down as a prize.
And still, I wanted her. No, I wanted her more. It had no logic, no mercy.
The female had found a way into the places I had kept locked away since Erik’s blood had slicked the ice of the basin. When I became the Savage King.
I didn’t choose Calista Vale because she was easy to control.
I took her because Lunaris would break without her.
Because there were benefits to a wolfless bride.
Because Hollowcrest needed protection and the Courts needed unity.
And most of all because Selraya had doled a blessed gift upon her and willed it so.
Most of those reasons were true at first but then...
I wanted her because when she looked at me, she didn’t look away.
It was a dangerous sort of wanting. Especially tonight.
Because now she was within reach. And I still couldn’t move. Not yet.
Not until she crossed that threshold and claimed what she had fought for. Not until she agreed to this betrothal, took the Moon Crown on her own feet and spoke her Three Edicts aloud.
Calista deserved that.
Even if it meant the little wolf might turn to me afterward and deny me everything.
The thought pressed a blade into my ribs. I had faced war councils, raider swords and the fangs of Wolvryn Alphas who thought they could take my throat and steal my crown. None of it had frightened me the way her choice did.
Beyond the hall, the wind clawed at the fortress. In my mind, I saw black sails and pitched decks, the shape of ships too close to our shores and too brazen for random raiders. Tarrik’s name lived like poison in my memory, threaded into old blood and old betrayal.
In the last week, the coast had been tested again and again. Small strikes. Quick burns. Nets cut. Watchfires taunted.
My old friend was sending me a message.
While the Courts chased a bride prize through the snow, the Blackwake had prowled like wolves circling a wounded elk.
Tarrik thought the Hunt made Frostcrag vulnerable, but he was wrong. The timing was certainly not an accident, and I would answer for it. After this. After Calista made her choice.
The footsteps outside surged closer now. One staggered, then recovered and pushed forward again. Pride flared in my chest, hot and unbidden.
Calista had earned this.
Then the sound changed beyond the door, turning sharper and more violent.
A scuffle at the threshold. A breathless curse. Steel striking stone.
The doors shuddered, and my Wolvryn slammed against my restraint, roaring soundlessly beneath my skin.
Protect her.
Claim her.
My nails dug into the throne arms. Goddess, this was torture. The mask hid my expression, but it did not hide the tension crawling through my frame.
The doors finally burst open, and I drew in a sharp breath.
Calista stumbled into the hall first, pale as moonlight, hair wild, cheeks wind-burned and blood-speckled. My heart stuttered, then doubled its furious pace. Somehow, she was still moving. Still fighting.
Rhosyn followed like a shadow with teeth, eyes bright and starving, and blade already raised.
The air between them felt electric with violence and need.
My chest tightened, a tangle of fury and desperation ravaging my insides. As the king, I could do nothing but watch. As a male and a beast, I wanted to raze the entire hall to ash.
Calista barreled forward, ignoring the blood on the stones, ignoring the way her body shook with exhaustion. Rhosyn lunged, trying to cut her off, trying to steal the last breath of victory.
Fury rose in me with each second. It was the kind that made my vision narrow and my instincts sharpen to a point.
Rhosyn was not just challenging Calista. She was challenging me.
And she was delaying her, making her bleed at my feet.
My Wolvryn surged again, claws raking the inside of my skin. Mine. My beast had claimed her long before the Hunt. The Hunt had only made it law. And that morning in the hut… one taste had finished me. Ruined me for anyone else. Mine. No one had any right to touch what already belonged to me.
My instinct roared in the ancient way of wolves that recognized their own and could not bear to watch them hunted.
Calista reached the dais first. She hit the steps with trembling hands and dragged herself up, pain twisting her mouth for half a heartbeat before she swallowed it down.
Rhosyn’s fingers nearly caught her cloak and hauled her back.
I moved. Not as much as I wished I could but just enough to be lawful. I leaned forward and caught Calista’s hand.
Her skin was as cold as snow. Her palm with the glittering crescent was scraped raw. Her fingers trembled against mine. The moment our hands met, relief hit so hard it made my breath hitch behind the mask.
She was alive. She was here.
And mine to protect.
I hauled her upward, as if she weighed nothing, as if I hadn’t been holding myself to this throne by sheer will.
Calista’s eyes flicked to my mask, dazed and fierce all at once, as if she couldn’t quite believe she had reached this point. “Savage…”
I rose at the sound of my name on her lips. Not my true name, but the one that served for now. The throne room seemed to contract around the movement. Torches wavered, and shadows shifted.
Turning with her hand still in mine, I guided her to the seat that had waited for her longer than she knew. She tried to resist, pride flaring, as if she wanted to stand on her own. Even injured. Even shaking.
I respected her for it, but I ignored it anyway. Because she would not fall. Not now. Not at the end. I helped her onto the throne, and the act felt like a vow and a threat tangled together.
“My Queen.” I barely recognized my own voice echoing across the empty room like the first crack in ice as I dropped to my knees at her feet.
Calista watched me, eyes impossibly wide as I knelt before her. She had not made her choice yet. She had not spoken her Edicts. And still, her title tasted true.
Fear suddenly flickered bright and cruel in a place I did not allow it to live. What if she denied me?
What if she walked out of Frostcrag and left the Courts to crumble?
Selraya’s words echoed across my mind, powerful and overwhelming. Crown the queen with no wolf or watch the Courts’ teeth break.
I refused to let that fear show. Instead, I turned to Rhosyn who still stood just beyond the dais. Fury blazed, hot and wild in my chest. Her blade was still lifted, breathing hard, eyes crazed with the last feral edge of the full moon’s aftermath.
She looked at Calista. Then at me and hesitated.
It took all my restraint not to snap her neck. Instead, I forced the calm and let the silence stretch just long enough for the female to remember who ruled this hall. Then I spoke, my tone colder than the snow outside.
“Get. Out. Now.”