Chapter 17 Mal
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Mal
The portal opened at exactly midnight.
I stepped through first, my ten best guards following behind me.
Stealth. Speed. Kill the king. Return home before Wen had time to worry herself sick.
Simple enough plan. We’d practiced the formation, the approach, the retreat.
Every man knew his role. I’d even managed to kiss my wife goodbye without her crying, which felt like its own small victory.
Except the moment my boots hit the forest floor and I took my first breath of Noctherion air, I knew we were completely and utterly fucked.
A woman stood directly in front of the portal.
Young, dark-haired, positioned exactly where we’d planned to emerge.
She wasn’t hiding and not even remotely surprised, just waiting like she’d been there for hours.
Her eyes glowed faintly purple in the darkness, an unnatural luminescence that had nothing to do with wolf sight.
Behind her, a man in royal colors with the Igryside crest embroidered on his jacket smiled at us like we’d arrived for a scheduled diplomatic visit rather than an assassination.
“Congratulations, Mira,” he said cheerfully, his tone as pleasant as if we were discussing the weather. “You were right. They DID use portal magic.”
A witch. The king’s secret weapon that Gregyor had warned us about. She’d sensed Wen opening the portal and had positioned herself here, feeling every fluctuation in the dimensional energy. We’d walked straight into a trap with our eyes wide open.
Wonderful. Exactly how I’d hoped this evening would go. I could already hear Wen saying “I told you so” in my head.
“Surround them!” the advisor shouted, his pleasant demeanor vanishing instantly.
Wolves poured out of the darkness from every direction like water breaking through a dam.
Not forty-three like Gregyor’s intelligence had indicated.
Closer to eighty, maybe more, their eyes glowing gold and silver in the moonlight.
They moved with military precision, trained warriors taking tactical positions.
We were surrounded within seconds, a tightening circle of teeth and claws closing in from all sides with nowhere to run.
The witch, Mira, stepped back with obvious satisfaction, her work done. She’d delivered us to the slaughter. I made a mental note to kill her later if I survived this. Which was looking increasingly unlikely by the second.
“So much for stealth,” Torin muttered beside me, his voice dry despite the absolutely dire situation.
“Any other observations?” I asked.
“We’re probably going to die.”
“Noted. Anything helpful?”
“The portal’s still open behind us.”
“That’s something.”
I shifted mid-stride, my wolf form tearing through my clothes.
The transformation was instant, brutal, familiar.
My perspective shifted as I dropped to four legs, the world sharpening into crystal clarity through wolf senses.
My guards formed a defensive circle around the portal behind us, our only escape route.
They knew without being told that protecting it was paramount.
If we lost access to it, we were dead men walking.
But I had one goal, singular and absolute.
Kill the king.
I scanned the clearing with wolf vision and found him immediately. King Igrid. Older than I’d expected, his hair more gray than dark, standing well back from the fighting with smug amusement, like this was all entertainment arranged for his personal pleasure and our lives meant nothing.
“The Ravenor King,” he called out, his voice carrying easily. “How kind of you to deliver yourself to me.” His smile widened, vicious in the moonlight. “Soon I will have your portal maker as well. The woman who can open doorways between worlds. Imagine what I could do with such power.”
He was talking about Wen. My mate. The mother of my son. The woman who was probably pacing the throne room right now, worrying herself sick over me.
Over my dead fucking body would he ever touch her.
I launched myself at him, crossing the distance in three explosive bounds. My paws ate up the ground, muscles bunching and releasing with brutal force. King Igrid barely had time to raise his arms before I tackled him to the ground with all my weight behind the impact.
We went down hard, hitting the forest floor with bone-jarring force. He was older but experienced, a trained fighter despite his years. He used my momentum against me, twisting as we fell, and we separated before I could get my jaws around his throat. Irritating.
“Protect the king!” someone shouted. “Kill the wolf!”
Around us, combat erupted in earnest. My guards were already fully engaged, outnumbered but holding their ground with the ferocity I’d trained into them over years.
Metal clashed against claws. Bodies collided.
The sounds of battle filled the clearing, a symphony of violence I knew all too well.
Torin was fighting three wolves at once, his blade a blur, and somehow winning.
The others were holding their positions around the portal.
And I could hear my guards falling. Injured, overwhelmed by sheer numbers despite their skill. We wouldn’t last long at this rate. I needed to end this quickly, one way or another.
King Igrid and I circled each other, two predators looking for weakness.
He’d drawn a blade, the metal gleaming silver in the moonlight, his hands gloved not to touch the metal.
It was probably silver, designed specifically to hurt wolves.
Because of course it was. Why wouldn’t he have silver weapons ready for exactly this scenario when he was literally trying to hunt down a hybrid wolf?
The man had been hunting witches for decades.
He knew how to hurt people with abilities.
“You think you can win this?” he asked, amused despite the chaos around us. “You’re outnumbered three to one. Your guards are falling as we speak. This was over before it started, wolf. You walked into my trap like a lamb to slaughter.”
I’d heard better threats from Killian when I wouldn’t give him extra cookies. At least my son was creative about it.
He lunged, faster than his age suggested.
I dodged but not quite fast enough, my back leg slowing me fractionally from the old injury that was now healed but still kept some phantom pain from time to time.
The blade caught my side, slicing through fur and flesh in a line of fire.
Something cracked deep in my ribs. The pain was immediate and vicious, but I pushed through it, driving forward instead of retreating.
I’d fought through worse. Pain was just information.
Information I could ignore. My teeth snapped at his throat, close enough that he had to throw himself backward to avoid them, close enough that I could smell his fear underneath the royal cologne.
He rolled away, breathing hard, face flushed with exertion. He was tiring. Good. “Impressive,” he admitted, trying to regain his composure. “But futile. Surrender now and perhaps I’ll let your mate live. Perhaps I’ll even let her keep the child. I can be merciful when properly motivated.”
The words were meant to make me hesitate, to plant seeds of doubt. They had the opposite effect entirely. Threatening Wen was a mistake. Threatening Killian was a death sentence.
I feinted left. He blocked exactly as I’d anticipated, his weight shifting to compensate.
Predictable. Old men always relied too much on experience, not enough on instinct.
Then I lunged right with everything I had and my jaws closed around his sword arm, teeth sinking deep into flesh and grinding against bone.
He screamed, a sound of pure agony that was deeply satisfying, trying desperately to shake me off.
I held on like death itself. My jaws were locked, pressure building, crushing. His blood filled my mouth, hot and copper-bright. The blood of a king who’d threatened my family.
“GET HIM OFF ME!” Igrid shrieked, all composure gone now, all pretense of royal dignity shattered. “SOMEONE GET THIS BEAST OFF ME!”
Before his guards could close in, before anyone could reach us, I started dragging him, using every ounce of strength to haul him backward toward the portal that still shimmered behind my defensive line. If I couldn’t kill him here, I’d take him somewhere I could.
He realized what I was doing and fought with renewed desperation, understanding hitting him all at once. This wasn’t just an attack. This was an abduction. “What are you doing? NO! STOP HIM! STOP HIM NOW!”
His guards rushed toward us, but my guards moved to intercept, buying me precious seconds. Just a few more feet. Almost there. My broken ribs screamed with every step, every drag, but I refused to let go. I’d come too far, lost too much.
With the last of my strength, I threw us both through the portal.
The dimensional travel was nauseating under the best circumstances.
Something about the way space folded and unfolded, colors bleeding into each other, sounds stretching and compressing into meaninglessness.
Mid-shift, badly injured, dragging a fighting king who was still trying to stab me with his free hand?
I’d experienced more pleasant sensations being trampled by horses.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, we were nowhere and everywhere at once.
We tumbled into the Lytopia throne room in a tangle of fur, hitting the stone floor with bruising impact.
The cold hardness of home was a shock after the soft forest floor.
I released his mangled arm and shifted back to human form.
The transformation on broken ribs was its own special kind of torture, bones restructuring themselves in ways that made me seriously reconsider every life choice that had led to this moment.