FIRE AT THE FORTRESS
Flames rose into the night sky.
Bright.
Violent.
Unnatural.
Aria stared at the distant fortress in shock as smoke curled above the massive stone walls.
“That’s… your home,” she whispered.
The Alpha King’s expression turned dangerously cold.
“Yes.”
Rowan’s wolf instincts were already reacting.
“That fire is inside the walls,” he said grimly. “Which means the enemy is already past the gates.”
Darius frowned.
“That fortress has three layers of defense.”
“And hundreds of warriors,” the second Alpha added.
The Alpha King’s voice was low and sharp.
“Something went very wrong.”
Another horn blast echoed across the mountains.
Long.
Urgent.
Aria felt her wolf tense.
That’s not a warning…
“What is it?” Aria asked.
Rowan’s face darkened.
“That’s a war call.”
Silence fell over the clearing.
Even Kael stopped arguing.
“A war call?” Aria repeated.
Rowan nodded.
“It means the pack believes they’re being invaded.”
Aria’s stomach twisted.
“By who?”
Darius sniffed the air again, his expression tightening.
“That’s the strange part.”
The Alpha King was already shifting.
Bones cracked as his body expanded again into his massive black wolf.
He didn’t say a word.
He simply looked at Rowan.
Rowan understood immediately.
“We’re going.”
Aria blinked.
“Wait—how?”
Rowan shifted as well.
His brown wolf stood tall beside the Alpha King.
“Get on.”
Aria stared at him.
“Get on what?”
Rowan rolled his eyes.
“My back.”
Aria hesitated.
“You’re serious?”
Another explosion echoed faintly from the fortress.
The Alpha King had already started running toward the mountains.
Fast.
Very fast.
Rowan growled impatiently.
“If you want to reach the fortress before the walls fall, move.”
Aria didn’t argue anymore.
She climbed onto Rowan’s back carefully.
“Hold tight,” Rowan warned.
Then he took off.
The forest blurred around them.
Aria had never moved this fast before.
The wind whipped through her hair as Rowan raced through the trees.
Ahead of them, the Alpha King moved like a shadow across the ground.
Darius and the other Alphas followed as well.
Even Kael.
No one spoke.
Because everyone understood the situation.
If the Alpha King’s fortress fell…
The balance of power in the werewolf world would collapse.
As they ran closer, the destruction became clearer.
Flames burned along parts of the outer wall.
Warriors were fighting near the gates.
And something massive had broken through the main entrance.
Aria’s heart pounded.
“That gate is huge,” she said.
“What could break it?”
Rowan didn’t answer immediately.
But when they got closer—
She finally saw it.
And her breath caught.
Standing in the middle of the broken gates was a creature larger than any wolf she had ever seen.
Not a werewolf.
Something worse.
Its body was twisted and unnatural.
Black veins crawled across its skin.
Its glowing red eyes scanned the battlefield like a predator.
Aria’s wolf snarled inside her mind.
That’s not a wolf.
“No,” Rowan said grimly.
“That’s a rogue mutation.”
The creature roared.
The sound shook the fortress walls.
Dozens of warriors attacked it at once—
And it threw them aside like ragdolls.
Aria felt fear crawl down her spine.
“What… made that thing?”
No one answered.
But the Alpha King had already reached the battlefield.
And the moment the monster saw him—
It smiled.
Like it had been waiting.