Chapter 12
STELLAN
Ifeel her bleed through the bond.
A hot line of pain sears across my ribs, sharp and sudden, a wound that is not mine burning through flesh I have not damaged.
The sensation staggers me mid-stride, and for one terrible moment the battle around me ceases to exist. There is only that phantom agony, that distant echo of claws finding purchase in skin that belongs to me even though it wraps around her bones.
Someone touched her. Someone made her bleed.
The wolf inside me does not ask questions. Does not strategize. Does not weigh options or consider consequences. He simply takes control, and I let him, because the man I pretend to be has no place in what comes next.
The enemy wolf in front of me dies before he registers the change.
My jaws close around his throat and tear, spraying arterial blood across the trampled snow, and I am already moving before his body hits the ground.
Another wolf lunges from my left. I catch him with a swipe that opens his belly from sternum to hip, spilling steaming entrails into the frozen air.
A third tries to flee. He makes it four steps before I hamstring him and leave him screaming for someone else to finish.
The battle has been going well. Torben's archers decimated Korren's initial charge from the high ground, and Holger's wolves from Ashwood broke through the enemy's eastern flank with brutal efficiency.
Vidar's disciplined fighters held the center when it threatened to buckle, buying time for our forces to regroup and push forward.
We were winning through strategy and coordination and the careful application of superior positioning.
I am done with strategy.
The partial bond pulses with Iris's fear and pain and something else, something that feels like fierce determination rather than helpless terror.
She is fighting. Wherever she is, whatever is happening, she is not cowering.
The knowledge should comfort me. Instead, it fans the flames of my fury higher, because she should not have to fight.
She should be safe behind walls I swore would protect her, surrounded by wolves who would die before letting harm reach her.
Someone failed. Someone will answer for it. But first, I have a debt to collect from the wolf who sent attackers after my mate.
Korren.
I find him near the center of his collapsing lines, surrounded by his personal guard, trying to rally wolves who have already decided this battle is lost. He is a large wolf, silver-furred and scarred from a lifetime of challenges, but size means nothing when rage has stripped away every limitation I normally impose on myself.
His guards see me coming. They form a wall between their alpha and the death bearing down on them.
The wall lasts approximately eight seconds.
I do not remember killing them individually.
I remember blood and bone and the satisfying crunch of vertebrae separating beneath my jaws.
I remember the taste of fear flooding their scent glands as they realized too late what they faced.
I remember the moment Korren's eyes met mine through the carnage, and I saw understanding dawn in those yellow depths.
He knows. He knows about the attack on the keep. He knows his gambit failed. And he knows exactly what I am going to do to him for daring to threaten what is mine.
Silvery mist swirls around us both as we shift to human form. For him, a surrender gesture, an appeal to the civilized rules that govern conflicts between alphas. For me, something else entirely.
I want him to see my face while I tear him apart.
"Varen." His voice is steady, but I can smell the fear beneath the bravado. "This doesn't have to end in—"
My hand closes around his throat before he can finish the sentence. I lift him off his feet, letting him dangle, letting him feel exactly how helpless he is against the strength flooding through my limbs.
"You sent wolves after my mate." The words come out barely human, my vocal cords still caught between forms. "You thought you could take her while I was distracted. Use her as leverage. Break me by breaking her."
"It's war." He claws at my wrist, desperate now, his feet kicking uselessly. "She's leverage. Any alpha would have done the same—"
I break his arm at the elbow. The snap echoes across the suddenly silent battlefield, followed by his scream. Wolves on both sides have stopped fighting to watch. Let them. Let them all see what happens to those who threaten the luna of the Northern Pack.
"She is not just anything." I release his throat and let him crumple to the ground, cradling his shattered arm. "She is mine. And you made her bleed."
I take my time with him.
I break his other arm first, methodical and precise, making sure he feels every fracture before I move on.
Then his legs, one bone at a time, until he is nothing but a broken thing sobbing in the bloody snow.
He begs. He bargains. He offers territory and tribute and anything else he thinks I might want.
I let him exhaust his words while I consider how to end this.
A quick death would be merciful. Korren does not deserve mercy.
I crouch beside him and grip his jaw, forcing him to meet my eyes.
"You wanted my territory. You used my mate as an excuse to take it.
You sent wolves to hurt her while I was away.
" I lean closer until my breath fogs against his tear-streaked face.
"I want you to remember this moment in whatever hell awaits you.
I want you to remember that you lost everything because you tried to take what belongs to me. "
Then I tear out his throat with my bare hands.
The blood is hot against my skin, pumping weakly as his heart struggles to understand that it no longer has anywhere to send its contents. I watch him bleed out, making sure the last thing he sees is the face of the wolf who destroyed him.
When it is finished, I rise and turn to face the battlefield.
Korren's wolves have gone still. Some have already shifted to human form, their heads bowed in submission.
Others remain frozen in their wolf shapes, uncertain whether to fight or flee.
The battle is over. Their alpha is dead, their cause is lost, and every one of them knows that challenging me now would be suicide.
"Anyone else?" My voice carries across the blood-soaked snow. "Anyone else want to threaten my pack? My territory? My mate?"
Silence answers me. Then, one by one, the enemy wolves lower themselves to the ground. Bellies exposed. Throats bared. The ancient gestures of surrender and submission, offered to the alpha who has proven himself the stronger.
I do not acknowledge them. I turn and begin walking back toward the keep, leaving Torben to handle the aftermath. There will be time for politics later. Time for absorbing Korren's territory, for dealing with his surviving wolves, for all the tedious work that follows victory.
My legs are heavy with exhaustion, each step dragging through the blood-soaked snow.
The fury that carried me through the battle is fading, leaving behind the bone-deep weariness of a body pushed past its limits.
I have not slept since the night before the march.
Have not eaten since dawn yesterday. The wounds I barely noticed during the fighting make themselves known now, a dozen cuts and gashes that throb in time with my heartbeat.
But through the bond, I sense her. Pain faded to a dull ache, which means her wounds are not severe. And beneath the discomfort, something else. Something that feels like pride and exhaustion and fierce, defiant joy. She fought. She survived. And she is waiting for me.
My pace quickens without conscious decision. The trudge becomes a walk, the walk becomes a lope, and then I am running, exhaustion forgotten, wounds ignored, nothing mattering except closing the distance between us.
She is alive. She is waiting. And I will not make her wait a moment longer than necessary.
The keep comes into view as the light begins to fade, and I push harder despite the exhaustion dragging at my limbs.
The gates stand open, which should alarm me, but I can see the guards on the walls and smell the familiar scents of my pack drifting on the evening air.
The attack has been repelled. The fortress held.
And there, standing in the center of the courtyard with blood on her clothes and a sword still strapped to her hip, is Iris.
She looks like something forged in battle rather than born from it. Her dark hair is tangled and matted with gore. A bandage wraps around her ribs, visible through the torn fabric of her shirt. Bruises darken her jaw and her knuckles are split and swollen. She has never been more beautiful.
I slow to a walk as I approach, giving her time to see what I have become.
Blood coats my skin from hairline to heel, dried brown in some places and still glistening red in others.
My hands are crusted with it, my nails torn from tearing through flesh and bone.
I am the beast they have always whispered about, the monster that lurks beneath the alpha's civilized mask, and I will not pretend otherwise.
She does not flinch. She does not step back or look away or show any sign of the fear that should be flooding through her at the sight of me. Instead, she walks forward, steady and deliberate, closing the distance between us until she stands close enough to touch.
Then she presses her forehead against my chest, directly over my heart, and breathes.
"You're alive."
The words are quiet, meant only for me, and something loosens in my chest at the sound of them.
I have been held together by fury and adrenaline for hours, running on nothing but the need to reach her, and now that she is here, now that she is real and solid and warm against my blood-soaked skin, the edges of that control begin to fray.