Chapter 39 #2
Feray's connection to the Dunnum pack gives her hundreds of wolves who would die at her command.
Her claim to Crescent Valley adds hundreds more—nearly seven hundred if we count every wolf who bowed to her after she killed the false alpha.
Together, that's an army that rivals anything the shifter councils could muster, spread across territories that span half a continent.
She is a massive threat to their rule. And if she ever opposes them—if she ever decides to challenge the corruption and cruelty they've perpetuated for generations—they know with bone-deep certainty that it would be their end.
They're not hunting her because they fear what she is.
They're hunting her because they fear what she could become.
The world moves in slow motion as I watch Torben's bear barrel into the massive polar wendigo, his full weight behind a charge that would flatten a building.
The impact sends ripples through the creature's blubbery flesh, knocking it back several steps—but it doesn't fall. Doesn't even seem to notice the pain.
Feray seizes the opening with the ruthless precision I've come to expect from her wolf.
She lunges for the creature's head, her massive jaws closing around its skull with a crack that echoes across the frozen wasteland.
The wendigo screams—a sound that will haunt my nightmares for centuries—as Feray and Torben attack in coordinated fury, tearing into its rotting flesh with claws and teeth.
Black blood sprays across the snow, steaming where it lands despite the cold.
Nearby, Easton's fire blazes brighter than the sun, engulfing three of the yeti in flames so hot the snow around them melts in an expanding circle. Their screams pierce the air like knives, mingling with the noxious black smoke that rises from their burning flesh and fur.
I swoop down and add my own stream of fire to the writhing bodies, ensuring they will never rise again. The collars around their necks melt and spark, the magic within them sputtering out as the metal runs like water.
A sharp yelp cuts through the chaos, and my heart stops. Feray.
I spin in midair and see her—my mate, my eternal, my reason for existing—with a fresh wound carved across her wolf's face.
The wendigo's claws have bisected her eyebrow, narrowly missing her eye by less than an inch, and the gash continues down her cheek in a line of crimson that stands out against her white fur like a brand.
Rage ignites deep within me. Not the hot fury of battle.
Something colder. Older. The kind of rage that builds dynasties and destroys empires, that waits with infinite patience for the perfect moment to strike.
Someone is going to die for this. I land heavily beside the ongoing battle, my massive form shaking the ground as I stomp toward the wendigo.
Feray and Torben look up at my approach, read something in my dragon's eyes, and wisely step aside.
The creature is already torn apart—its mage nearly ripped from its chest where Feray's claws found whatever dark magic was keeping it alive. It twitches and writhes in the bloody snow, not yet dead but no longer able to fight.
I raise my dragon's front foot high. And I bring it down with every ounce of strength nine hundred years has given me.
The sickening crunch of bones shattering beneath my weight echoes across the tundra like a death knell.
The wendigo squishes like a grape beneath my foot, black ichor and rotting viscera spraying in every direction. The silence that follows is absolute.
The air is thick with the metallic scent of blood and the acrid smell of burned flesh.
The landscape around us has become a twisted nightmare—bodies strewn about, some charred beyond recognition, others crushed into the snow until they're barely identifiable as something that once lived.
I stand amidst the carnage, my senses still heightened from the battle, my dragon slowly settling back beneath my skin as the threat fades.
Feray shifts back to human form beside me, her body visibly trembling with a volatile mixture of rage and adrenaline. Her breath comes in ragged gasps, each exhale misting in the cold air, and the wound on her face bleeds freely down her cheek and neck, staining her pale skin crimson.
The remnants of the creature that hunted her—that might have killed her parents, that was sent specifically to end her life—lie flattened beneath my foot, a gruesome reminder of what happens to those who threaten what is mine.
"I am so sick and tired of having to fight these bloody things," she spits out, her voice echoing with frustration as she gestures to the mangled corpse.
Her eyes—still ice blue and burning with her wolf's fury—turn to the sky as if demanding answers from the gods themselves.
"When is it going to end?" she screams, and the raw emotion in her voice sends chills down my spine.
I shift back into human form and meet her gaze, feeling the heat of her fury and the iron core of her determination. She isn't broken by this. She isn't afraid. She's angry.
Good.
"It will end with their heads on pikes," I reply, my voice a low growl as I survey the battlefield littered with crispy yetis and the flattened remains of the wendigo beneath my boot prints. "It's been centuries since I added skulls to my collection. It's high time I start again."
I crack my knuckles—a human habit I picked up somewhere along the centuries—and step closer to Feray. Gently, with a tenderness that seems impossible for hands that just crushed a monster to pulp, I lift her chin to examine the wound.
The angry red line runs from just below her hairline, bisects her eyebrow, skirts past her eye by a miracle, and continues down her cheek to her jaw.
An inch to the left and she would be blind in that eye.
An inch deeper and she might not be standing here at all.
The phoenix feather woven into her hair burns brightly, pulsing with golden light as it works to heal what damage it can.
Already the bleeding is slowing, the edges of the wound beginning to knit together with supernatural speed.
Easton approaches, his hand raised and ready. "Do you want me to heal it?" he offers, concern etched deep into his features. "I can remove it completely—no scar, no mark, like it never happened."
Feray considers him for a long moment, something ancient and fierce flickering behind her ice-blue eyes. "No," she says finally, her voice firm. "I earned this. I fought to protect my people and survived a polar bear wendigo. This scar is mine."
She tilts her head, looking from me to Easton with a small smile tugging at her lips—the first hint of warmth I've seen since the attack began. "Thank you anyway."
Her gaze moves to Torben and Khal, still in their shifted forms in the snow, both of them bleeding from wounds of their own. The bear's flank is torn. The basilisk has lost several scales along his side. But they're alive. We're all alive.
"Let's go home," she says, her voice carrying the quiet authority of a queen.
She shifts back into her wolf form with a fluid grace that still takes my breath away, and begins trudging through the churned, bloody snow toward the alpha house without looking back at the carnage we're leaving behind.
She doesn't need to look back. The dead aren't her concern anymore.
When Feray and the others are far enough away—white wolf, brown bear, and silver basilisk cutting a path through the snow—Easton turns to me, his brow furrowed with concern. "Why didn't she want to be healed? The scar is going to bother her once she calms down and sees it in a mirror."
I watch our bond mates go, feeling a strange mixture of pride and protectiveness and something that might be awe.
"Wolves, like dragons, take great pride in their scars," I explain, stroking my beard thoughtfully.
"Her wolf is probably telling her that the scar is proof she survived against all odds, proof that something tried to kill her and failed. "
"But still..." Easton's voice carries a rare note of vulnerability, his healer's instincts warring with his understanding of shifter psychology.
"Settle down," I say, gripping his shoulder with a reassuring squeeze.
"If it's not bothering her, leave it be.
She healed herself to this point using your feather—if she wanted her skin flawless like it was before, she would have come to you immediately.
If we leave it alone and it bothers her later, she'll ask you to fix it then. "
"It's harder to heal the longer a scar is left to set," Easton murmurs, defeat coloring his words.
"Couple that with a shifter's enhanced healing factor and my feather accelerating everything, and it may be too late by the time we reach the alpha house.
" For once, he doesn't sound like a pompous ass—just a man worried about the woman he loves.
I nod, considering his point. "Let's catch up to the family.
Everyone needs to eat and bathe. I'm sure you can find an excuse to bathe with Feray to check her for other wounds.
" His eyes light up at the suggestion, and he shifts immediately, golden wings carrying him swiftly after our mate.
I let out a soft laugh before shifting and taking flight myself.
I circle the ravine where the moose were killed, ensuring the wolves have gathered all the bodies.
Most of the kills have been loaded onto sleds, but the largest one—the final moose Feray and Torben brought down together—lies abandoned in the bloody snow.
A chilling reminder of how quickly everything changed.
From above, I can see the trampled earth and the dark stains marking where the battle interrupted the harvest. The wolves fled in such panic they left behind enough meat to feed a dozen families for a week. I won't let that sacrifice go to waste.
I'm too large to land directly in the narrow ravine, so I touch down on the ridge above it and lower my spiked tail into the gap.
The barbs impale the moose carcass with wet thuds, and I lift the massive weight into the air, gripping it with my taloned hand before taking flight again.
One more piece of my mate's victory, brought home where it belongs.
When I arrive back at the village, I land near the other sleds and place the moose with the rest of the kills. The scent of blood hangs heavy in the air—from the hunt, from the battle, from wounds both healed and healing.
As I shift back and walk toward the alpha house, the residents of this little village begin to emerge from their hiding places. Their eyes are shadowed with worry, with fear of what almost happened, but I see something else there too. Gratitude. Hope.
They watched their Luna fight a monster and win. They watched four mythics rain fire from the sky to protect them. For the first time in two decades, they have someone willing to bleed for them.
The walk back to the alpha house is pleasant despite the lingering tension that coils in my chest. Many of the small shops have beautiful displays in their windows, glinting in the afternoon light like jewels—carved bone trinkets and woven blankets and delicate silver jewelry that catches the sun.
I make note of which windows make me think of Feray.
She'll never buy anything for herself—she's too practical, too focused on others, too convinced she doesn't deserve beautiful things.
But I have nine hundred years of accumulated wealth and a dragon's instinct to hoard treasures for his mate.
I'll come back when she's not looking. Feray deserves all the beautiful things her heart desires, whether she'll admit it or not.
And whoever sent that wendigo—whoever is hunting her, tracking her, trying to snuff out the last winter wolf before she can become the queen she was born to be—they're going to learn what happens when you threaten a dragon's hoard.
The hard way.