Sorin
There was no need to look at the crowd, my men, or the doctor. I could hear and feel their fear. Aliana’s eyes were not just red—they fucking glowed. Malakh was mute with shock.
Me?
I was so gone for my mate that they could proclaim her a dark witch and I would still kill every last one of them without hesitation, for the insult alone.
She was not just my mate. She was my destiny.
This was a boon from the Moon Goddess, and one I would honour for the rest of my life. My soul had left my body when I thought her dead—crippled in a way I would never fully comprehend.
I dipped the cloth in iced water and pressed it against her burning forehead.
Malakh rose silently, and I knew what he wanted. I bowed my head until Aliana’s eyes locked with ours. The tension left her—a ragged breath shuddering beneath her sternum. She saw us, and her eyes softened.
Two wolves.
Bound. Reflections of one another.
Our bond would not be weak. Our love would remain true. My allegiance would never falter.
“Alpha?”
I growled, turning to snap my teeth and snarl at the interruption.
Rev took a step back but held up his hand.
A small glass vial sat in his palm, fitted with silver at the base and cap.
“The stepmother had it in her purse.”
Every part of me wanted to rise, to hunt down the entire Silvermere delegation and paint the ceremony grounds red with a violence they wouldn’t survive long enough to regret.
I wanted to peel skin from bone slowly enough to hear them beg, roast the flesh over the pit behind the kennels, and feed the ashes to the livestock—let something innocent benefit from what those people had tried to take from me.
But my arms were full of her. And nothing—not vengeance, not fury, not the Terrible clawing beneath my skin—was worth loosening my grip on my mate for even a second.
So I held still. I held her. And I let the rage build inside me like a furnace with no outlet, banking itself for later.
My left eye and cheek began to twitch.
“Place her family in the cells. All of them. Make sure they have nothing they could use to take their own lives.”
Because I intended to be the one who ended them. Slowly. Personally. When my hands were finally free to do it.
He nodded, waving Jax over as they took off.
“Talon, secure the Silvermere Alpha. String him up on the central post,” I murmured, stroking Aliana’s hair.
An Alpha had a duty to his pack members, and he had repeatedly failed my mate. His demise would serve as a warning to every other pack watching.
A few moments later, shots rang out. I didn’t need to look to know my officers had surrounded the Alpha and his kin.
I slipped my arm beneath her legs and gathered her close before I stood. The crowd parted while my officers kept their weapons drawn.
“Hospital,” I snapped, and two officers ran ahead of me.
Aliana patted my chest. I glanced at her flushed face.
“Don’t be so mean,” she murmured.
I was about to defend myself when she spoke again.
“Not to our pack.”
Excellent. That left me thirteen other packs to torment. But I didn’t tell her that.
? ? ?
The doctor had placed an intravenous antivenom drip in Aliana’s arm, and nurses came every twenty minutes to check her blood pressure, lung function, and any signs of swelling.
I’d had to cut the wedding dress off her. Which made Aliana sad. Which drove me straight back into a bloodthirsty frenzy.
“I feel much better now,” she said, trying to sit up.
I placed my hand over her hospital gown, holding her down.
“You were dying an hour and a half ago,” I said, glancing up.
Her eyes had returned to dark brown and black.
“Technically, I was dead.”
Malakh growled.
She claimed to have seen her mother, but it could have been a hallucination—fluid building in her lungs, the toxins causing the frothing and excess drool. A sight I never wanted to see again.
“Seriously, I’m hungry. What happened to the ceremony feast?”
This is criminal, Malakh snapped. Feed our mate.
I raised a finger.
“Do not move. Not a single inch.”
She nodded, but a slight smile played on her lips.
“Maybe you can be my royal food tester, like in the olden days?”
I stood. She had a point.
Talon was born for this new role.