Tobias met that winter-gray stare without flinching. "You have my word."
"It had better. Because the debt you are creating isn't small and is not dependent upon the outcome of this binding." Erasmus stepped closer, and despite his courage, Tobias felt the primal urge to flee that all humans experienced in the presence of a wolf wearing human skin. "If we survive this night, you and yours will owe me and mine a blood debt. Unpaid until I or my descendants call it due."
The words settled into Tobias's bones with supernatural weight. A blood pact. Unbreakable by any force short of divine intervention. Binding not just him but every generation that followed.
He thought of his wife, heavy with their first child. He thought of the family he hoped to build, the legacy he wanted to leave. He was about to mortgage all of it on a single desperate gamble.
But if he refused, if he walked away, the necromancers would sweep across the territory like a plague. His wife, his unborn child, everyone he had ever known would either die or rise again as slaves to the coven's will.
"Agreed," Tobias said.
Erasmus produced a knife from his belt and drew the blade across his palm. Tobias took the knife and did the same, wincing at the sting. They clasped hands, and the world reformed around them. The trees seemed to lean closer. The wind held its breath. Something vast and ancient witnessed their agreement and found it acceptable.
"Done," Erasmus said. "Now let's kill these bastards before they kill us."
Erasmus led his wolves in a direct assault on the undead army, their howls tearing the silence apart. They fought with savage precision, tearing through corpses and scattering bones across the snow. But for every dead thing they destroyed, more pressed forward to take its place. The necromancers had been building their forces for too long, and the wolves were vastly outnumbered.
Tobias used the chaos to circle around the horde, moving through the shadows with skills honed by years of dangerous work. His perception guided him, showing him the paths where the necromantic energy flowed weakest, the gaps in the army's formation where he could slip through unnoticed.
He found the coven on a rise overlooking the battle, their arms raised as they chanted in a language that hurt his ears. The threads of dark energy flowed from their fingers, controlling the hundreds of corpses below. Up close, Tobias could see the strain on their faces. Maintaining control over so many dead required enormous concentration. If he could break that concentration, even for a moment, the whole web might unravel.
But how? He had no magic of his own, no weapons that could harm them from this distance. All he had was his gift, his ability to see the threads that others could not.
And then he understood.
His gift had always been passive, a way of perceiving rather than acting. But he had seen something in the threads tonight—a give, a fragility, as though they strained against their own complexity. Perception and reality were not as separate as he had always believed. To see something truly was to understand it. And to understand something was to have power over it.
Tobias closed his eyes and let his perception expand further than he had ever pushed it before. Pain cracked through his skull as he strained against the limits of his ability. He could feel something tearing inside him, some essential part of himself fraying under the pressure.
He pushed harder.
The threads of necromantic energy blazed in his mind like lines of fire. He could see every connection, every binding, every knot of dark magic that held the army together. And at the center of it all, the three necromancers, their souls tainted and twisted by years of the forbidden practice.
Tobias reached out with his perception—not to see the threads but to grasp them. The effort sent agony screaming through every nerve. Blood began to pour from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes. He could feel his gift burning itself out, consuming the very essence of what made him special.
But he held on. He pulled at the threads with everything he had, unraveling the bindings, severing the connections, disrupting the careful architecture of control.
The necromancers screamed as their power snapped back against them. Below, the army of the dead collapsed as one, bones clattering to the snow like scattered kindling. The wolvespressed their advantage, surging forward to tear the remaining necromancers apart before they could recover.
Tobias collapsed into the snow, blood pooling beneath his face, his vision going dark. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness took him was Erasmus Varen standing over him, those colorless eyes wide with genuine respect.
He woke three days later in a bed of furs, with a wolfshifter healer watching over him.
"The coven is destroyed," she told him. "Your gift saved us all."
Tobias tried to reach for his perception, tried to feel the threads of supernatural energy that had always surrounded him. There was nothing. Just a hollow emptiness where his gift used to live.
"It's gone, isn't it?" he asked.
The healer nodded, her eyes filled with sympathy. "You burned it out. Such sacrifices cannot be undone."
Erasmus visited him that evening, standing at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed over his massive chest.
"My scouts tell me you may have had this gift your whole life," the Alpha said. "That it was passed down through your family for generations."
"It was."
"And you spent it. All of it. To save wolves you had never met."
