I will choose him. Completely. The bite, the bond, the conversion. All of it.
Because I am no longer the woman who walked into this keep as a prisoner. I am luna of the Northern Pack, with the blood of my enemies on my hands.
The howl rises from the forest below, long and triumphant, answered by dozens more. They are close now. Minutes away.
I grip the cold stone of the parapet and let the bond pull taut between us. He is close now. And when he arrives, I will show him exactly what his luna is capable of.
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. Iremember 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.
