This isn’t like the riverbank.
My jaw tightens. “Sophie—”
“I’m not going with you to fight,” she cuts in calmly. “I’ll stay back, just in case, and I’ll help the wounded when it’s over.”
Conan scoffs under his breath, but Heinrich shoots him a warning look before I can, even though my hands curl into fists at my sides.
I study Sophie’s face, searching for fear, hesitation, anything that would give me an excuse to refuse her. I find none. Just resolve. Grounded. Awake.
This is what frightens me the most.
If I say no, I can already feel the fracture it would cause. Not in the bond, not exactly, but in her trust. She’s done being shielded without explanation. Done being managed.
I exhale slowly. “Fine,” I say at last. “But you stay at the perimeter. No exceptions. You don’t step in until it’s absolutely necessary. We don’t even know why they’re camping there, and it can’t be good.”
She nods once. “I’ll be safe, I promise.”
The bond hums, quiet but firm, like something locking into place. That’s when I turn and signal the pack. Wolves shift,weapons are gathered, magic tightens and coils beneath skin and sinew. This isn’t a scouting party. This is a full defensive push.
As we move out, the weight settles fully on my shoulders.
Not just as alpha.
As the one standing between Sophie and what’s coming.
***
The southern ruins feel wrong, thick and dense with the kind of heaviness that comes with impending death.
The air hangs heavy with heat that doesn’t belong to the early morning, thick and metallic, like scorched iron. The stone structures—ancient, half-collapsed remnants of something long forgotten—radiate a low, pulsing energy that prickles against my skin.
Demons rise from the shadows before we even reach the outer boundary.
Not one. Not two.
Too many.
They don’t scatter. They don’t retreat.
They attack from all sides, swarming us like bees protecting their hive. Except, it's not their hive, but the southern ruins of the Ashclaw pack.
The first impact hits hard and fast, claws tearing into stone and flesh alike. Wolves surge forward, magic flaring—earth, wind, steel, water. I’m everywhere at once, shouting orders, shaping currents, pulling the river’s strength up through the ground beneath my feet.
Fire answers from the demons in jagged bursts, warped and oily, leaving scorch marks that don’t fade.
This is coordinated.
I see Heinrich fighting at my side, precise and relentless, his movements clean despite the chaos. Conan tears through a cluster with brutal efficiency, but his control is thin, edges fraying as the fight drags on.
Wolves fall.
The scent of blood cuts through the smoke, sharp and unmistakable. Injuries pile up faster than I’d anticipated—burns that don’t cool, wounds that resist healing.
Through it all, I feel Sophie.
She stays where she promised, moving among the injured with steady hands, her presence a calm counterpoint to the violence on the outskirts of the fight. I don’t look at her directly—not often—but I track her constantly, an awareness threaded through every breath.
Her fire is there.
