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My voice echoed in the chamber. Alaric paused mid–swing, turning slowly toward me, his face a mask of disbelief that quickly morphed into rage.
“How dare you disrespect me?” he growled, the whip dangling from his hand, blood dripping from its tip. I am disciplining my mate in private. Who do you think you are to barge in here?” Ilis voice rose with each question, indignation burning in his eyes. Remove yourself from my sight this instant, or 1 will flay the skin from your ones! No one defies the Alpha King and lives to tell of it. GET OUT NOW!”
I stood frozen in the doorway, suddenly aware of the magnitude of my intrusion. This was the Alpha King–the most powerful werewolf in the territory. And I had just interrupted his private “session” with his mate.
He spun toward Ophelia, who hung limply from her chains. “I put a roof over your head and food in your fucking mouth,” he snarled, his voice rising with each word. “I bought you all you need, and this is how you repay me, bitch!*
He raised the whip again, his rage now amplified by my presence, alming once more at Ophelia’s already bloodied back. The whip whistled through the air as he prepared to deliver another brutal las to his mate.
I should have run. Should have stepped back, closed the door, pretended I’d never seen anything. Instead, some instinct I didn’t recognize propelled me forward.
I threw myself between the whip and Ophelia’s bloodied back.
Fire exploded across my shoulder as the leather bit into my skin. I cried out, the pain sharper than anything I’d experienced before. Silver. The whip was laced with silver.
Alaric’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed with cruel pleasure. “Want to feel what it’s like to be my mate?” he snarled. “I’ll break you just like her.” He drew his arm back, preparing another strike.
I braced myself, knowing I couldn’t withstand many of these blows, especially with silver burning through my flesh. But I couldn’t move–wouldn’t leave Ophelia to face this alone.
The door behind me crashed open with such force it splintered from its hinges.
Kaius stood in the doorway, his dark frame vibrating with barely contained fury. His eyes took in the scene in an instant–Ophelia chained and bleeding, me pressed against the wall with a fresh whip mark across my shoulder, his father with arm raised for another blow.
What happened next was too fast for my human eyes to follow completely. One moment, Kaius stood in human form at the threshold, the next, a massive black wolf lunged across the room, slamming into Alaric with enough force to send them both crashing into the far wall.
Alaric shifted mid–fall, his wolf form nearly as large as Kaius’s but silver–gray rather than midnight black. The two enormous predators collided in a blur of teeth and claws, their snarls and growls filling the chamber with primal fury.
I scrambled away from the wall, moving toward Ophelia whose eyes were now half–open, watching the battle with detached horror.
The wolves tore at each other with no restraint, blood spattering the walls and floor as they fought. This wasn’t a dominance display or territorial dispute this was a fight to the death. Kaius’s jaws snapped inches from his father’s throat while Alaric’s claws raked deep furrows in his son’s flank.
I tried to reach Ophelia, to free her from the chains, but the fighting wolves blocked my path, their massive bodies crashing into furniture and walls as they struggled for dominance.
The silver burn from the whip was spreading through my body, weakening me even as I tried to find a way around the battling
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wolves. My vision blurred, the room spinning slightly as the toxin worked through my system.
Kaius had Alaric pinned now, his jaws closing on his father’s throat, ist as his teeth began to break skin, Alaric twisted violently, breaking free and lunging toward the balcony doors. With a crash of glass, he leapt through and disappeared into the night,
Kaius stood panting, blood matting his black fur, his amber eyes burting with an intensity that made me shrink back. Slowly, he shifted back to human form, naked and still bleeding from multiple wounds that were already beginning to close
His gaze found mine, sweeping over me to assess the damage. The whip mark on my shoulder throbbed in response, as if recognizing its significance in triggering this cascade of violence.
The door opened again, and Frost appeared, carrying a bundle of clothing. His eyes widened slightly as he took in the devastation of the room, but his voice remained calm when he spoke.
“We have to talk,” he said to Kaius, who nodded once before turning to look at his mother.
moved to her quickly, breaking the restraints with his
Ophelia had lost consciousness, her body hanging limp from the chains. bare hands and catching her as she fell. Gently, he laid her on the bed, covering her naked body with a sheet.
“Take care of Elowen,” he said to Frost before following him from the room, pausing only to pull on the pants Frost had brought.
The silence after they left was deafening. I stood there, unsure what to do, the silver poison making my thoughts fuzzy and disjointed. I moved to Ophelia’s side, looking for something to clean her wounds with.
I’d found a cloth and water when her eyes fluttered open, fixing on me with sudden, sharp clarity.
“You should not have done that.” Her voice was hoarse but steady.
“What do you mean?” I asked, wringing out the cloth to clean the blood from her back.
She pushed my hand away with surprising strength. “What did you think you were doing? Do
*Ou think you could be some hero?”
“I couldn’t just close my ears to that,” I defended myself. “What kind of person would that make me?”
“You only caused more trouble.” There was bitterness in her voice, but something else too–fear.
“I’m sorry, I—”
“Shut up!” she interrupted, her eyes flashing with anger. “Shut your fucking mouth because you don’t know anything, little girl. You don’t know what you have just done. You made things worse; if you had gone on your own, soon he would decide I’ve had enough for my misbehaviour at the feast, and that would be it, but now… now you’ve made it worse; he is my mate; I am fucking stuck to him for life! Do you know where I will be going after this? To the Ironvale Pack, his pack, and no one, not you, not Kaius, will stop him. Worse, you also added Kaius to this mess; now he will suffer for you.”
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