Chapter 4
“The mechanism is three inches beneath your boots,” Heath said, opening his eyes again. The amber was shadowed by dark, bruised rings of purple exhaustion. “And you cannot lift it. Not without a master rune stone. And the only master rune stone in the northern hemisphere sits on a velvet cushion around Garyth’s fat neck.”
Silence crashed down over the hall, thick and suffocating.
Wrenley stared at him. She looked at the four massive spikes driven through the leather of his cuirass.
Slowly, against every instinct of an assassin confronting a mark, she climbed the dais steps.
Heath didn't move. He watched her approach with the quiet stillness of an ancient predator that had long since forgotten how to fear the hunter’s spear. As she drew nearer, the scent of him thickened—scorched earth, crushed winter needles, and beneath it, the unmistakable, metallic tang of an Alpha whose core power was running dangerously, critically dry.
She stopped two paces away.
In the unobstructed moonlight, the true horror of his condition laid itself bare.
Garyth had told the Council that Heath was bloated on stolen vitality. But the man before her was carved down to sinew and raw, stubborn muscle. His collarbones stood out like iron bars beneath his frayed linen shirt. The hollow beneath his cheekbones spoke of months without proper sustenance, his body surviving on nothing more than the ferocious, stubborn resilience of a royal Lycan bloodline.
And the chains.
Wrenley looked closer at the obsidian links anchoring him to the throne.
They weren't just wrapped around his legs. They were *drinking* from him.
Where the dark, glass-like spikes entered the flesh of his upper thighs and the soft curve of his flanks, tiny, hair-thin capillaries of purple light branched outward through his pale skin. They looked like spiderwebs of violet frost, pulsing rhythmically as they pulled a steady, continuous stream of golden light from his veins and channeled it downward into the dais.
*He’s not hoarding power,* her inner wolf whispered, a cold terror gripping her heart. *He’s bleeding it.*
Every pulse of that violet frost coincided precisely with the low, rhythmic thumping she had felt beneath the soles of her boots.
“You’re... you’re an anchor,” Wrenley breathed, the blade in her hand dropping an inch.
“A battery,” Heath corrected, his voice a dry rasp. “An anchor implies choice. An anchor implies I can pull the chain when I wish to sail away.”
Wrenley felt the ground beneath her world begin to slide.
“If you are the source feeding the keep,” she said, her throat tight, “then the ley-lines aren't being hoarded here. They’re being drawn *into* the floor. What is taking your power, Heath?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Something that was buried before our packs learned to walk on two legs. Something that has been scratching at the bedrock of Dunmore for a thousand years.”
He shifted slightly, trying to ease the pressure on his left hip, and let out an involuntary hiss of agony. His breath caught in his throat, and for a fleeting second, the terrifying, indomitable Alpha facade cracked, revealing the raw, unbearable agony he was enduring.
Her body moved before her mind could sanction the treason.
She took the final step, dropping to one knee beside the armrest of the throne. She reached out, her gloved fingers hovering an inch above the entry point of the obsidian spike in his right thigh.
“Don't touch it,” Heath warned, though his voice lacked any real bite. It was strained, breathless. “The rune doesn't distinguish between my soul and yours. It will bite you, little wolf.”
“I’m an assassin, not a civilian,” she muttered, ignoring his warning.
She peeled off her leather gauntlet with her teeth, exposing the pale skin of her hand. With infinite care, she brushed two fingers against the junction where the obsidian met his flesh.
The reaction was instantaneous.
A jolt of pure, freezing agony shot up her arm, burning like liquid nitrogen through her nerves. But mingled with the pain was an overwhelming, soul-shattering wave of *him*. His scent exploded across her senses; she felt the ancient, thundering beat of his royal wolf, locked in an endless, agonizing war of attrition, throwing its golden aura against an encroaching, bottomless dark.
Wrenley gasped, her pupils blowing wide.
Heath groaned, his head falling forward, his forehead coming to rest against her bare shoulder. The heat coming off his skin was searing, a stark, violent contrast to the icy hall.
“Wrenley...” he whispered, his lips brushing against the collar of her tunic.
The sound of her name on his lips sent a shiver through her core so intense it bordered on pain. Her inner wolf surged to the surface, whining with an unbearable, territorial urge to soothe him, to bare her throat to him, to take half of that crushing weight onto her own shoulders.
*Mine,* the bond sang, humming in the marrow of her bones. *Mate. Sufferer. King.*
Her free hand, acting entirely without permission, rose to the back of his neck. Her fingers tangled into his thick, unwashed dark hair. It was cool to the touch, dusted with frost, but the skin beneath was fever-hot.
“Why didn't you send word to the Council?” she whispered, her breath mingling with his in the frigid air. Her heart was beating so hard she could hear it in her ears. “If you were holding this... whatever this is... why let Garyth paint you as a tyrant? Why let the valley believe you were their enemy?”
Heath didn't lift his head. He seemed entirely incapable of pulling away from the touch, leaning the full weight of his skull against her shoulder like a drowning man clutching a piece of driftwood.
“Garyth knows,” Heath breathed against her skin. Every word vibrated against her collarbone. “Garyth was here... seven years ago. When the seal first cracked.”
A cold dread pooled in Wrenley’s stomach. “What are you saying?”
“Look on the table,” Heath muttered, his voice fading with exhaustion. “Behind the pillar. The western alcove. See what the Council left me to guard the north with.”
Wrenley hesitated. The warmth of his body pressed against hers was an intoxicating drug. Her rogue training screamed that turning her back on an Alpha was suicide; her wolf screamed that leaving his side was an unforgivable sin.
Slowly, deliberately, she eased her hand out of his hair. Heath let out a soft, broken sound at the loss of contact—a half-growl, half-whimper that made her stomach clench with fierce, possessive sweet heat.
“I’ll be right here,” she found herself saying, the promise slipping past her defenses before she could bite it back.
She rose to her feet, her legs feeling oddly light, and walked past the dais toward the western colonnade.
Tucked into the deep shadows between two fluted pillars sat a heavy oak trestle table, covered in a thick layer of dust. Upon it lay no feasts, no stolen gold, no opulent relics of a hoarder’s wealth.
There were only parchments.
Dozens of them.
Wrenley picked up the nearest scroll, blowing the dust from its surface. The seal on the wax was unmistakably Garyth’s—the three-headed wolf of the Northern Council, stamped in deep crimson.
