Chapter 6
“I came here to kill you,” she whispered, the guilt tearing at her chest.
“And you failed miserably,” he answered, a faint vibration of amusement rumbling in his chest. “Worst assassin the Council ever hired.”
A wet laugh escaped her lips, half a sob. She turned her face upward, her cheek sliding against the stubble of his jaw until her lips were a fraction of an inch from his.
Heath went utterly still.
The banter died instantly. The air between them grew charged, electric, heavy with the suffocating sweet heat of an Alpha recognizing his Luna. His amber eyes blazed into hers, dark, possessive, yet filled with a reverence that made her heart ache.
His hand slid up from her back, cupping the side of her neck. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone, wiping away the trace of her tear with a gentle, calloused stroke.
“You shouldn't be here,” Heath whispered, his breath hot against her parted lips. “I am a dead man on a broken seat, Wrenley. I have nothing to give you. No pack. No crown. Only this cold stone.”
“I don't want a pack,” Wrenley whispered back, her fingers rising to touch his chest, resting directly over his thundering heart. Her inner wolf was practically purring, wild with satisfaction. “I spent my whole life running from Alphas who wanted to cage me. And the only one I want to stay with is the one who can’t even walk.”
Heath let out a ragged, tortured groan.
He leaned down, bridging the tiny expanse between them.
His lips met hers.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was the collision of two starving souls, born in the bitter frost and forged in solitude. His mouth was fierce, demanding, claiming her with all the desperate, pent-up passion of seven years in the dark.
Wrenley arched into him, her fingers tangling in the thick hair at the nape of his neck, opening to him completely. The mate bond surged between them like an open flame catching dry pine, filling her veins with a golden, blazing light that obliterated the cold of the hall, the weight of the daggers, and the ghost of the assassin she had been an hour ago.
Heath held her like she was the only real thing in a crumbling world, his tongue tracing the seam of her lips, his body trembling with the colossal restraint it took not to crush her against his chest.
When he finally pulled back, resting his forehead against hers, they were both breathing hard, their chests rising and falling in sync.
“Wrenley,” he gasped, his amber eyes wild with gold.
“I’m here,” she said, her fingers resting against his jaw. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Before Heath could answer, a violent, deafening tremor ripped through the foundation.
*BOOM.*
The entire keep swayed. Dust and chunks of mortar rained down from the ceiling, crashing onto the stone floor below.
At their feet, the obsidian spikes flared with a blinding, toxic violet radiance. The runes etched into the stone began to hiss, steam rising from Heath’s flesh as the chains jerked violently downward, pulling against him with savage, terrifying force.
Heath let out a roar of agony, his back arching, his hands gripping the obsidian armrests so hard the polished stone cracked beneath his fingers.
“Heath!” Wrenley cried, scrambling to hold him, her hands pressing against his shoulders.
Beneath the floorboards, miles into the deep earth, something groaned.
It was a wet, ancient sound. A shifting of immense, impossible coils.
The vibration rattled Wrenley’s teeth in her skull. It wasn't just a tremor of the earth; it was an aura—something so dark, so hungry, that the hair on the back of her neck stood on end.
“The eclipse...” Heath choked out through clenched teeth, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he fought to keep his wolf’s power pouring into the altar. “The celestial eclipse... is tomorrow night.”
Wrenley looked up through the cracked clerestory windows.
Outside, the full moon was riding high in the black sky, but its eastern edge was already beginning to tarnish, a creeping, unnatural shadow biting into the silver light.
“The wards are failing because the moon is dying,” Heath gasped, his amber eyes wide with urgent, desperate terror. He looked at her, his hand reaching out to shove her away from the throne, trying to break the bond, trying to push her to safety. “Garyth knows the timing. He didn't just send you to kill me, Wrenley... he sent you tonight so the seal would break before the eclipse is full!”
Before she could process his words, a sound cut through the silence of the high mountain pass outside Dunmore Keep.
A war horn.
Clear, brassy, and carrying the unmistakable, heraldic cadence of the High Alpha Council.
Then came the rhythmic, thundering march of two hundred armored wolves, their boots striking the frozen stone of the outer courtyard.
Garyth had arrived.
The brazen shriek of the war horn tore through the frost-thickened silence of the inner sanctuary.
Before the sound could fade, the first blow struck.
A seismic concussion slammed into the outer curtain wall, rattling the iron-toothed portcullises that sealed the grand hall. Dust exploded from the mortar between the granite blocks, raining down in a white, blinding flurry that dusted Wrenley’s dark braids.
Beside her, Heath went rigid.
A sharp, wet gasp tore from his throat. The four obsidian spikes driven into his thighs and flanks flared with blinding, furious violet light. The glow was so intense that through his worn leather breeches and linen shirt, Wrenley could see the translucent black glass burning like white-hot coal. The runes etched down the links began to boil the sweat pooling on his skin, sending thin, bitter tendrils of steam hissing into the freezing air.
“They brought siege engines,” Wrenley breathed, slipping off the dais and landing on the balls of her feet. Her daggers cleared their scabbards with twin, metallic whispers. “To an empty keep?”
“Not siege engines,” Heath choked out. His knuckles were bone-white where they gripped the obsidian armrests. Veins bulged along the corded muscles of his neck, thick and dark against his pale skin. “Rune-rams. Cold-forged iron soaked in wolfsbane. Garyth isn't trying to breach the gates. He’s trying to shatter the resonance. If he disrupts the hall’s vibration... the floor...”
He didn't need to finish.
As if summoned by his ragged voice, the subterranean floor shuddered.
It was not a natural tremor. It was a violent, upward jolt, as though something miles wide had just rolled over in its subterranean slumber and shoved against the ceiling of its grave.
*CRACK.*
A jagged fissure, as black and wide as a warrior’s forearm, ripped across the polished granite floor three paces from the dais steps. A cloud of sulfurous, oily steam hissed from the crack, smelling of stagnant water, copper, and ancient rot.
Wrenley staggered, catching herself against the edge of the third step. Her rogue wolf let out a sharp, panicked yelp in the dark corners of her mind, its hackles raised, its teeth bared at the floorboards.
“What is down there?” she demanded, spinning back toward him. Her heart was hammering an erratic rhythm against her ribs. “Heath, look at me! What is beneath this stone?”
