Chapter 5
A rogue had no honour. Glenn had said it a thousand times: *They will twist your mind with fables before they slit your throat.*
My jaw clenched until the bone ached. I shoved the confusion down into the black pit of my stomach, letting the icy venom of purpose fill the void.
I shifted my aim. I would not execute them from ambush—not because of their absurd words, but because the shot would echo through the gorge, warning Lucian miles ahead.
I reached to my belt, slipping two iron smoke-globes from their loops. I struck the flint caps against my forearm plate and hurled them down into the center of their triangular formation.
*Pfff-crack.*
A dense, blinding cloud of sulfurous white smoke exploded across the basin floor, swallowing the three warriors in an instant.
"Ambush!" the girl screamed, her steel cleavers rasping from their scabbards.
"Shields up!" Dennis roared. "Non-lethal! I said non-lethal, damn your hides!"
I dropped from the ridge.
I descended the scree slope like an avalanche of silent leather, landing on the frozen shale at the edge of the smoke cloud without a sound. My crossbow remained slung across my back; in close quarters, against three heavy Lycans, reloading was death.
Instead, I drew the twin trench daggers from my lower ribs—blades forged of blackened steel, grooved along the spine to channel blood, devoid of silver so they would not paralyze my own grip in the melee.
I plunged into the smoke.
The female wolf lunged out of the white fog, guided by hearing alone. She was fast—her twin cleavers sliced through the air in a scissor-cut aimed to sever my knees.
I didn't block. You cannot parry the brute mass of a half-shifted wolf with human-weight steel.
I vaulted forward, planting my boot directly on the broad flat of her descending blade, using her own momentum to flip over her head. In mid-air, I brought the heavy pommel of my right dagger down against the base of her skull with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer.
*Crack.*
The girl crumpled into the soot, unconscious before her knees touched the gravel.
"Talia!" the wounded male shouted from the mist, charging blindly toward the sound.
His short spear thrust through the white vapor, aiming low. I sidestepped, letting the shaft scrape against the hardened leather of my corset, and hooked my left dagger behind his elbow joint. A sharp twist wrenched the spear from his grip.
I slammed my palm into the center of his chest—right over his fractured ribs.
The scout gasped, the breath leaving him in a ragged wheeze as he stumbled backward, landing hard against the canyon wall. He looked up, his wolf-eyes glowing dull gold in the gloom, staring at the blade leveled at his throat.
He didn't bare his teeth. He didn't claw for his sidearm.
He just looked at me.
And in those golden, beast-bright eyes, there was no hatred. There was no feral lust for blood.
There were tears.
"Princess..." he whispered, his cracked lips trembling.
The word hit me like a physical blow.
My hand shook on the hilt of the dagger. My pulse roared in my ears, deafening and hot. "Shut up," I snarled, my voice cold, thin, vibrating with a rage I didn't understand. "I am the hand of the High Sanctum. You are an outlaw."
"You have her chin," the wounded wolf murmured, his eyes sweeping my face with an agony so naked it made my skin crawl. "Queen Isolda’s chin. The same stubborn line."
"I said *shut up!*"
A hurricane of wind tore through the smoke as Dennis leaped from the fog.
His boarding axe was swung broadside—not leading with the razor edge, but with the flat, heavy cheek of the iron head, aimed to disarm, not to cleave.
I spun away from the wounded scout, bringing my daggers up in a crossed-guard to catch the haft. The impact drove me back four paces, my boots plowing deep furrows through the frozen soot. The sheer, crushing power of an old Beta jarred through my wrists, radiating up into my collarbone.
And when that shock hit my chest, the scar *ignited*.
A violent spasm of heat ripped through the hollow of my throat. It felt as though an iron needle had been heated in a furnace and driven straight down into the marrow of my breastbone.
I stumbled, my daggers dropping an inch, a ragged gasp tearing from my lips.
Dennis was already upon me. His massive, brindle-furred frame towered over mine, his chest broad enough to crush my ribs beneath his weight. His axe was raised. His balance was perfect. If he had brought the spike of the haft down through my collarbone, he could have pinned me to the frozen stone like an insect.
He froze.
He saw my hand fly to my throat. He saw the white-hot agony contorting my face, the sudden, terrible trembling that shook my limbs.
Instead of striking, the old wolf dropped his axe.
The heavy iron weapon clattered harmlessly against the stones.
Dennis reached out with both hands, his massive, claw-tipped fingers opening wide in a posture of desperate surrender.
"Easy," he rumbled, his voice rough, frantic, as if speaking to a spooked foal on the edge of a cliff. "Easy, little one. The seal is reacting. Don't fight it. If you fight the scent-pull, it will tear your lungs apart."
"Stay... back..." I choked out, stumbling away from him, my vision swimming with grey spots.
The heat was spreading down my arms, into my fingertips. My throat was so tight I couldn't drag oxygen into my chest. And beneath the burning, that impossible, maddening sensation flooded my senses again.
Cedar. Crushed mountain pine.
The crack of lightning over high water.
It was close.
Not leagues away across the tundra.
*Here.*
Dennis took half a step forward, his eyes wide with fear—not for himself, but for me. "Dennis! Grab her!" the wounded scout coughed from the wall.
"I can't!" Dennis barked back. "If I touch her while the Alpha's aura is sweeping the basin, the blood-rejection will stop her heart! Talia, get up! We have to clear the gorge!"
The young female was already groaning, pushing herself up from the soot, shaking her bruised head. Dennis hauled her to her feet by her scruff, shoving her toward the northern pass.
"Run!" Dennis ordered, throwing the wounded scout’s arm over his broad shoulder. "Get to the timberline! Tell Lucian she’s in the gap!"
"What about her?" Talia spat blood onto the snow, glaring at me through dazed eyes.
"She won't follow us," Dennis said, looking back at me one last time, his gaze heavy with an unspeakable sorrow. "He’s already here."
They scrambled into the fog, their heavy footfalls fading rapidly into the howling gale of the upper valley.
I was left alone in the soot.
I fell to one knee, the rough gravel biting through the leather of my trousers. I jammed the heels of my hands into my eyes, fighting the sensory tidal wave that was drowning my mind.
*Get up. Get up, Diana.*
*You are an assassin. You are an empty vessel. You have no scent. You have no mate. You have no pack.*
