Chapter 5
"Lucian is a ghost who stayed in the woods too long," another voice spat. Fenris. Even in the damp chill of the subterranean vault, his voice carried the thick, oily arrogance of an Alpha who already believed the crown sat upon his brow. "He thinks because he patrols the ice-wastes, he knows how to rule a pack. He has three dozen scouts. I have three hundred warriors. If my brother stands between me and the solar doors, I will split his throat before I carve the old man's chest."
"The elders are getting skittish, Fenris," Torvald warned, his boots coming to a halt near the entrance of the archives. "Elder Garek spoke up during the dawn council. He says pack law requires the Alpha to be officially declared rabid by the shaman circle before the doors may be broken. If we strike too early, the minor clans might claim the rite was tainted."
"Garek is an old toothless bitch," Fenris snarled. "Did you see the old man's eyes at dusk? The black rot is already past his temples. By tomorrow midnight, he won't know his own name. He'll be tearing the tapestries off the walls and pissing blood. Am I supposed to wait until he breaks out and slaughters the lower kennels?"
A pause stretched, heavy with the sound of Fenris’s low, rhythmic panting. He was working himself into a lather, his blood singing with the scent of an approaching kill.
"Besides," Fenris continued, his tone dropping into a vicious, purring register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, "the old man made his final mistake. He locked that little human pet in there with him."
My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged bird, so loud I was terrified their enhanced wolf senses would hear it through the stone. I held my breath, pressing the bone hilt harder against my flesh.
"Why do you think he kept her?" Torvald grunted. "Fifteen years of feeding meat to a useless mouth. She can't fight. She can't breed strong pups. Half the pack thought Oberon had taken her to his bed."
"Oberon never touched her," Fenris scoffed with venomous disdain. "He was too sanctimonious for that. He kept her as an insult to me. A reminder that his word was absolute—that he could elevate a stray mongrel from the dirt and place her higher than his own pureblooded commanders. But it works in our favor."
"How?"
"When we smash through those ironwood doors, we don't just take his heart," Fenris said, a dark chuckle vibrating in his chest. "We find the human torn to ribbons. We tell the council that the mad Alpha butchered his own pet in his feral fury. It validates the slaughter. It proves to the entire northern territory that the old monster had completely lost his humanity. The elders will beg me to eat his heart right there on the solar floor to cleanse the stain."
"And if she's still breathing when we break the wood?"
"Then you break her neck, Torvald," Fenris answered flatly. "And toss her carcass out the window into the ravine. A human lives by our grace, and she dies by our convenience. Let's go. Lucian is calling an assembly in the Great Hall. Let's see what pathetic legalities my little brother wants to whine about before I rip his teeth out."
Their footsteps receded up the stairs, the heavy oak door at the top banging shut, followed by the clanking slide of a bolt.
I remained frozen in the darkness for several minutes, the silence ringing in my ears.
*A human lives by our grace, and she dies by our convenience.*
Fenris didn't just want the mantle; he wanted the total eradication of everything Oberon had protected. If I stayed in the fortress, I died. If I ran, Fenris would send his tracker hounds to tear me apart in the pine forests before I crossed the river.
My only shield, the only thing keeping the jaws of the pack from closing around my throat, was the dying, mad warlord locked in the solar above.
I tucked the heavy volume back into its shelf, crept up the narrow servants' passage behind the pantry walls, and moved through the shadows of the fortress toward the high solar.
The clock was ticking. Forty-eight hours until the eclipse.
***
The Great Hall was an amphitheater of bared teeth and suppressed violence.
I peered down from the high wooden gallery, shrouded behind the heavy wool banners that hung from the rafters. Below me, nearly two hundred shifters had gathered around the sunken fire-pit. The scent of roasted mutton, sour ale, and wet wolf pelt was thick enough to choke on.
In the center of the flagstones stood Lucian.
He had removed his travel-stained cloak, wearing only a form-fitting tunic of boiled leather studded with iron rivets. His posture was rigid, perfectly balanced, his long fingers resting casually on the pommel of his broadsword. Against the massive, hulking berserkers surrounding him, Lucian looked almost slender—yet none of them dared step within three paces of him. He carried himself with the lethal economy of a timber wolf that had spent three years hunting in the frozen barren lands where mistakes were punished by death.
Opposite him, leaning against the carved stone hearth, stood Fenris, flanked by five of his heaviest enforcers. Fenris’s arms were bare, thick cords of muscle rippling beneath skin tattooed with the kill-marks of forty border skirmishes.
Between them sat the Council of Elders—five ancient shifters with silver-streaked fur clinging to their collars, their rheumy eyes darting nervously between the two brothers.
"The law of the First Alpha is clear, Lucian," Fenris barked, his voice booming off the vaulted timber ceiling. "When the Alpha’s blood turns black, the threshold of the solar is forfeit! The pack cannot be left leaderless while a rabid beast sits upon the high seat!"
"The law of the First Alpha is precise, brother," Lucian countered, his voice smooth, low, and terrifyingly steady. It didn't bounce off the walls; it cut through them. "The threshold is forfeit *only* when the eclipse crests and the shaman circle confirms the loss of reason. We are still forty-eight hours from the blood moon. Oberon sits behind barred doors by his own decree. As long as he draws breath as Alpha, touching that door is treason."
"He has locked himself away like a coward!" a warrior from Fenris’s ranks yelled.
Lucian’s head snapped toward the speaker. His storm-gray eyes narrowed to slits, and in a single, fluid blur of movement that made several elders flinch, he drew a six-inch throwing blade from his belt and slammed it into the heavy oak table half an inch from the warrior's hand.
The wood split with a violent *crack*.
"Speak of the Alpha with respect, or I will feed your tongue to your own bitch," Lucian said quietly. The Great Hall fell deathly silent. Even the fire in the pit seemed to hiss with subdued tension. "Oberon led this pack through three territorial wars. He broke the frost-giants at the Red Pass. He fed your sires when the seven-year famine froze the herds. If he chooses to spend his final hours behind barred doors, you will wait until the moon commands the rite."
