Chapter 10
My inner wolf shrieked.
I could feel her—my silver wolf, the companion of my soul—being ripped apart from the center outward. The celestial decree of perjury was executing its sentence. Under the cosmic laws of the Moon Goddess, a wolf that breaks a sacred mating bond is an abomination. The punishment is spiritual annihilation: the soul is ground to ash, the wolf erased from existence, leaving only a hollow, lifeless corpse.
And because Logan had bound his broken vows to my marrow, the heavens were executing me in his place.
"No..." I gasped, my forehead pressed against the freezing rock, blood pouring from my nose, dripping through my cracked lips. "I kept the vow... I held the thread... I didn't break it..."
The sky did not listen. The heavens do not care for tears.
A bolt of violet celestial lightning struck the mountain peak above.
The cavern roof cracked. Massive chunks of granite shattered, raining dust and pulverized stone onto the floor. The wind within the cavern whipped into a howling gale, trapping me inside a cage of whirling purple sparks.
The tether pulled upward with terrifying, crushing force.
My body was lifted off the ground, suspended three feet in the air by the invisible nexus of the corrupted bond. My arms and legs hung limp, paralyzed by the sheer divine weight. Every bone in my body felt as if it were being compressed by the weight of an entire ocean.
*This is it,* my mind whispered through the white-out of agony.
*He ascends to a golden throne. And I die in the dark, branded as a traitor.*
A tear, hot and clear, slipped down my blood-streaked cheek.
*I trusted you.*
Above my head, the vortex narrowed.
A spear of concentrated, lethal skyfire—a solid column of blinding, violet celestial light—began to descend through the ceiling fissure. It moved slowly, deliberate and absolute, an executioner's blade falling through the heavens to strike through my chest and pulverize my soul into nothingness.
Ten seconds. Nine seconds.
The light was so bright it stripped the shadows from the cavern walls, blinding my eyes.
*CRASH.*
The heavy iron wards sealed over the ceremonial entrance of the cavern detonated inward with a sound like an exploding cannon.
Shards of iron and shattered oak flew across the chamber, pulverized by an immense, catastrophic force.
Through the curtain of smoke and swirling purple embers, a shadow ripped into the sanctuary.
It was not a man. It was an engine of pure, feral destruction.
Valen.
He was in his human form, but his eyes were completely swallowed by molten gold, blazing with a terrifying, apocalyptic fury that rivaled the celestial storm above. His heavy combat tunic was shredded at the shoulders, coated in blood—whether his own or the blood of the Silverpine sentries who had tried to bar his path, I could not tell.
In his right hand, he held an obsidian blade, its edge jagged and ancient, glowing with a dull, crimson heat.
"Valen..." My voice was barely a breath, lost in the roar of the skyfire.
He didn't speak. He didn't hesitate.
The barrier of the ceremonial circle was humming with lethal divine voltage, a boundary designed to keep out any living thing while the execution was carried out.
Valen hit that barrier like a siege ram.
The shockwave blasted through the cavern. Violet sparks tore across his flesh, shredding the leather of his trousers, searing deep, bloody furrows into his arms and face. The Alpha King roared—a sound of raw, unyielding dominance that shook the stone floor beneath us—and forced his massive frame through the electric perimeter through sheer, brutal force of will.
He breached the circle.
The descending column of skyfire was fifty feet above my chest, descending like a falling star. The heat was already singeing my hair, boiling the blood in my veins.
Valen lunged.
His massive hands clamped onto my waist, tearing me out of the air, breaking the levitation holding me suspended. The impact drove both of us backward against the ancient stone altar of the First Ancestors.
He pinned me to the cold marble.
His body was a wall of living iron, radiating heat so intense it pushed back the freezing rot in my bones. His dark hair was wild, plastered with sweat and blood to his forehead, his golden eyes wide and blazing with a fierce, desperate madness.
"You stubborn, foolish little wolf," he snarled through bared fangs, his chest heaving against mine.
"Get away from me!" I cried, trying to shove his chest with my bloody hands. "It's an execution! The celestial retribution... it will kill you! It's coming down!"
"Let it come," Valen growled.
With a swift, violent flick of his wrist, he raised the obsidian blade.
He didn't point it at me.
He drove the razor-sharp volcanic glass across his own broad chest, slicing a deep, crimson trench from his left collarbone to his sternum. Blood—pure, dark, rich Alpha blood—welled from the wound, steaming in the freezing cavern air.
Above us, the ceiling fissure shattered completely as the violet celestial lightning cracked through the cavern ceiling, locking me into the lethal vortex of the Moon Goddess’s retribution for Logan’s broken vows.
The skyfire was twenty feet away. The stone around us began to melt into glass.
My wolf let out a final, dying shriek in my mind, her spiritual core beginning to tear apart under the impossible cosmic pressure.
Valen grabbed the sides of my face, his calloused thumbs digging into my cheeks, forcing my eyes to look directly into his blazing golden stare.
"If the Moon demands an Alpha’s life for his perjury," he snarled, his voice a deafening roar that drowned out the thunder of the heavens, "she will take a King’s!"
Before I could scream, before I could breathe, he bared his fangs and lunged directly toward my mating gland to forcibly divert my execution into his own flesh as the death-strike fell.
