Chapter 6
"You held a conduit, Clara, but it wasn't to anchor him!" Valen stepped closer, invading my space until I could smell the crushed juniper and winter air of his skin, until his massive chest nearly brushed mine. "A true death of a fated mate leaves a barren soul. It is empty. It is dead earth. It does not drink!"
He pointed a thick, scarred finger directly at my chest.
"You are being milked dry! Your wolf’s core is being siphoned through that mark like water through a broken dam! Do you think I don't know what celestial soul-rot looks like? I have fought across the northern territories for fifteen years. I have seen the forbidden rites of the High Moon Court!"
The mention of the High Moon Court sent an icy needle through my spine.
"The Court has nothing to do with this," I stammered, though my voice sounded thin even to my own ears. "Silverpine is an independent valley. We have had no ties to the High Court in over a century—"
"Then why are your elders sending three armored carriages toward the eastern mountain pass under the cover of the midnight mist?" Valen interrupted, his eyes boring into mine with devastating clarity.
I froze.
The wind howled through the gorge, carrying the sound of rushing water far below.
"What did you say?" I whispered.
"Three nights ago, the same night your husband supposedly burned into holy dust, a courier eagle from the High Moon Court crossed my northern airspace," Valen said, his voice dropping into a tight, relentless rhythm. "It carried imperial seals. Yesterday at dusk, my scouts spotted twelve heavy draft horses crossing the upper bridge near the Silverpine boundary, escorted not by pack warriors, but by hooded priests wearing the crest of the High Moon Inquisitors."
"You're lying," I breathed, though my stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit of cold dread. "That's impossible. No carriage leaves the valley without the Luna’s authorization."
"Then go look in your ancestral vaults, Clara," Valen said softly.
He didn't sneer. He didn't gloat. The look on his face was one of grim, brutal pity—a look that cut far deeper than any blade he carried.
"Go down beneath your sacred chapel," he continued, holding my gaze without blinking. "Look for the Moonstone Chalice. Look for the ancient charters of your founders. Look for the sacred bloodline relics your line has guarded for five hundred years. See if they are still sleeping in their velvet chests."
"Why would they take them?" My voice cracked, the foundations of my reality beginning to shudder beneath my feet. "Even if you speak the truth—which I do not concede—why would our elders give our heritage to the High Court?"
Valen took half a step back, giving me room to breathe, though the intensity of his presence remained suffocating.
"Because a peasant does not buy his way into heaven with empty hands," Valen said grimly. "And an Alpha from a backwater mountain pack does not ascend to the Luminary High Tier without paying a dowry in royal blood."
The words struck my chest like a physical blow.
*Ascend?*
*Dowry?*
"You're insane," I choked out, shaking my head violently, clutching his cloak around my shivering frame. "Logan is dead. I felt him die. I have his ring! It was in the ash!"
"He broke the bond from the inside, Clara," Valen said, his voice dropping to a low, solemn cadence that sounded like a death sentence. "There are ancient, forbidden rites that allow an oathbreaker to sever the sacred tether without suffering the divine lightning of the Moon Goddess. But the Goddess always demands a life for a broken vow. The debt cannot simply be erased. It must be transferred."
He reached out, his warm, rough fingers hovering just an inch from the bruised mark beneath my collar.
"He didn't die for your sins," Valen murmured, his golden eyes dark with a fathomless, ancient sorrow. "He left you behind to pay for his."
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I stood there on the edge of the cliff, the wind whipping strands of hair across my eyes, staring at the warlord of Frostfang as if he were a demon summoned from the dark.
Every instinct of loyalty, every memory of Logan’s gentle hands, his soft smiles, his whispered promises beneath the moonlight rose up in a desperate, screaming wall of denial. Logan had loved me. He had held my face in his hands before he knelt on that stone. He had told me I was the heart of the valley.
*He would not do this. No man could be so monstrous.*
"Get out," I whispered, the words shaking with a fury born of sheer terror.
Valen didn't move. "Clara—"
"Get off my land!" I screamed, tearing his cloak from my shoulders and throwing it onto the snow between us. The freezing mountain air slammed into my bare skin, but I didn't care. I stood before him in my thin leather undergarments, shivering with rage, my fingernails digging into my palms until blood dripped into the snow. "You are an invading tyrant! You came here to poison my mind because you know you cannot take our valley while I still breathe! I would rather rot in this dirt than believe a single syllable that crawls out of your throat!"
Valen looked at the heavy fur cloak lying in the snow, then looked up at me.
His jaw set into hard, unyielding granite. The flicker of sorrow vanished from his golden eyes, replaced once more by the terrifying, impenetrable mask of the Frostfang King.
"Then go check your vaults, widow," he said, turning his back to me without fear. "And pray to the Moon that I am lying."
With a sudden, explosive blur of motion, his body shifted mid-stride.
Where the man had stood, a massive, midnight-black wolf hit the snow with silent power. His fur was tipped with silver frost, his shoulders broader than any beast I had ever seen, his golden eyes flashing one final, piercing look over his shoulder before he bounded into the thick fog of the pines.
Within seconds, the forest swallowed him whole.
I was left alone on the edge of the precipice, gasping for breath, the wind biting into my skin like needles of ice.
I sank slowly to my knees, burying my face in my trembling hands, while deep inside my chest, the necrotic rot pulsed—one, two, three—drinking the warmth from my soul with relentless, unbroken malice.
***
Night fell over the Silverpine manor like a suffocating wool blanket.
I did not shift on the journey back. I rode my mare through the secondary hunting trails, avoiding the main checkpoints, my mind a churning vortex of cold fury and creeping dread.
*Go check your vaults.*
The phrase repeated in my skull like the tolling of an executioner's bell.
By the third hour after midnight, the manor was completely dark. The torches in the courtyard flickered low in the wet mountain drizzle, and the heavy iron gates stood locked against the night.
I slipped through the postern gate behind the stables, moving like a wraith through the shadows of the colonnade.
I wore dark combat leathers, my silver daggers secured at my hips. For the first time since the eclipse, I had not taken the herbal draught Raymond provided. The fog in my mind had lifted, leaving my senses sharp, raw, and painfully alert.
