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I tightened my grip. Her body jerked beneath my hand, heels dragging deep ruts in the frozen earth as she slammed against the wall of the cottage with a dull, brutalcrack. The snow-covered planks shuddered behind her. Her breath hitched—just once. No scream. No cry. Just a wince and silence.

That silence said more than words ever could. Defiance burned in her eyes. Not the desperate kind—no, this was old. Tempered. A fire forged in cruelty and starvation. A flame that had survived.

So I drove her harder against the wall, and let my power bleed out of me like smoke from a long-sealed crypt. The air thickened. Turned violent. The men around us stilled, instincts overriding logic. This was no show of force.

This was a warning. She bared her teeth.

“I serve no pack,” she hissed.

Then she spit in my face.

It hit my cheek with a splatter—hot, defiant, and tainted with the acrid sting of hatred. A challenge thrown in the mouth of death. And I didn’t wipe it away.

The world paused. Even the snow hung motionless in the air, suspended mid-fall as if the gods themselves wanted to see what I'd do next.

I could smell the boy’s fear behind her—sweet and sharp like crushed violets—but I didn’t turn.

I laughed. Low, cruel. A sound pulled from the black marrow of my bones, older than language, deeper than wrath. It echoed off the ruined walls of the cottage and into the hollow spaces where hope used to live.

She wasn’t Crescent Moon. I would’ve known. Would’ve felt it. But she wasn’t rogue either. Rogues stank of desperation. Of shame and loneliness. She didn’t. She smelled like… absence. Like void. Like someone had ripped her from the world and sewn her back in with thread made of lies and blood.

Dark magic clung to her like a second skin—faint, but lingering. A clever mask. A curse. Which raised only one question:If she wasn’t Crescent… then what pack dared plant a wolf this deep in my territory?

Blood boiled beneath my skin, rage surging behind my ribcage. I hadn’t torn the Crescent Moon alpha limb from limb, crushed his sons, burned his holdings, just to have some other mongrel pack sneak in and stake their claim through this silent, defiant bitch.

If she belonged to another, I would find out who. And I would bury them next. But first, I’d breakher.

“Leave her alone!”

The voice cracked through the air like lightning across a frozen lake. Thin. Human. I turned, slowly. The boy stood just beyond my reach, trembling like a dying star but burning just the same. Fists clenched, eyes wide with terror—but standing his ground.

“What’s it to you, boy?” I asked, my voice low and razored, dripping with violence barely leashed.

He didn’t back down.

“She’s my mother.”

The silence was instant. Heavy. I stared at him.

Human. No wolf in him. No trace. No bite. No claim. Nomark. Just fragile flesh and fire where there should’ve been fear.

I turned back to her. Her eyes met mine like a blade to the throat—bright, furious, unbroken

What kind of wolf claims a human child?

What kind ofbeastprotects the weak?

And what kind of pack would send such a thing to lie hidden beneath my nose, wrapped in shadows and rot? There was something more here. Something buried so deep it stank of treason. I didn’t just want answers. I needed them. Because if another pack thought to stake a claim on what I bled to conquer,they’d learn what it meant to challenge the Blood Night Alpha.

And she— She would be the first to scream.

“Alpha!” a voice barked from the edge of the road, sharp and urgent. “We found him!”

I let her go. Not willingly.

My fingers unfurled from her throat like claws drawn from flesh, reluctant, the ghost of her skin still seared into my palm. Heat lingered—hers—unnatural and infuriating. The wolf inside me paced with fury, snapping its jaws, furious to release her. It wanted her on her knees, wanted her broken, her scent smeared into the snow like a mark of ownership.

But I turned.Duty called.I stalked across the frostbitten road, snow crunching under my boots, each step heavier than the last. My soldiers parted, forming a circle around a boy on his knees, his hands bound, blood dripping from his split lip onto the snow like petals of crimson.