Chapter 267

Elara’s POV

I stood on all fours, my enormous silver-white wolf form radiating a power I had never known. The truth finally slammed into me—the lie my adoptive parents had fed me all my life. My biological parents, who died years ago, weren’t the weak runts I was told they were. They were pure-blood Alphas.

I opened my jaws and let the Alpha’s roar tear free.

Not a howl. Not a growl. A command—raw, ancient, and absolute. It erupted from the deepest chamber of my chest and hit them like a wall of force. The trees shuddered. Leaves ripped from branches and spiraled through the air. The ground itself seemed to vibrate beneath my paws.

The command hit them, forcing Malakor and Isolde to their knees. Desperate to fight the submission, they shifted. Malakor exploded into a massive tawny-brown wolf, and Isolde took the form of a gray wolf. But it was useless. Malakor crumpled—forelimbs splaying, muzzle smashing into the dirt. A whine ripped from his throat. Involuntary. Primal. His body recognized what his mind refused to accept.

Isolde dropped a heartbeat later, collapsing sideways. Her paws scrabbled uselessly at the earth, her whole frame trembling as the Alpha command crushed her resistance flat.

Kneel.

They knelt.

The satisfaction that surged through me was savage and pure. Every year of being called nothing. Every sneer. Every blow. Every whispered insult about my worthless bloodline—burned away in that single, glorious moment of absolute dominance.

But it wouldn’t hold them forever.

Malakor recovered first. His muscles coiled, and he launched himself at me from the left—jaws wide, aiming for my throat. Isolde attacked simultaneously from the right, darting low, trying to hamstring me.

Coordinated. Practiced. They’d hunted together before.

I caught Malakor mid-leap. My jaws closed around his neck—not to kill, not yet—and I threw him. His body sailed through the air and hit an oak trunk with a crack that split the bark. He yelped, crumpled, scrambled to his feet. Slower now.

Pain exploded in my hind leg. Isolde’s teeth had found their mark, tearing through fur and muscle. I spun—faster than something my size should move—and my forepaw raked across her face before she could pull away.

Four deep gouges opened from her brow to her jaw. Blood sprayed across the dead leaves. She shrieked—a sound half-wolf, half-woman—and stumbled backward, half-blinded.

Malakor charged again. Reckless this time. Desperate.

I met him head-on. We collided and the impact shook the earth. His jaws snapped at my shoulder. I twisted beneath him, felt his teeth scrape uselessly against my thicker fur, and then I did what my blood was screaming at me to do.

I extended all five claws of my right forepaw—each one long as a hunting knife—and drove them upward into his exposed belly.

The sound was wet. Final.

I dragged my claws through soft tissue. His body seized above me. A strangled yelp escaped him, cut short by shock. Hot blood poured over my paw, my foreleg, pooling in the dirt beneath us.

I pulled free.

Malakor staggered sideways. His wolf form shuddered—shrinking—and the man emerged, hands clutching the ruin of his abdomen. Entrails bulged between his fingers. He dropped to his knees, then to all fours, and began to crawl.

I watched him drag himself toward the tree line. Slow. Pathetic. Leaving a smear of dark red across the forest floor.

He wouldn’t make it far. A matter of hours, at most. The forest would take him.

I let him go.

Behind me, the ember in the mate bond flickered. Weaker.

Kaelen.

I turned.

Isolde had shifted back to human form. She crouched in the clearing, naked and bloodied, one hand pressed against the four gashes splitting her face. Her other hand fumbled at the ground. A leather pouch. She ripped it open.

A small glass bottle. A single arrow, crude but sharp, its tip glistening with the same dark substance.

Wolfsbane.

Isolde nocked the arrow against a short hand-bow I hadn’t seen before—hidden in the pouch. Her hands were shaking. Blood ran into her left eye and she blinked it away.

“You were always nothing,” she hissed. Her voice was thick, distorted by the wounds across her face. “Just an adopted nobody—”

She fired.

The arrow hissed through the air—straight at my chest. For one frozen instant I saw its trajectory with perfect clarity. The poisoned tip spinning. Inches from my heart.

I shifted my weight. Barely. The arrow passed so close I felt the fletching brush my fur. It buried itself in the tree behind me and quivered there, humming.

Isolde’s face went blank with shock.

The shift happened between one heartbeat and the next. My bones compressed. My fur receded. The enormous silver wolf contracted inward until I stood on two bare feet, naked and drenched in blood—mine and theirs—my silver hair hanging in matted, gore-soaked ropes around my shoulders.

I walked toward her.

She scrambled backward, clutching the now-empty hand-bow. “Stay away from me—”

I caught her wrist. The one holding the bow. My grip tightened.

The bones ground together. Then snapped.

Isolde screamed. The bow dropped. Her wrist crumbled beneath my fingers like dry wood, and I held her there—watching her face contort, watching tears stream through the blood on her cheeks.

“The bottle,” I said. My voice was calm. Eerily calm. It didn’t sound like mine. “Open it.”

“No—please—Elara, we’re sisters—”

I squeezed harder. Another bone fractured. She shrieked.

“We were never sisters.” I pried the glass bottle from the pouch with my free hand. Uncorked it with my teeth. The sharp, acrid smell of concentrated wolfsbane hit my nostrils. “Open your mouth.”

“No. No, no, no—”

I grabbed her jaw. Forced it open. And poured every last drop of the dark liquid down her throat.

Isolde choked. Gagged. Tried to spit it out. I clamped her mouth shut and held it there, staring into her wide, terrified eyes as the poison slid down. Her body convulsed against my grip. Once. Twice.

I let go.

She crumpled to the ground. Her back arched. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and then the pink foam came—bubbling up between her lips, thick and bloody. Her legs kicked. Her fingers clawed at her own throat. The foam kept coming, streaked darker now, almost red.

I crouched beside her and watched.

No pity. No regret. Just a cold, hollow satisfaction settling into the space behind my ribs. She had taken everything from me once. My betrothed. My family. My dignity. Had tried to take my children. Had sided with the man who murdered my parents’ people.

The kicking slowed. Her eyes glazed. A final shudder ran through her body.

Then nothing.

Isolde was dead.

I stood. The blood was cooling on my skin. The night air hit my naked body and I shivered—once—before the cold stopped mattering entirely.

Because the ember was dying.

I spun and ran.

Kaelen lay where he’d fallen. On his back. Eyes closed. His skin had gone past gray into something worse—a waxy, bluish pallor that made him look carved from stone. His lips were colorless. His chest wasn’t moving.

I dropped to my knees beside him. Blood—his blood, Malakor’s blood, Isolde’s blood—smeared across his armor as I pressed my hands to his neck.

No pulse.

“No,” I whispered. My fingers moved to his wrist. Nothing. “No. No. Kaelen.”

I ripped open what remained of his chest plate, tearing buckles, shoving aside leather and steel. Pressed my ear to his bare chest.

Silence.

The mate bond—that last fragile thread—was dissolving. I could feel it unraveling inside me like smoke in wind.

“You don’t get to die.” My voice cracked. “You don’t get to die. Not now. I saw the crystal. I saw what Gareth and Seraphine did. I saw the recording, Kaelen. All of it. The drug. The setup. You never—” A sob tore through me. “You never betrayed me. I know that now. Do you hear me? I know.”

Nothing. He gave me nothing. No flicker of warmth. No twitch of recognition.

His heart had stopped.

I laced my fingers together. Placed the heel of my palm against his sternum. And pushed.

One. Two. Three. I counted to thirty, arms locked straight, each compression forcing his ribcage down and back. His body shifted limply beneath my hands. Like pressing on something hollow.

I tilted his head back. Pinched his nose. Sealed my mouth over his and forced two breaths in. His chest rose. Fell.

Nothing.

Thirty more compressions. My arms burned. Blood from my hands smeared across his chest. Two more breaths. Rise. Fall.

Nothing.

“Please,” I begged. The word came out shattered. Barely human. “Please. Valerius needs you. Lyra needs you. I need—” My voice broke completely. Tears streamed down my face, dripping onto his gray skin. “Don’t leave us. Don’t you dare leave us.”

I pressed my forehead against his cold face and wept.