Chapter 318

Nolan POV

I felt it in my core the moment the packhouse wards flared.

Not as sound or sight, but as a violent wrench in my chest-like something vital had been grabbed and shaken hard. My wolf snarled inside me, panic bleeding through the bond I fought to keep locked down.

Ellie.

I staggered a step as thunder rolled overhead, my attention snapping away from the rogues in front of me despite every instinct screaming that it was a mistake.

Focus.

I forced my eyes back to the battlefield.

The rogues sensed the shift immediately.

They pressed harder, not with killing blows but with relentless pressure-feints, flanking maneuvers, bodies thrown into our lines to disrupt formation. They were herding us now, tightening the net the moment they realized I was trying to pull away.

“Alpha!” one of my lieutenants shouted over the din. “They’re surging on the west-

“I see it,” I growled.

But I wasn’t seeing enough.

My thoughts were unraveling, every tactical instinct drowned out by images I couldn’t silence: Ellie standing alone in the packhouse. The boys crying. Felicity’s smile.

I tried to pull back units anyway.

“Third and fifth rotations, disengage on my mark!” I ordered through the comm. “Prep..e to fall back toward-“

A rogue slammed into me from the side, jaws snapping shut inches from my throat. I barely twisted in time, pain tearing through my already injured side as I drove my elbow down into its spine.

The comm crackled uselessly.

They weren’t letting me go.

Every attempt to thin our line was punished instantly, rogues surging into the gap with brutal efficiency. If I pulled too many warriors back now, the line would collapse- and then there would be nothing between the rogues and the heart of Silver Fang at all.

They knew it,

They were counting on it.

My wolf roared, furious and afraid in equal measure. I could feel my control slipping, rage threatening to drown strategy entirely.

I was going to get us all killed.

I was compromised, unfit to lead in this moment. I’d trained my entire life to protect Silver Fang from exactly this

type of situation, and now that it was here, I was coming apart at the seams, breaking under the

The realization hit hard and cold.

pressure.

In this state, I was as much a danger to my people as the attacking rogues were. But what could I do? The fight wasn’t going to pause to allow me time to think it through and hand command over to Lance or Cassian. I wasn’t even sure where either of them were in this chaos now.

“Damn it,” I snarled, slamming another rogue to the ground with enough force to crack stone beneath him. Blood sprayed, hot and coppery, across my hands-but still the kill didn’t come easily. They twisted away, dragged themselves back, buying time.

Buying her time.

I lifted my head and howled—a sharp, furious sound meant to rally, to command, but

it came out fractured. Wrong.

For the first time since becoming Alpha, I didn’t trust myself to lead.

That was when the air changed. Every hair on my body stood on end under the sudden rush of power that rippled through the air.

Not like the storm. Not like the goddess’s distant pressure that hovered around Ellie.

This was older. Heavier. Authoritative.

The rogues felt it too.

They hesitated. Not enough to give me an opening, but enough to show that they sensed instinctively that something new was entering the field. A threat they weren’t expecting.

It was just a fraction of a second-but on a battlefield, that was everything.

The ground seemed to bend, power slamming down like an invisible weight, and sudden’ Alaric was there.

He appeared at my side as if he’d stepped out of the storm itself, cloak snapping violenty behind him, eyes burning with a cold, lethal clarity that cut through the chaos.

“Enough,” he snapped.

Not loud-but absolute.

The nearest rogues recoiled instinctively, hackles rising as they backed away from him. Even the boldest among them faltered, unease rippling through their ranks.

Alaric turned on me, and his gaze was a blade.

“Get your head out of your chest,” he barked. “You’re not helping them like this.” The words hit harder than any blow.

I sucked in a sharp breath, chest heaving, and forced myself to meet his eyes.

“What the hell are you doing here? You’re supposed to be with Ellie!”

The outrage in my voice was overshadowed by the raw panic on my face. He didn’t respond to the question. He moved beside me, cold calculation in his eyes.