Aurelia pressed herself flat against the ground beneath him. Her golden eyes tracked the vampires circling the pair from every angle.

Vampires were evaluating the cost of approaching a wolf whose body language was communicating a single, clear, non-negotiable message: try it and I will rip you apart.

They were outnumbered. Dozens had grown into over one hundred. It was looking bad.

Xeon was growling. Aurelia was shaking.

Dex’s wolf crashed into the circle next. Massive. Black as obsidian. His wolf was also glowing gold. That was new.

Aegon: Make the magic go BOOM again.

Dex: I have told you six times. I do not know how.

Aegon: Try harder.

Dex: Try harder is not a magical instruction.

Aegon: It is a wolf instruction. Try harder. Bite harder. Glow harder. Boom harder. These are simple concepts and you are overcomplicating them.

Aegon rammed two vampires so hard their bodies burst apart. He tore into the next, dragging it to the ground and ripping straight through its spine.

Aegon: They smell terrible.

Dex: Not the priority right now.

Aegon: That one just put its head back on. I remove it again. You taste it with me.

Dex: Disgusting.

The vampires reassessed. Two massive wolves, one of which was glowing gold and could go ’Boom,’ was a problem. What came next made it worse.

A dark forest green wolf, also glowing gold, tore through the clearing, grabbing a vampire mid-leap and slamming it against a tree with enough force to splinter bark.

Every dismembered corpse twitched. Limbs clawing through dirt. Bodies stitching themselves back together faster than they could be ripped apart.

Gavriel: Why are we glowing, Rook?

Rook: Mate.

Gavriel: We’ve never glowed before.

Rook: We’ve never had Alpha strength before either.

Gavriel: Just tell me what you aren’t saying.

Rook: I’ve been telling you. MATE.

The horde kept coming.

The three wolves moved instinctively into formation around Aurelia, snarling in unison, a living barricade of teeth and fury.

They tore. Bit. Ripped.

Nothing stayed dead.

Every kill reassembled. Every dismemberment reversed. The vampires were a hydra with a sense of humor, and the humor was ’watch the wolves waste energy on violence that doesn’t stick.’

In the middle of this, Xeon chose his moment.

Xeon: Mate needs to mark us to glow gold like them.

Fin: What the hell are you talking about?

Xeon: They glow. I want to glow.

Fin: We are surrounded by vampires and you are jealous of a color.

Xeon: It is not jealousy. It is an observation. They glow gold. We do not glow. We are the only wolf here not glowing. That is unacceptable. We look basic.

Fin: We are not basic.

Fin: Xeon.

Xeon: The Gamma glows brighter than us. THE GAMMA is marked.

Fin: The Gamma is not marked.

Xeon: He is. Aurelia did it. Three mates.

Before Fin could process that statement, hundreds of vampires surrounded them on all sides. Every undead eye locked on the white wolf at the center.

The canopy shuddered.

The shuddering was reverent. The trees were moving because something was descending through them and the something was being given space by a jungle whose respect was earned through age.

He dropped lightly from the branches.

The Vampire King stepped into the clearing wearing a crown of bone and obsidian, his smile stretching too wide for something alive.

“Well,” he purred. “At last. My Moon Princess.”

Xeon immediately planted himself over Aurelia. Hackles raised. Teeth bared. A low thunderous growl rattling the earth beneath them. The growl was Alpha. The growl communicated: this wolf is mine and the mine is ending your life if you take one more step.

The King’s smile sharpened.

“Shift.”

The command didn’t come as a sound. It hit like a shockwave.

A pulse of corrupted magic slammed into the clearing.

Xeon dropped first, body convulsing as he was forced back into Fin. Black fur receding, bones cracking in reverse, the Alpha collapsing onto the jungle floor.

Aurelia was peeled back from the wolf form in a flash of white light, like a scream in reverse, collapsing into Serena. Fin’s arms were around her before the shift had finished, pulling her back against his chest, shielding her body with his own.

But it didn’t matter.

A dozen vampires surged forward at once. Fin was forced to his knees with Serena held tightly against him, three blades aimed at her neck, not his.

Dex and Gav’s shifts were no different.

Dex was shoved down beside Fin and Serena, a vampire yanking his head back by his hair. Two blades crossing at his jugular.

Gavriel was dragged to one knee, two blades at his throat, a knee driven into his back.

Hyran, Aeron, and Maelor were slammed to the ground moments later by vampires who had been waiting for the magic to do its work. Their own magic sputtered, disrupted, the corrupted pulse interfering with their constructs the way a magnet interferes with a compass.

Aeron was pinned with a dagger at the base of his spine.

Hyran’s arms were twisted behind him, a blade laid across his jawline.

Maelor was facedown. Two vampires on his back. His shredded robes spread around him like a burial shroud made of Nightspire silk.

Within seconds, the seven most dangerous people in Skardos were brought to their knees. Disarmed. Immobilized. Surrounded.

The Vampire King stepped close enough that Serena could feel the cold radiating from his body. The cold was absence. The absence of warmth, of life, of anything that belonged to the living.

“Now,” he whispered, lowering himself to eye level with her. “Let us begin.”

His hand shot out like a whip, grabbing Serena by her hair, pulling her head forward. The blades on her throat moved to Fin’s.

The vampire yanked her across the clearing, ripping her straight out of Fin’s arms. She hit the ground hard and was dragged through dirt and leaves.

Fin roared, lunging. The blade at his throat bit down. Blood appeared in a thin line.

“DON’T TOUCH HER!”

Dex lunged too. The vampires holding him pressed harder. Two lines of blood ran down his neck. His gold eyes were producing a heat that was making the creatures holding him flinch. They held anyway.

Gavriel’s body surged forward. The knee in his back drove harder. The blades at his throat pressed. Blood ran. Rook was producing a frequency inside his skull that was no longer a howl and no longer a word and was instead the sound of a wolf whose mate was being dragged across a clearing by her hair and whose dragging was producing a scream that was the worst sound Rook had ever heard in ten thousand years of remembering.

The six of them were forced to watch. Blades pressed to their throats as the Vampire King dragged her to the center. Stopped. Released her hair.

She lay on the ground. Breathing hard. Scalp burning. Hands bleeding. Zero understanding of anything except that she was on the ground and a creature was standing over her and six people she loved were on their knees with blades at their throats.

“Ten thousand years,” the Vampire King said, looking down at her. “Your bloodline has evaded the Night Throne for ten thousand years.”