My name is Nyx.I am an elite-trained warrior—and, when necessary, an assassin.
The training mat smelled like rubber and sweat. My fist met the heavy bag with a dull, satisfying thud. It swung across the chalk line like a pendulum with a grudge.
"Again," Commander Ren said, his voice flat as concrete.
I hit twice—right cross, left hook—then stepped in, buried a palm heel into the bag's gut, and pivoted to keep my center balanced. The bag shuddered. Ren didn't blink.
"Blade," he ordered.
I drew and threw in one breath. The knife struck the bag's painted throat and quivered there, dead center. I didn't smile. The Silent Blades never taught us to be proud of what survival demanded.
Ren walked past me in his black fatigues, the built-in mic at his collar catching the scrape of fabric. His hair was grayer this year, lines cut deeper around his eyes. He plucked the knife free and handed it back to me hilt-first.
"Your hands are steady," he said. "Your eyes aren't."
"I slept four hours," I replied.
"No, you didn't sleep at all." He circled me once, and my wolf stirred under my skin. "Tell me why your heart rate spiked when you heard the chimes."
The palace's morning chimes echoed through the bunker like music played underwater.
"It's the job," I said.
The shape of the job was a blade pressed under someone's ribs in a crowded room while cameras flashed. The shape knew where the exits were when none existed. The shape was pretending I wasn't there at all.
Ren's comm crackled. He muted it and tossed me a towel. "Clean up. Briefing in five."
I stripped off my gloves, wiped sweat from my face, and caught my reflection in the wall mirror out of habit—high cheekbones, straight nose, a mouth that looked softer than it was.
Princess Liora Morvain would be upstairs in the East Wing, wrapped in silk and stylists and prayer. If I stood beside her without armor or a cap shadowing my eyes, no camera would know which of us to adore and which to erase. That was the point. It had always been the point.
The shower water was too hot. I took it anyway, letting steam blur the tile until I could barely see myself. When I stepped out, I was someone else—hair braided, uniform pressed, matte-black plates cinched tight across ribs and spine. The Silent Blades were not ceremonial guards. We were the ghosts the public wasn't meant to see until it was too late.
I palmed the scanner at Operations, and the door hissed open. The room was bright and cold, a half-moon of workstations facing a wall of feeds—gates, helipad, ballroom, cathedral, a hundred corridors soon to be crowded. The screens bled captions from every network. Across the bottom, a single headline scrolled:
THE BINDING: WILL PROPHECY FINALLY BRING PEACE?
Ren stood at the central table with the team—Luci, Ortega, and Dahl. He didn't look up when I entered.
"Nyx," he said. "Approach."
The table lit under my palms.
"At nineteen hundred hours," Ren said, "Princess Liora proceeds down the central aisle to the stage. The Lycan King arrives from the west entrance. The binding vow—if it happens—is at nineteen-nineteen."
"If," Luci muttered.
Ren ignored her. "Nyx, you're on the floor. Your only objective is the principal. You are a shadow. You do not exist."
"Copy."
"Threat profile," Ortega said, tapping the northeast balcony. "We've got chatter from intel. If the King fails to bind to Liora, they'll spin it into the King has no goddess. We all know what follows."
"War," Dahl muttered.
Ren toggled another layer. "The church is insisting on incense. We've secured non-reactive blends. Don't inhale anything you didn't unseal yourself."
"Noted," I said.
"Camera coverage is wall to wall," Luci added.
Ren slid me a small black glass square. "Blind ID. Opens every door, leaves no record. If you go down, we never met."
"Reassuring."
He almost smiled. "We don't fail this, Nyx. The fragile peace of the last two years depends on tonight. The packs are circling. The world needs a story to believe in. We give them one night without blood."
"And if it doesn't hold?"
"It holds."
"Understood."
He dismissed the others. As I turned, he caught my sleeve. "Two things," he said. "Don't die."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a preference. Second—if something goes wrong with the King or this bond nonsense starts to spiral out of control, your job doesn't change. Protect the principal. Liora only."
"Copy," I said.
At eighteen hundred hours, the palace transformed. The East Wing doors opened to a sliver of neon sky.Black SUVs slipped through the gates. Inside, staff wheeled carts hung with crystal and winter roses. The orchestra tuned, sound checks flashing across the vaulted ceiling. The moon dais gleamed white at the far end—a stage built to look like a blessing.
I took my post in the southeast shadow, cap low, comm in place. The armor hugged me in a familiar grip. Knives at the small of my back and thigh, baton across my spine, pistol as a last resort. Precision, not chaos.
"Shadow One, status," Luci murmured.
"In. South line clear."
"Copy. Stream goes live in twelve. Don't sneeze."
Guests drifted in under the weight of perfume and politics. Priests glided like swans, robes hiding inked wrists. Drones whispered above, mapping for broadcast.
At eighteen forty-nine, the princess entered for rehearsal. Liora Morvain moved like someone who had been trained to enchant gravity. She glowed in white silk, a moonstone at her throat, a crown resting in dark hair identical to mine. My throat tightened.
Her eyes flicked once—almost toward me. Maybe she saw me. Maybe she always looked that way, like she knew where her shadow stood. Liora had been groomed for every gaze. I had been trained to disappear under them. She was the reason I existed, and the reason I didn't.
Aunt Serice followed half a step behind, pearls precise at her throat, eyes always moving. When her gaze brushed my corner, the hairs on my arms rose.
"Shadow," Ren's voice said in my ear, soft but edged. "Silver protocol. Unvetted florals by the west doors. Dahl's on it."
"Copy."
I tracked the florals, the priests, the guards rehearsing their marks. The King would arrive in eighteen minutes. My wolf paced inside me, uneasy with incense, uneasy with men who spoke of fate.
"Comm check," Luci said.
"Solid."
"Motorcade five minutes."
The room changed. People stood straighter. Even the air felt staged. The Lycan King wasn't a ruler who entered quietly—he arrived like an answer to a dangerous question.
"Breathe, Nyx," Ren said softly.
I did. In for four. Out for six.
"Motorcade at the gate," Ortega reported. "Two decoys, three primaries. Advance cleared."
The west doors opened. Cold air swept through silk. Camera lights sliced the dark like knives. His guard entered first, in black suits and mirrored lenses. Then Dorian Voss stepped through—tall, composed, a living contradiction of restraint and threat.
He didn't look like prophecy. He looked like a consequence.
He greeted the Prime, the Archbishop, and the cameras. The orchestra swelled. My gaze swept the room—doors, balconies, exits, lines of sight. My wolf paced again, then froze.
A hum slid through my bones. Not sound—something deeper, like a tuning fork struck beneath the world.
"Shadow, your vitals just—" Luci began.
I didn't hear the rest.
The King had paused just past the threshold, his guards forming a quiet wall around him. He should have been looking at the dais. He wasn't.
His gaze cut through the crowd and stopped where I stood.
His eyes met mine.
The world narrowed. My wolf rose, tall and certain inside me, and said with terrifying clarity—Mine.
Voices filled the comm, all of them saying my name.
I couldn't move. The bond hit like a line thrown across a chasm, snapping tight and singing as if it had always been waiting.
On the screens above, cameras found his face. The angle lingered—long enough for every watching citizen to see their King look past the princess to the shadow on the wall.
My hand was steady on the baton. My heart was not.
"Nyx," Ren snapped. "Stand down."
I hadn't moved.
The King took one step, then another. The wolves in the room felt it and murmured. Liora's smile trembled, then reformed. Aunt Serice's jaw locked.
My wolf pressed against my skin, all warning and want. She did not kneel. She existed at full size—for the first time.
The bond pulled again.
And in the brittle silence of a night the world had called sacred, the thing I'd spent my life refusing to be—seen—found me anyway.
The chandelier glittered. The cameras watched. The King's mouth parted as if to speak a word he didn't believe in.
My comm went dead.
Incense smoke curled blue.
And something ancient and inconvenient inside me began to burn.