Logan Blackwood POV
The morning air in the Silver Moon council chamber felt like wet wool—heavy, grey, and suffocating.
I sat at the head of the obsidian table, my fingers digging into the velvet upholstery of my chair. Opposite me, my father, Alpha Silas, was a statue of suppressed rage. The other Elders sat in a row of jagged shadows, their eyes darting toward the empty seat that should have been Marek's.
"He's three hours late," my father growled, his voice a low, gravelly threat. "Marek has never been late. If the boy has spent the night in a tavern while the Southern Outpost is under threat..."
"Marek doesn't drink on duty," I interrupted, though my own voice sounded thin, like dry parchment.
The hollow ache in my chest the mate-grief I'd been trying to drown in scotch gave a sudden, violent throb. It wasn't pain. It was a warning. My wolf, usually a snarling beast of pride, was pacing a tight circle in the back of my mind, his fur standing on end.
Something is coming.
The heavy doors at the end of the hall didn't open. They were pushed. Slowly.
A single figure walked in. It was a young boy, barely twelve, a runner from the border patrols. He was shaking so hard his knees were knocking together, and his face was the color of a guttering candle. In his arms, he carried a box made of rough pine, tied with a single, blood-stained ribbon.
"Alpha..." the boy whispered, his voice cracking. "A... a group of Rogues. They stopped me at the South Gate. They said... they said the Princess sent a tax payment."
My father stood up, his Alpha aura flaring so sharply it knocked a glass of water off the table. "Princess? Aria?"
The boy didn't answer. He simply placed the box on the obsidian table and bolted, his footsteps echoing in a frantic rhythm until he was gone.
The room went deathly silent. We all stared at the box. It smelled of woodsmoke and a cold, metallic scent that made the hair on my arms rise.
"Open it," Silas commanded, looking at me.
My hands felt like lead as I reached for the ribbon. I pulled it. The knot slid apart with a sickeningly smooth hiss. I lifted the lid.
The gasp that went around the table was a collective intake of frozen air.
It wasn't gold. It wasn't iron.
Inside the box lay a pile of silver-edged collars the ones our guards used to restrain the laborers at the outpost. But they weren't just removed. They had been melted, twisted into the shape of a broken crown.
And resting on top of the twisted metal was Marek's signet ring. It was still attached to his finger.
But the finger wasn't flesh anymore. It was glass.
Pure, translucent, silver-tinted glass.
"What... what kind of sorcery is this?" Elder Thorne stammered, his voice rising to a frantic pitch. "Marek was a Beta of the third rank! He was a mountain of a man! How can a body be turned to... to this?"
I reached out, my trembling fingers ghosting over the cold, crystalline surface of the finger. It wasn't a magic spell. It was the result of a heat so intense, a power so concentrated, that it had vitrified the very cells of his body.
"It wasn't sorcery," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow to the gut. "It was her. This is what the Primal fire does. It doesn't just burn. It re-makes."
Underneath the glass finger, there was a small scrap of parchment. I picked it up. The handwriting was elegant, precise, and hauntingly familiar. It was the same script that used to write me love notes in the academy.
To the Alpha-heir of the Silver Moon,
I found your 'property' in the mud. Since you have no use for weak things, I've repurposed them. Consider this the first installment of the debt you owe the Wastes.
P.S. Logan, the bond didn't break. It just changed color.
I dropped the note as if it had turned into an adder. The bond didn't break.
"She took the outpost," Silas roared, slamming his fist onto the table. "She slaughtered our guards and freed the Rogues! She's mocking us! Logan, take two battalions. Burn the Obsidian Crest. Bring me her head before the sun sets tomorrow!"
"I can't," I said, my voice barely audible.
"What did you say?" My father stepped toward me, his eyes glowing a lethal, predatory red. "You are the future Alpha! You will lead the charge or I will strip you of your title right here!"
I looked up at him, and for the first time in my life, I didn't feel fear. I felt a crushing, absolute certainty.
"She isn't in the Crest, Father. She's everywhere."
I stood up, my chair screeching against the floor. "She turned Marek to glass. She defeated a garrison without a full shift. If I take a battalion into those mountains, I'm not leading a war. I'm leading a massacre. Our men's wolves will turn on them the moment they see her. They'll kneel. Just like I did."
"Coward!" Silas screamed. He backhanded me, the force of his Alpha-strength sending me spinning into the wall.
I hit the stone, the copper taste of blood filling my mouth. But I didn't fight back. I just looked at the twisted silver crown in the box.
The bond... she said it changed color.
I closed my eyes, and for a second, I felt it. The golden thread that used to be our connection was gone, yes. But in its place was something else. A cold, shimmering silver wire. It wasn't a link of love. It was a leash.
She was tugging on it. From miles away, across the snow-capped peaks, she was reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart with a hand of ice.
« Bow, Logan. »
The voice echoed in my skull, so clear I looked around to see if she was standing in the shadows. It wasn't my wolf's voice. It was hers.
I fell to my knees in front of the council, my forehead pressing against the cold floor.
"Logan! Stand up!" my father bellowed, his voice full of disgust.
I couldn't. My muscles wouldn't obey. My wolf was whimpering, a high-pitched, pathetic sound that filled the room. I was the Alpha-heir of the most powerful pack in the North, and I was pinned to the floor by the mere thought of a girl I had thrown away.
"She's coming," I wheezed into the dust. "And she's not coming for the throne, Father. She's coming for us."
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Aria POV
I stood on the balcony of the Obsidian Crest, the wind whipping my silver hair around my face. I could feel him.
Logan.
The silver wire I'd wrapped around his soul felt taut, vibrating with his terror. It was a delicious sensation—the ultimate inversion.
He had used the Alpha command to crush me for years; now, I was using the Primal link to anchor his very sanity to my whim.
"You're doing it again," Gabriel's voice drifted from the doorway.
I didn't turn around. I didn't have to. I could feel his heat, his dark, abyssal aura reaching out to entwine with my silver light. He walked up behind me, his chest pressing against my back, his arms sliding around my waist.
"He's on his knees," I whispered, a cold smile touching my lips. "I can feel his forehead on the floor."
Gabriel leaned down, his lips ghosting over the mark on my neck where the rejection scar had once been—now replaced by a faint, glowing lunar rune.
"Good," he murmured, his voice a dark caress. "But don't break him yet, Aria. A broken toy is no fun to play with. We want him whole when we finally show him the world he lost."
I leaned back into his strength, watching the distant smoke from the outpost rise like a funeral pyre.
"I don't want to play with him, Gabriel," I said, turning in his arms to look into his abyssal eyes. "I want him to watch while I build a new world on top of his ruins. And then... then I'll let him forget how to breathe."
Gabriel's eyes darkened, a growl of approval rumbling in his throat. He claimed my lips in a kiss that tasted of victory and blood.
The hunt was no longer a chase. It was a harvest. And the Silver Moon was ripe for the taking.