Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

I have to get to her

CASPIAN

The moment the realization hits me, I’m already moving, chair scraping violently against the floor as I lunge across the table toward the rogue leader’s throat.

He’s faster than I expect, throwing himself backward out of his chair, shouting something in a language I don’t bother processing before the entire room erupts into chaos around us.

The two men who’d led us in burst back through the doorway, no longer bothering with the pretense of hospitality, weapons already drawn, and I feel the shift take me before I’ve even fully decided to let it, bones cracking and reshaping in the space of a single furious breath.

Marcus is already transformed beside me, a blur of gray fur and bared teeth, slamming into the nearest attacker with enough force to send him crashing through the flimsy wooden wall.

Soren follows a heartbeat later, and the cabin, already unstable from years of neglect, groans and splinters under the sudden violence unleashed inside it.

I go for the rogue leader first, my claws catching the edge of his jacket as he scrambles backward, but he’s slippery, desperate, throwing furniture and anything else within reach into my path to slow me down.

I don’t have time for this.

Every second I waste here is a second she’s alone, unprotected, walking straight into whatever trap they’ve spent this entire meeting constructing.

More rogues pour in from outside, drawn by the noise, and the fight spills out through the shattered walls into the overgrown yard beyond, moonlight breaking weakly through the trees overhead.

I tear through them with a violence that feels less like strategy now and more like pure, desperate need, every wolf I put down another obstacle between me and getting back to her.

One of them gets a lucky strike in, a blade raking deep across my ribs before I manage to snap his wrist and put him down permanently, and the pain barely registers past the roaring urgency building in my chest.

Marcus fights beside me, back to back, the two of us carving a bloody path through the chaos with the ease of centuries of combat between us, while Soren manages to corner two of the rogues near the treeline, subduing one and killing the other outright when he refuses to stand down.

By the time the fighting finally slows, the yard is littered with bodies, most of them not moving, a handful of survivors having fled deeper into the trees rather than face the three of us any longer.

The rogue leader himself is nowhere to be found, having apparently slipped away in the chaos, but we manage to drag one of the surviving fighters back with us, bloodied and barely conscious, shoved to his knees in what remains of the cabin’s main room.

I stand over him, breathing hard, blood soaking through my shirt from the gash along my ribs, and something still nags uncomfortably at the back of my mind, refusing to settle even now that the immediate threat has been dealt with.

“Talk,” I growl, hauling the rogue up by the collar. “Now. What was the actual point of this meeting?”

He spits blood onto the floor, defiant even now, though I can see the fear flickering behind his eyes.

“Just following orders,” he manages. “Wasn’t told the details.”

“Whose orders?”

He hesitates, and I tighten my grip, letting my claws lengthen just enough to press warningly against his throat.

“Someone paying well enough not to ask questions,” he finally admits. “All I know is we were told to keep you occupied. Stall as long as possible. Someone else needed the time.”

“Time for what?” I demand, though even as the words leave my mouth, something cold and sickening begins settling into my gut, pieces sliding into place faster than I want them to.

“Didn’t ask,” he says. “Didn’t want to know.”

I stare at him, my mind racing back through everything—the sudden willingness to meet after months of silence, the deliberate circling of the negotiation, the calculated waste of hours while we sat there believing we were making progress.

None of it was ever about the shipment routes.

None of it was ever about weapons or supply lines at all.

It was about keeping the three of us here.

Away from the palace.

Away from her.

The realization lands like a physical blow, worse than the gash still bleeding freely along my side, worse than anything this rogue could have done to me directly.

Someone wanted her isolated, unprotected, with no one capable of stopping whatever they intended to do the moment they knew we were far enough away.

“Caspian.”

Marcus’s voice cuts through the haze, sharp with concern, his hand landing heavy on my shoulder.

“What is it?”

I don’t answer him immediately, too busy running through every possibility, every enemy who might want her badly enough to orchestrate something this elaborate just to get her alone.

The pieces click together with a horrifying, undeniable clarity, and the wolf inside me, already riding close to the surface after the fight, surges forward with a violence that has nothing to do with the rogues scattered dead around us and everything to do with pure, desperate terror.

“It was never about the negotiation,” I say, my voice rough, barely recognizable even to myself. “They needed us gone. All three of us, together, far enough away that we couldn’t get back in time.”

“Get back in time for what?” Soren asks, already reaching for the keys to the vehicle, sensing the shift in me before I’ve even fully explained it.

“Her,” I say, and the word comes out cracked, raw, torn from somewhere I usually keep buried far too deep to reach.

“She’s the target. She’s been the target this entire time.”

I don’t wait for a response.

I’m already moving, ignoring the blood still soaking through my shirt, ignoring the pain radiating along my ribs with every step, because none of it matters, none of it comes close to mattering compared to the cold, absolute certainty settling into my bones.

I have to get to her. Now.