Chapter 54.
716 Words
The forest at the edge of the Nightshade border didn't feel like home anymore. To Fenris, it felt like a labyrinth of mocking scents and lingering oil. He moved through the undergrowth not as a wolf, but as a shadow given teeth. He was no longer fighting the static or the pull; he had become the storm itself.
He had found them. The tail of the mercenary group- four figures cloaked in heavy, enchanted wool, crouched around a dying fire in a ravine. They weren't the human filth Gorgon usually employed. These were creatures of the gray- mercenaries from the splintered clans of the West, exiles with enough magic to mask their trail and enough strength to think they could outrun an Alpha.
They were wrong.
Fenris didn't growl. He didn't howl. He simply appeared in the center of their camp, a blur of shadow-black fur and molten gold eyes.
The first mercenary barely had time to reach for his axe before Fenris’s jaws closed around his shoulder, the sound of crushing bone a sickening crack in the silent woods. Fenris threw the creature aside like a rag doll and shifted. He didn't shift into his full human form, but into that terrifying middle ground- a towering, two-footed nightmare of fur, muscle, and claws.
"Where is she?" Fenris rasped. The voice wasn't his; it was Malphas, a sound that seemed to come from the earth itself.
The lead mercenary, a scarred creature with skin like cured leather and milky, pupilless eyes, spat at Fenris’s feet. "We don't talk to mutts, Alpha. The Master paid us in blood. Our loyalty is sealed."
Fenris was on him in a heartbeat. He didn't use a blade. He used his hands- claws that had been sharpened by a century of protecting the mountain. He pinned the creature against a frozen cedar, his grip tightening around its throat until the wood groaned.
"Gorgon left gold in the snow," Fenris hissed, his face inches from the mercenary’s. "He thinks he bought a refund. He thinks there is a price for what he took."
"There is always a price," the creature wheezed, a dark, viscous fluid leaking from its mouth. "She’s behind the iron walls now. You’re too late, wolf. She’s already being drained."
The mention of her being drained- of her light being stolen by that leech, snapped the last thread of Fenris’s control. The Alpha rage mentality took over. It was a cold, surgical focus. He didn't need them to talk anymore; he could see the direction of their tracks, the lingering shimmer of suppressed fairy magic heading South-West toward the Free Marches.
He didn't kill them quickly. He was efficient, yes, but he was sending a message.
Minutes later, the ravine was silent again, save for the crackle of the dying fire.
Fenris stood over the bodies of the four mercenaries. He reached into the heavy pack he had carried from the keep and pulled out the three silk bags of gold- the "refund" Gorgon had so arrogantly left behind.
With a brutal, focused intensity, Fenris stuffed the bags into the mouths of the fallen mercenaries. He jammed the gold deep, the coins spilling out over their cold lips, gleaming mockingly in the moonlight. He wanted Gorgon’s scouts to find them. He wanted the message to be carried back to the South.
This isn't about the money.
He stood, his chest heaving, his claws dripping with the dark ichor of the creatures. He looked toward the South-West, where the air felt thin and the void in his soul was a screaming ache.
"You stole a soul, leech," Fenris whispered into the wind, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, absolute certainty. "And gold won't buy your life back when I find you."
He shifted back into the great black wolf, his form merging with the darkness of the trees. He didn't need a map. He didn't need a trail. He followed the echo of the scream she had let out in his mind, a phantom vibration that was leading him straight into the heart of the enemy's territory.
The Alpha wasn't coming for a refund. He was coming for a reckoning.
- Writer
