Chapter 51.
852 Words
Rhiannon stayed in the ring long after Fenris’s shadow had vanished into the stone corridors of the keep. Her skin still felt too tight, humming with a residual heat that the morning frost couldn't touch. She needed to move. She needed to put distance between herself and the scent of cedar and wolf that was currently clogging her senses.
She drifted toward the lower woods, a place where the mountain met the valley in a tangle of ancient pines and silvered mist. It was supposed to be safe. It was within the outer perimeter. But Rhiannon was beginning to realize that "safety" was a fragile thing when one carried a light as bright as hers.
She went through the motions Fenris had taught her, the wooden trainer slicing through the cold air. Step, pivot, draw. Step, pivot, draw. She was so focused on the internal rhythm- the way her neon-green magic flickered in time with her heartbeat, that she didn't hear the silence fall over the woods.
The birds stopped singing. The wind died in the needles.
Rhiannon spun, her hand flying to the silver at her thigh, but the static in her head exploded into a blinding, white-hot scream. It wasn't a warning this time; it was an ambush.
"Look at you," a voice rasped from the shadows, dripping with a familiar, oily malice. "Playing soldier in the snow."
A group of men materialized from the mist, but these weren't the clumsy mercenaries from the garden. These were Gorgon’s elite- men who smelled of the South, of iron, and of the cloying, heavy incense of the brothel.
Rhiannon’s blood went cold. Gorgon. The name alone felt like a shackle. She knew why they were here. Gorgon hadn't just lost a "piece of property"; he was a man addicted to the rare, intoxicating hum of her magical blood, a man who had spent the last month and a half clawing through the agony of withdrawal.
"I’m not going back," Rhiannon said, her voice trembling but her grip on the silver dagger firm.
"Master Gorgon says otherwise," the lead mercenary sneered. "He says the Alpha was just a temporary distraction. He’s ready for his fix."
They lunged.
Rhiannon fought with a desperation she had never known. She was liquid and flame, her silver blade carving arcs of light through the dim woods. She found the gaps. She drew blood. She moved with the grace Fenris had beaten into her bones, her magic flaring in a violent, protective shield.
But there were too many of them, and they weren't trying to kill her. They were hunting.
She took down two, her silver blade searing through their leather armor, but as she turned to face a third, a heavy, blunt weight crashed into the back of her skull.
The world shattered. The neon-green light at her fingertips flickered and died. Rhiannon felt the frozen earth rush up to meet her, the taste of iron filling her mouth as the darkness rushed in from the edges of her vision.
The last thing she felt was the rough, calloused hands hauling her upward, and the distant, agonizing realization that she had failed to find the gap.
An hour later, the sun was high, illuminating the lower woods in a cruel, bright light.
Fenris arrived not with the pace of a man, but with the velocity of a landslide. He had felt it- the moment the bond snapped into a void of cold, echoing silence. He burst into the clearing, his eyes pure, molten gold, his claws extended and dripping with the frost he had torn through to get here.
"Rhia!" he roared, the sound shaking the very needles from the trees.
There was no answer.
The clearing was a ruin of trampled snow and frozen blood. Two mercenaries lay dead, their bodies already cooling in the shadows. But Rhiannon was gone.
Fenris slowed, his breath hitching in a jagged, terrifying sound of grief and rage. His gaze fell to the center of the clearing, to the exact spot where she must have been taken.
Resting on the blood-stained snow were three heavy silk bags. They were tied with golden cord, their bellies bulging with the unmistakable clink of high-denomination coin.
Three bags of gold. The exact price Fenris had paid in the city.
The message was silent and absolute. Gorgon didn't see this as a kidnapping. He saw it as a return of stolen goods. He had sent the Alpha his refund, and in his mind, the transaction was complete.
Fenris fell to one knee, his hand closing over the blood-soaked earth where Rhiannon had fallen. A low, vibrating growl started in his chest- a sound so ancient and predatory that the birds miles away took flight in terror.
Gorgon wanted his "toy" back.
But he was about to learn that the Alpha of the Nightshade didn't accept refunds. And the wolf was no longer on a leash.
- Writer
