CHAPTER FIVE: THE CLAIMING
1520 Words
The attack came at dawn.
I woke to Kade’s hand over my mouth, his body a wall of heat against my back. “They’re here,” he breathed, so quiet it was barely sound at all. “Stay quiet.”
Through the cracked shutter, I counted them. Soldiers in dark crimson and black — Theron’s colors, embroidered in gold thread that caught the early light like little flames. Thirty at least. Maybe more circling around back.
My stomach dropped.
“How did they find us?” I whispered against his palm.
He lowered his hand slowly. His jaw was set. “Doesn’t matter.”
Asher was already armed, two blades drawn, rolling his neck like he was warming up for something that pleased him. “We end this now.”
“You can’t fight thirty soldiers—”
“Watch us.” The grin he flashed me was wolf-bright and reckless.
Riven appeared from the shadows without a sound — I still didn’t know how someone that large moved like smoke — and pressed a knife into my hand. The grip was warm from his own palm. “Stay behind us,” he said. Not a request. “If anyone breaks through, you run.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You will if we tell you to.” Kade’s eyes found mine in the gray light, and whatever softness usually lived there was gone. This was the rogue. The leader. “This isn’t a discussion, Aria.”
Jax crouched beside the window, watching. “They’re moving on my count—”
The front door didn’t open.
It exploded.
Wood and iron and hinges blasted inward, and then Theron’s soldiers were everywhere, filling the small den like floodwater, and there was no more time to be afraid.
What happened next didn’t look like a fight.
It looked like something older than that.
Kade moved through the room like death had taken a body and learned to dance in it. Every strike landed once. Only once. Efficient, brutal, final. He didn’t waste a single movement.
Asher fought the way some people laugh — with his whole self, loud and savage and thoroughly delighted. He took a sword to the shoulder and barely flinched. Just snarled and hit back harder.
Jax was fire. Unpredictable, blazing, impossible to pin down. He changed directions mid-motion, struck from angles that shouldn’t have been possible, left three men groaning on the floor before they’d even registered he was moving.
And Riven—
Riven was a ghost. Silent where the others were loud, precise where they were broad. He didn’t fight like he wanted to win. He fought like winning was already decided and he was simply marking the time until everyone else caught up.
They were extraordinary.
And there were still too many.
One soldier broke through the line. Big, fast, eyes locked on me with the cold focus of a man following orders he intended to complete. I backed against the wall. The knife in my hand suddenly felt very small.
He reached for me.
Something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t pain. It was the opposite of pain — a pressure I’d carried so long I’d stopped feeling it, suddenly gone, and in its place a heat that started in my chest and moved outward like a second heartbeat. My wolf surged forward, but it wasn’t just my wolf.
It was more.
I moved without deciding to move.
My hand closed around his wrist. My body twisted. His bone snapped with a sound like green wood breaking and he dropped, screaming, and I was already stepping past him because three more were coming and I didn’t stop—
I didn’t stop.
Riven’s training moved through my muscles like memory. But faster. Stronger. Like the lessons had been seeds and something had finally broken the soil.
When the last one fell, the room went quiet.
Every head turned toward me.
My four rogues. The remaining soldiers — a dozen at least, still standing. All of them staring.
I became aware, distantly, that I was breathing hard. That my hands were shaking. That four men were on the floor in front of me and I had put them there.
“Impossible,” a soldier said. His voice cracked on the word. “She’s a Dominant.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
“Fall back.” The command came from the soldier nearest the door, his face pale under his helm. “The princess is a Dominant wolf — fall back!”
They ran.
They actually ran from me.
My legs chose that moment to remember they were legs, not stone pillars, and I started to go down. Kade caught me before I hit the floor, his arms coming around me fast and sure, pulling me against his chest.
“Easy.” His voice had changed — the hardness gone, something raw underneath. “I’ve got you.”
“What just happened?” My voice sounded far away.
“You awakened.” He pulled back just enough to look at my face. His eyes were bright in a way I hadn’t seen before. “Dominant wolves — they’re rare. Maybe one in ten thousand. Stronger, faster, more powerful than any other wolf. The ability usually surfaces under extreme stress.”
“I didn’t know I was—”
“Neither did we.” Asher laughed — genuine, startled, delighted. He pressed a hand to his bleeding shoulder and seemed to completely forget it. “Our princess is a weapon.”
Riven said nothing. He moved closer and studied me the way he studied everything: carefully, completely, like he was memorizing the architecture of a new fact. When his eyes met mine, something shifted in them. Something that looked almost like relief.
“They’ll be back,” Jax said from the window. “With more.”
“Let them.” I straightened. My legs held. “I’m done running.”
Kade’s hand came up to cup my face, and I let him. “You’re sure?”
I thought of Theron’s cold voice. His cold palace. The life that had been built for me without my consent — a gilded cage shaped like a crown.
“Theron wanted a docile queen,” I said. “Something decorative. Something that wouldn’t ask questions.” I looked at each of them — Kade’s steadiness, Asher’s fire, Jax’s chaos, Riven’s quiet. “But you four wanted a warrior. So that’s what I’ll be.”
“Then we claim you.” Kade’s voice dropped. “Properly. With marks and bonds and everything that comes with it.”
“All of you?”
“All of us.” Asher moved to my left. “If you’ll have us.”
Jax stepped to my right, his hand finding mine. “We’re a pack, Aria. We do this together, or we don’t do it at all.”
Riven settled at my back — solid, silent, unmovable as a wall.
“This is forever,” Kade warned. “Once the bond forms, there’s no undoing it. We’re yours. You’re ours. No going back.”
I thought I should be afraid.
I wasn’t.
I’d been afraid my entire life. I was done with it.
“Then claim me,” I said.
The bond didn’t snap into place.
It roared.
Silver and gold light tore through the room — ancient, bone-deep, older than language. It felt like every wall I’d ever built being stripped away, not violently, but inevitably, like winter becoming spring whether it wanted to or not. And in the space they left behind: them. Four presences, bright and distinct, woven into somewhere behind my sternum.
When the light faded, I had four marks on my skin. One from each of them.
“You’re ours now,” Kade said softly.
“And you’re mine,” I replied.
That’s when the messenger arrived. A young wolf, bloodied and barely upright, clutching a sealed letter like he’d run through hell to deliver it.
Kade took it. Read it. The warmth left his face completely.
“What does it say?”
He handed it to me without a word.
You can keep the broken princess. I’ve found a better bride. But I’ll still come for her — just to prove no one defies me. In three days, I march on your den with my full army. And I’ll make those rogues watch while I break you before I kill you.
The rage that moved through me was nothing like the hot, panicked thing I’d felt before.
This was cold. Clear. Certain.
“He thinks I’m broken,” I said quietly.
“He’s wrong,” Asher said.
“Yes.” I folded the letter. Set it down. Looked at the four of them — my pack, my family, the choice I’d finally made for myself. “He is. And in three days, I’m going to make sure he understands that.”
The bond hummed between us. Strong. Unbreakable.
Let Theron come.
We’d be ready.
- Writer
