Chapter 0003
1042 Words
Tamsin
The cold was alive.
It gnawed through my frost armor like a lover’s teeth, whispering secrets in a language older than wolves. My breath crystallized midair, each exhale etching ghostly runes into the dark. The chasm walls pressed close, their ice veined with luminous blue—the First Alpha’s marrow seeping through millennia of frozen lies.
Veyra prowled at the edge of my consciousness, her growls harmonizing with the glacial hum beneath my boots. Deeper, she urged. The truth festers where light dies.
I pressed on, mercury-tipped bolts clinking at my hip. The holographic map from the shattered bone ring pulsed in my mind, its coordinates leading toward a cavern throbbing with wrongness. Cassian’s trial was a farce, but the real trap lay ahead—one even the Council feared.
A sound sliced the silence. Not ice cracking. Not wind. A whimper.
Human.
I froze. The chasm didn’t permit human trespassers; their fragile bodies shattered like glass in the cold. Yet the scent hit me—copper, sweat, and the oily tang of fear. Following it led to a fissure veiled by ice curtains. Inside, a girl huddled beneath a thermal blanket, her breath ragged.
She couldn’t have been older than fourteen. Human, yes, but her pupils glowed faintly violet.
Hybrid.
“Who sent you?” My dagger kissed her throat. Frost spread across her blanket.
“M-Mira.” She trembled, revealing a syringe buried in her forearm. “S-said you’d need a guide.”
The needle’s contents shimmered gold. Leo’s heartblood.
“Why?”
“The marrow… it’s not just a drug.” She coughed, black veins spidering beneath her skin. “It’s alive. It chooses who hears the song.”
Her words dissolved into static. The syringe clattered to the ice as her body seized, violet light erupting from eyes, mouth, pores—
Then silence.
Her corpse crystallized in seconds, frost blooming across lifeless features. Only the syringe remained, its golden liquid now swirling with her blood.
Mira’s gift.
I pocketed it and moved deeper.
The Heart of Deception
The cavern opened like a ribcage, its vaulted ceiling dripping with marrow-fed stalactites. At its center stood an altar of black ice, cradling a skeleton twice the size of any Alpha. The First Alpha’s remains.
Except—
The skull was wrong. Too elongated. The spinal column ridged with vestigial wings.
Not a wolf. Never a wolf.
Cassian’s precious relic was a lie. The foundation of our caste system—a fraud.
“You begin to see.”
The voice came from everywhere. From the marrow-light. From my own bones.
A figure coalesced from the frost—a woman with my face, my scars, but eyes like collapsed stars. Her armor shimmered with primordial ice, the Delta spiral brands on her spine alive with blue fire.
“What are you?” My dagger trembled.
“Echoes.” She circled the altar. “The First Alpha was no ruler. He was a thief. A human alchemist who stole our power.” Her hand passed through the skeleton. “Your Delta blood isn’t a curse. It’s the key.”
Veyra howled in recognition. Mother’s lullaby.
The vision struck without warning—
Ashcliff Mine. Leo shielding me from falling rocks. Radiation searing our skin. Then, a voice from the uranium veins: “Take my gift, child. Make them bleed for what they stole.”
I staggered. “The cave… you spoke through the ore.”
“And you survived.” Her smile cut. “Now finish it. Shatter his bones. Free the marrow.”
The syringe burned in my palm. Mira’s cocktail—Leo’s heartblood and the hybrid’s essence.
I plunged it into the First Alpha’s skull.
The chasm screamed.
Bloodmoon Rising
Leo found me at the cliff’s edge, dawn staining the snow corpse-pale.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” he rasped. Blood crusted his temple—Lysette’s doing, no doubt.
I turned, letting him see the marrow coursing through my veins. My Delta brands glowed like frozen lightning. “You reek of her desperation. How many syringes has she emptied to mimic a mate’s scent?”
He flinched. Good.
“The Council knows you survived. They’re coming.” He gripped Eternity’s Vow, our wedding blade now crackling with the same blue fire as my veins. “Give me the marrow. I can protect—”
“Protect?” I laughed, brittle as breaking glaciers. “You couldn’t protect me from a lie.”
The vial glinted in my fist—pure moonlight marrow, writhing like liquid starlight. “Cassian’s been feeding this to the Alphas for centuries. It doesn’t strengthen bonds. It addicts. Makes them pliant.”
Leo’s sword dipped. “You’re saying…”
“The fated mate myth? A system to distribute the drug. Lysette’s pheromones? A synthetic cocktail to trigger your cravings.” I stepped closer, marrow-light refracting in his widened pupils. “And you, my love? Just another addict.”
He lunged. I let him.
Our blades met in a shower of sparks, steel singing the old song of teeth and blood. But when his sword pierced my shoulder, I didn’t bleed—I crystallized.
“What have you done?” Horror choked him as frost climbed his blade.
“What you couldn’t.” I yanked the steel deeper, freezing his hands to the hilt. “Become the storm.”
The vial shattered at his feet.
Marrow-light exploded.
Ephemeral Vengeance
They came at dusk—Cassian’s forces in gilded armor, Lysette at their helm.
“Kill the abomination!” Her voice cracked, neck ulcers now eating into her jawline.
I stood atop the First Alpha’s altar, the chasm’s power thrumming through me. Hybrids and Deltas crawled from ice crevices, drawn by the marrow’s call.
“You mistake corruption for evolution.” My whisper carried on frozen wind. “Let me show you true corruption.”
The first wave charged. I exhaled.
Winter answered.
Ice spears impaled Cassian’s vanguard mid-leap. Lysette’s scream cut off as frost filled her lungs. But the true horror came when Leo stepped from the blizzard, Eternity’s Vow crackling with stolen marrow-light.
“For the mate I failed,” he growled, and turned the blade on his own kin.
Chaos tasted sweet.
- Writer
