Power drove into the clearing hard enough to bow the trees.
Every guard and wolf dropped to their knees with their heads to the dirt. Lyla was already down. She curled against the ground and whimpered.
I remained standing. With the mate bond severed, the pack hierarchy had no hold on me. Darius’s power pressed over my shoulders and moved on.
Darius took in the silver-burned hole in his mother’s chest, my journals scattered across the floor, and the Moonbone pouch in a guard’s hand.
He stopped on the carved wolf’s tooth at Maeve’s collar. Last, he looked at his son sobbing in her blood.
Killian pushed himself up. It took him two tries to speak. “Father, I was tricked. Lyla lied. I didn’t know.”
Darius crossed the clearing in two strides and drove his fist into his son’s jaw. Bone crac
