Chapter 18
990 Words
MAETHYS POV
Valik told me to stay with him.
I tried.
I swear I tried.
The fire was too loud. The smoke too thick. People were shouting from every direction, but none of the words made sense. Bodies moved around me, too fast to follow. Wolves. People. Shadows with hands raised like they could command the world itself.
Valik was the only solid thing.
His hand on my neck.
His voice in my ears.
Stay with me.
So I did.
Until he moved.
Only a few steps.
Only long enough to stop the man with ice in his hands.
I watched the attacker hit the ground with impossible force, watched Valik move like violence had been carved into his bones.
Then something grabbed me.
A fist twisted in my shirt and yanked me backward.
My feet slipped.
I screamed.
Valik turned.
Our eyes met through the smoke.
Then something hit him.
He disappeared from my sight.
No.
No—
Something sharp felt like it ran through me.
My insides twisting.
The man dragging me cursed and pulled harder.
My body answered before my mind did.
I shifted.
It still hurt.
Of course it hurt.
Bones broke. Skin burned. My jaw stretched with a pressure that made my thoughts flash white.
But this time, the pain had direction.
Shape.
Purpose.
My hands struck the ground as paws.
My spine snapped into place.
Fur rippled over me, and my scream changed into a snarl.
The man let go.
My wolf did not wait.
She twisted our body low and fast, teeth catching the arm that had held us. Blood filled my mouth.
He shouted.
I released him and stumbled back, shaking.
I had bitten him.
I had meant to.
The thought should have frozen me.
Another figure came through the smoke.
Metal swung in his hand.
A chain.
My mind panicked.
My wolf listened.
Metal.
Left.
I jumped.
The chain cracked against the dirt where my legs had been. The sound hissed against stone, sharp enough to make my ears flatten.
Bad.
The knowledge was not a word.
It was a certainty.
Bad metal.
Do not let it touch.
The man swung again.
I ducked under it and ran at him because my wolf said closer was safer than away. My shoulder slammed into his knees.
He fell sideways with a shreik, and my teeth found his throat before he could lift the chain again.
I looked at the body now lying on the ground.
The blood that pooled there terrified me.
His scream had turned into silence.
I let go and backed away, panting.
Smoke burned my nose.
Blood coated my tongue.
My heart hammered so hard it felt like it might break my ribs from the inside.
I had killed someone.
But I was still standing.
Not because I understood what I was doing.
Because she did.
The wolf inside me wasn’t screaming this time.
She was watching.
Listening.
Choosing.
I stopped trying to think through it. Thinking was too slow. Fear was too loud.
So I listened to her.
My wolf.
Mine.
She wasn’t stealing me from myself.
She was keeping me alive.
The realization hit somewhere deep, beneath the panic.
I wasn’t trapped in her.
I was with her.
Another attacker lunged from the smoke, and this time I met him.
I darted under his arm, claws digging into dirt, then sprang up and slammed my full weight into his chest. He fell backward. I landed badly but stayed on my feet.
A growl tore out of me.
Mine.
Ours.
For one impossible second, I thought maybe I could do this.
Then I saw Valik.
He was on the ground.
Not moving.
My whole body froze.
The bond in my chest pulled so hard it hurt.
Valik.
I took one step toward him.
That was all they needed.
A chain whipped around my front leg.
It snapped closed.
Fire shot through me.
Not fire.
Worse.
The pain sank past fur, past muscle, straight into the place where my wolf lived.
I screamed.
The chain jerked tight, dragging me off balance.
I snapped at it, teeth scraping metal.
The burn exploded through my mouth.
Another cuff clamped around my other front leg.
My wolf thrashed beneath my skin, not trying to escape me this time.
Trying to stay.
Trying to protect me.
No.
No, no, no—
My bones broke backward.
The shift tore through me in reverse, brutal and wrong. Fur vanished in patches. Claws cracked into nails. My muzzle shortened with a grinding pain that made the world pulse black at the edges.
I hit the ground human.
Shaking.
Still chained.
The cuffs burned around my wrists now, silver-washed iron biting into skin that felt too soft, too exposed, too weak.
Someone grabbed my hair and yanked my head up.
I kicked, but my legs were caught too. Another chain locked around my ankles, dragging them together.
I tried to scream.
A hand slapped over my mouth.
“Careful,” someone snapped. “He said alive.”
Alive.
Not safe.
Not whole.
Alive.
My eyes watered from smoke and pain.
I looked for Valik.
The pack was forming ranks near the burning building, pulling injured wolves behind them, closing around their own. They were not running. They were not giving up.
They were protecting the pack.
And I was not one of them.
The thought split something quiet inside me.
Even with the bond.
Even with the pull.
I did not belong.
Valik lay beyond the smoke, dark and still.
Too still.
The bond screamed through me.
It could pull.
It could ache.
It could beg.
But it could not make him wake.
“Valik,” I tried to say.
The sound barely left my throat.
A rough cloth hood dropped over my face.
Darkness swallowed the fire.
The last thing I saw was my mate lying motionless in the dirt.
And no one coming for me.
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