CHAPTER 6
829 Words
The first rogue hit the ground so hard the cave floor shook.
Darius ripped it off his back in a blur of claws and teeth, slamming it into the wall with a crunch of bone. Blood sprayed hot and metallic across the stone.
“Stay behind me!” he barked at Seraphina, his voice more wolf than man now.
Like hell. She had her dagger out before he finished the order, her eyes blazing silver in the flicker of lightning. “Not happening.”
Two more rogues lunged into the cave, foam dripping from their jaws. They weren’t feral—this was coordinated.
“Too organized,” Darius snarled, ducking under a swipe and ripping the rogue’s throat open with his claws. The scent of blood hit like a war drum. “Someone’s controlling them.”
Seraphina kicked another back, steel flashing as she sliced its hamstring. It howled and collapsed, thrashing. “Your brother.”
The name was a curse between them.
The third rogue leapt for her blind side—but Darius was there, a blur of muscle and death, snapping its neck with a wet c***k that echoed through the cave.
She spun toward him, chest heaving, dagger slick with blood. “You okay?”
He gave her a feral grin, teeth bared. “Better than okay.”
And then—silence. For one breath. Two.
Too quiet.
“Darius…”
He stiffened. He smelled it too. Not just rogues. Something heavier. Older. Wrong.
And then the shadow filled the cave mouth.
A wolf, black as the storm outside, with eyes like molten amber—and scars that mapped a lifetime of betrayal.
“Lucien,” Darius growled, the name scraping raw from his throat.
His brother stepped forward on four legs, then rose—bones snapping, sinews twisting until a man stood there, naked and terrible in his power.
“Well,” Lucien said, his voice smooth as poison. “Little brother. Still alive. Still selfish.”
Darius bristled, every muscle a wire about to snap. “You were dead.”
Lucien smiled, cold and sharp. “Dead to you, maybe. Not to the wolves who needed a leader who wasn’t blinded by a witch’s pretty face.”
Seraphina stiffened, fury sparking through her fear. “You sent rogues after me.”
“After you?” Lucien chuckled. “No, sweetheart. After the boy. He’s the future. My future. When I take this pack—and I will—I’ll need an heir. And what better than my dear brother’s bastard?”
Something inside Darius detonated. His wolf surged, snapping chains he didn’t know he still wore.
“You’ll never touch him,” he snarled, shifting mid-lunge, fur erupting over skin, bones breaking and remaking until the Alpha wolf stood where the man had been.
The cave exploded in violence.
Lucien met him halfway, and the impact shook the stone. Claws raked, teeth tore, blood sprayed across rock and skin alike. They moved like shadows made flesh, too fast for human eyes, a blur of black and gold fur and flashing teeth.
Seraphina pressed back against the wall, heart slamming, dagger clenched—but this wasn’t her fight. This was blood against blood, brother against brother.
Until Lucien feinted left and slammed Darius into the wall with bone-crushing force.
“Alpha?” Lucien sneered, grinding his forearm into Darius’s throat. “You were never strong enough to lead. You let her soften you.”
Darius’s jaws snapped, missing Lucien’s throat by a breath. His vision swam red—but then he felt it. A warmth blazing through the pain. A bond he thought broken.
Seraphina.
She was on her knees, eyes glowing silver, lips moving in a chant older than moonlight. Magic spilled from her in shimmering threads, coiling around his battered body like armor.
“Get. Up,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Darius—don’t you dare die on me.”
And something in him answered. Something primal. Something claimed.
The mate bond roared back to life like a vein of molten fire snapping open. His wolf howled, and with a surge of impossible strength, he tore free—shattering Lucien’s grip and slamming him to the ground.
“I am Alpha,” Darius snarled, fangs sinking into Lucien’s shoulder, tearing through muscle and bone. “And she is mine.”
Lucien screamed, thrashing, blood spilling hot and fast. But even as Darius pinned him, Lucien laughed—a wet, broken sound.
“Kill me, and you’ll never find him,” he hissed. “Your precious son.”
Darius froze.
Seraphina’s chant faltered, her breath catching like a blade in her chest. “What—what do you mean?”
Lucien grinned through the blood on his teeth. “He’s gone. Taken. While you were busy playing house in a cave, they took him. And when the moon turns black… he’ll belong to me.”
Darius’s howl split the storm wide open.
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