THEODORE’S POV
Gravewind's growl doesn't fade — it grows teeth of its own inside my skull.
Protect her.
"No." I say out loud, to the empty air, to the trees, to whatever piece of my wolf has gone insane. My claws are still an inch from her throat. My arm is shaking, not from weakness, but from two hundred years of obedience breaking apart at once. "You don't give me orders. I give you orders."
Gravewind claws back, and this time it isn't a growl — it's pain, real pain, like something inside my ribs is being pulled apart with bare hands. I stagger back from her sleeping body, gripping my own skull, and for one humiliating second the Alpha Prince of Winter kneels in the snow like a dying man. This has never happened. Not once in two centuries has my own wolf turned against me.
I choose
