CHAPTER TEN: THE CLAIM AND THE COLD
1127 Words
Damien's POV
Blood on the stone under my boots. I got there before her head hit the floor, just barely. Somebody shouted something behind me. Too late to matter.
Her skin was burning against my hands, hot enough it stung. I got her into the crook of my arm. She weighed almost nothing. Air kept pressing down around us, worse by the second, like something was leaking out of her into the room.
Weaker wolves around us just folded where they stood, hands at their own throats, gasping at nothing anyone could see.
Ten feet off, Lucas was swaying on his feet, his eyes gone wide and empty.
"Lucas?" Ivy's voice, high, fast. "Look at me. Breathe, damn you."
I didn't wait to see if he would. I got Sienna tighter against me, her heat coming through my shirt, and looked at the guards around us. Men who used to take orders from me. Their hands were already on their weapons.
I gave them one nod. They backed off. One of them, Cassius, six years serving under me, wouldn't look at me while he did it. Nobody in that hall wanted to be the one who moved first.
I turned for the doors.
"Damien."
Morrigan spat blood on the stone and wiped her mouth with a hand that wasn't steady. Her dress had torn at the shoulder. Her eyes hadn't changed at all.
I stopped three steps short of the exit. In the quiet I could feel Sienna's heart against my arm, and each beat felt a little emptier than the last one.
"Step away from her," Morrigan said, blood still in her throat.
"She's mine now. Let it go."
"She's a pack member." Fear finally showed in her voice. "She's a traitor. You haven't marked her. You've got no claim on her." Her hands were shaking too now, and she gripped the front of her own dress trying to hide it.
I looked down at Sienna's face. What ran in my blood, the old line, could maybe pull her back from wherever she was going. Use it here, in front of this many witnesses, and the Council would call it heresy. We'd both be dead before she woke up.
I let my aura out slow. Floor hummed with it. What was left of the crowd pushed back against the walls.
"She is mine." My voice went through the floor more than the air. "Touch her and I stop being a guest here. I start being the reason this house doesn't stand tomorrow."
Lucas came forward a step. His guards spread out behind him. His jaw was locked. His hands didn't seem to know what to do with themselves.
Then Ivy moved.
She came out from behind a pillar, quiet on her heels, a bruise already coming up dark on one side of her face. She wasn't looking at me. Her eyes went straight to the noblewomen in the corner, the ones who decided what a wolf was worth in this territory, and tears came up in her eyes right on cue.
Then her eyes went somewhere else again, blank for a second, the same as before. Whatever was said to her, I didn't get any of it. Just her face going still, then moving again like she'd made up her mind about something.
I let my wolf come up. He didn't get bigger, he just rose off my back like a shadow, darker than anything else in that room, with something gold running through him that shouldn't have been there. Every guard's hand shook where it was gripping a spear.
"You think you're the hero here, don't you." Ivy came at me, each step deliberate. Behind her, two of the noblewomen already had their heads together.
She stopped just short of arm's reach. Blood and perfume both, mixing under the cold coming off Sienna. She leaned in close enough only I'd hear it.
"You're just carrying a corpse. Why bother, on a girl who's already gone."
Her smile dropped off her face.
Her hand came out. Not at me. At Sienna, who couldn't have lifted a finger to stop it.
Her fingers didn't get there.
Shadow moved first.
It hit her center chest and she didn't fall so much as go flying, hitting the base of a statue hard enough the sound carried. Nobody moved to help her. Not even Lucas.
"Ah, god." She got up on one elbow, blood at her mouth, eyes already back on the noblewomen. "She's cursed! Did you feel that? That's dark magic, coming off her from the grave!"
"She's right!" A woman in green silk was already up on her feet. "That wasn't wolf power. That was the Tosil Curse."
Word went around the room fast after that, mouth to mouth.
"She used it on her own mother." Ivy had her finger out, pointed at us. "She's a monster, Alpha Damien. Drop her before she gets into you too."
Morrigan's face had gone grave. "Law's clear. A cursed wolf goes to the Executioner's Hall. Leave her, or you're part of what she did."
Word kept moving through the crowd till it didn't sound like an accusation anymore, just a fact everyone agreed on.
I looked at the three of them and pulled Sienna in tighter. None of them came any closer.
"You want her," I said, while the shadow behind me pulled its lips back over teeth too big for that room, "come take her."
"Seize him." Morrigan's voice cracked out over the room.
Nobody moved for a second. Then guards came anyway. Shadow didn't touch one of them. They just dropped where they stood, weapons hitting the floor around them.
Lucas hadn't moved the whole time. He watched his own men go down without a single hit landing, his face gone slack, hands doing nothing at his sides. Once he took half a step forward. Then he looked at the floor and didn't move again.
I stood there with Sienna against me, and my hands wouldn't stop shaking now, whether that was her or just from holding the shadow back, I couldn't tell you.
Then my hands went cold.
Not slow. Heat in her just cut off, all at once, and what came in behind it went straight to the bone. I pushed whatever I had left toward her and felt it disappear the second it touched her skin. Like there was nothing left in her to catch it.
"Stay with me." My voice broke on it and I let it. "You don't get to do this. Not here."
I looked at her face. All the color was gone out of it.
Under my hand, her heart gave one last beat, stuttering.
Then nothing.
Ten minutes before she died.
- Writer
