Chapter 010
1693 Words
Damien's POV
The world slowed to a crawl.
Gravity doubled, dragging Sienna toward the marble like a physical weight while action quickly overrode thought. I surged forward, my boots skidding on the blood-slicked floor as I caught her a fraction of a second before her skull could meet the stone.
The heat radiating from her skin was savage, acting not as a normal fever but feeling exactly like holding a live coal. My palms began to sting, the flesh reddening under the intensity of her touch, but I refused to let go as I shifted my weight to pull her smaller frame into the crook of my arm. She was feather-light, yet the raw power leaking from her body completely smothered the room.
Is this the girl? I stared down at her pale face, hidden beneath matted sweat-soaked hair. I wondered if this was the storm the prophecy promised, or just a dying spark destined to burn me alive.
A crushing invisible weight vacuumed the oxygen from the hall, and I felt it first in my own lungs as a tightening demand for submission that I refused to give. Around us, the lesser wolves collapsed, their spines bending under a pressure they couldn't see as they gasped for air that had suddenly turned into a void.
Ten feet away, Lucas swayed like a man watching his own name being carved into a headstone. His eyes were wide and vacant, completely stripped of the arrogance that usually defined him.
"Lucas?"
Ivy's voice cut through the shadows, surfacing as a frantic high-pitched whisper that grated against the silence. "Lucas, look at me. Breathe, damn you."
I didn't wait for him to find his rhythm or his courage, pulling Sienna tighter against my chest while her heat soaked right through my shirt. Surrounding guards, men I had once commanded who were now watching me like I was a stranger, tensed their muscles, but I didn't reach for a weapon or need to, simply giving them a sharp final nod.
Dismissed.
I turned toward the high arched doors while my heart hammered against my ribs, the raw metallic adrenaline of a cornered predator flooding my veins.
"Damien."
The voice was wet and heavy with spite, revealing Morrigan as she spat a thick glob of blood onto the floor and wiped her mouth with a shaking hand. She looked like a ruined queen with her silk gown torn, but her eyes held a violent lingering sharpness that proved she wasn't done playing her hand.
I stopped three steps from the exit, three steps from freedom and the darkness of the night outside.
The silence that followed was deafening, leaving me to hear the faint erratic thud-thud of Sienna's heart against my arm like a clock winding down where each beat sounded more hollow than the last.
"Step away from her," Morrigan rasped, her voice catching on the blood in her throat.
I didn't turn around, refusing to give her the satisfaction of seeing the conflict I was burying. "She's mine now, Morrigan. Let it go."
"She's a pack member!" Morrigan's voice cracked, the desperation finally leaking through the gaps of her authority. "She's a criminal. You haven't marked her, so you have no claim to her soul."
I looked down at the girl, knowing I could save her because the Eucharist in my blood, the ancient pure strain of the sacred line, could jumpstart her heart. But the cost was absolute, knowing that if I did it here, the Council would see the light and label us heretics, executing us both before she even had the chance to open her eyes.
I was standing in the middle of a burning room, forced to choose between her life and our immediate execution.
I turned slowly, pivoting on my heel as I let my aura bleed out in a predatory pressure that made the floor tiles hum and vibrate. The remaining nobles scrambled, their silk gowns rustling like dry leaves as they fled toward the safety of the walls.
"I said," I lowered my voice until it was a lethal vibration, "she is mine. Touch her, and I stop being a guest in this house. I start being the end of it."
Lucas finally found his legs, stepping forward to signal his guards to form a semi-circle around me. He looked pathetic, appearing as a king trying to reclaim a throne while his lungs were still burning from his mate's stolen power.
Then Ivy moved.
She stepped out from behind a massive marble pillar, her heels clicking softly against the stone while the bruise on her face turned a sickly deep purple that ruined the porcelain perfection she spent hours maintaining. She didn't look at me, looking instead toward the noble ladies in the corner who controlled the social fate of every wolf in the territory, her eyes filling with calculated shimmering tears.
Mindlink: "Her essence is failing. Now or never."
The mindlink hit my brain like jagged glass, broken and sharp, but the intent was unmistakable as I sensed the jagged edge of their desperation.
Mindlink: "The light was too bright. It's the perfect cover. We call it a curse, and we bury her with it tonight."
The words burned into my mind as if they were shouting the lie directly to me, leaving me to hear every syllable and feel the cold grease of their deceit.
I let my wolf stir, and instead of growing, he manifested as a shadow darker than the night outside that bled off my back and rose toward the vaulted ceiling.
A massive gold-lined spirit stood behind me, and though it wasn't physical flesh, the sheer density of its presence pinned the room completely. The guards took a step back, their hands trembling on their silver-tipped spears.
Mindlink: "The sacred black wolf. Look at the gold lines. It's true. The prophecy lives."
The link drifted past like a phantom, leaving only the cold aftertaste of their greed as I felt their sudden sharp hunger for the blood in my veins.
Mindlink: "The Eucharist? The purity that brings the dead back? We need that blood, Mother, because we need him bound."
The intent was heavy, acting as a suffocating weight in the air that made the hair on my arms stand straight up.
"You think you're being a hero, don't you?" Ivy walked toward me, her heels clicking a taunting slow rhythm on the marble.
Click.
She took a step with her eyes locked on mine, searching for a weakness.
Click.
Another step.
Click.
She stopped just out of reach as the air between us grew thick and volatile. The sharp copper tang of her blood mixed with the faint sweet vanilla of her perfume, clashing directly against the deathly cold rolling off Sienna before she leaned in with a poisonous whisper meant only for me.
"You're just carrying a corpse, Damien, so why waste the effort on a girl who's already gone?"
Her smile vanished instantly.
Ivy's hand flew out, and instead of trying to grab Sienna, she went for a slap to deliver a final vicious insult to a girl who couldn't fight back.
Before her fingers could graze skin, the beast lunged.
THUD.
A wave of kinetic force hit Ivy center-chest, ensuring she didn't just fall but flew backwards. Her body skidded across the floor, hitting the base of a stone statue with a sickening c***k that echoed through the rafters.
"Ah, god." She coughed, blood bubbling at the corner of her lips while she looked up at the nobles with eyes wide in a perfectly timed look of horror. "She, she's cursed! Did you feel it? That was dark magic, and she's attacking me from the grave!"
"She's right!" A noblewoman in green silk stood up, her voice trembling with manufactured outrage. "That wasn't wolf power. That was the Tosil Curse, because I felt the darkness!"
The hall went ice cold while the accusation hung in the air like a noose.
"She used it on her mother," Ivy cried, pointing a shaking finger at us. "She used it to trick Lucas, so she's a monster, Alpha Damien! Drop her before she rots your soul too!"
Morrigan stepped forward with her face set in a mask of false gravity. "The law is clear, Damien. A cursed wolf belongs to the Executioner's Hall, so leave her, or you're an accomplice to her sin. Choose your side."
I looked at them as the lies dripped off their tongues like venom, causing my grip on Sienna to tighten until my knuckles were bone-white.
"If you want her," I said, while the beast behind me bared teeth like daggers, "come take her."
"Seize him!" Morrigan's command surfaced as a scream that tore right through the tension.
The guards rushed, forcing the shadow to lunge forward.
It didn't need to bite, since its aura smothered the air right out of their chests. They hit the floor, clutching their throats as the spirit walked through them like a nightmare made of mist, leaving them to fall one by one while their weapons clattered against the stone.
Lucas stood frozen, watching his best men crumble without a single blow being landed until genuine hollow terror filled his eyes. He realized then that he wasn't fighting a man but was up against an ancient power he couldn't comprehend.
I stood in the center of the wreckage with Sienna tucked securely against my heart.
Suddenly my hands grew unnaturally cold. The heat in Sienna's skin didn't just fade but vanished completely, replaced by a terrifying hollow chill that seeped into my bones. My hands began to shake, a physical cost I couldn't hide as my own energy drained to keep her spark alive, while the gold-lined spirit recoiled with its form flickering like a dying flame.
Damien, the voice hissed in my soul, no longer dominant but frantic. She's slipping through our fingers, because the light is out.
I looked down.
Her skin was the color of ash.
Her heart beneath my palm gave one final stuttering beat before going completely silent, leaving us exactly ten minutes before she died.
- Writer
