THE ALPHA KING'S BASTARD SON

🌒 THE TEST

The slaughter that followed was not a duel, it was an execution of space.

Danriv moved between the tables like smoke through wicker, tearing into the rogues before they could even register the threat.

The female werewolf, pinned against the splintered wall, watched in stunned silence as her tormentors were systematically dismantled.

When three rogues lunged at once with heavy boarding pikes, Danriv didn't parry, he dropped low, sliding through the grease on the ground, his small sword severing the tendons behind their knees. As they collapsed, he finished them with precise, downward thrusts into the collarbone.

With a sudden, violent surge, Danriv lunged toward the center of the room where the largest rogue still gripped the female werewolf by her hair. Before the brute could use her as a shield, Danriv’s blade flashed in a brutal upward arc.

The rogue's grip severed instantly.

Danriv grabbed the woman's shoulder, pulling her forcefully behind his back to shield her body with his own.

The power Garrick had sensed, the heavy, uncalled gravity began to leak from Danriv’s skin. The candles flickered and died one by one, not from a draft, but from the sudden, suffocating pressure that filled the room.

The remaining rogues could not breathe, their lungs felt loaded with wet sand. Their movements became sluggish, their swings wide and desperate as Danriv systematically hunted them down in the gloom.

"Demon," one choked out, his eyes bloodshot as he crawled toward the back door, while his wounded legs lying behind him.

"You're no wolf... " one of the rogue said.

Danriv stepped on his spine, the bone cracking under his heel, and drove his blade between the shoulder blades.

In eleven seconds, the tavern was silent.

The only sound was the drip of dark blood from the edge of the cedar tables onto the straw-covered dirt.

Now twelve bodies littered the floor. The gate was clear. The task was exceeded.

Danriv stood in the center of the c*****e, his breath was rising and falling in perfect measured intervals. He slowly turned his silver eyes back to the female werewolf, who was shaking violently against the wall, trapped between intense relief and absolute terror of the monster, who had just saved her.

He didn't offer a hand. He didn't offer comfort. He simply sheathed his blood-soaked blade, his voice cutting through the dead silence like dry ice.

"Run, and never show your face to me again." Danriv commanded, his tone is flat and freezing.

The terrified female werewolf run and disappeared in his sight.

Behind him, out in the mist, he heard the faint, rhythmic clicking of Garrick’s silver cane approaching the tavern door. The Commander was coming to verify the killings.

Suddenly a young boy show up, he was hiding from the wall behind while no one sees him. The boy was so terrified and cried silently, fear for his life.

But Danriv lowered his small sword. The cold precision of his mind fractured, replaced by a sudden ache. He remember his face as what he experiences before at his young age.

"Run," Danriv whispered.

The small boy did not move at first, his eyes darting between the bloody blade and the door.

"Run!" Danriv commanded, his voice cracking with an authority that belonged to something much older than sixteen.

The boy scrambled over the salt barrels, his small limbs flailing. He lunged through the small grain-delivery hatch at the back of the larder, his small body slipping into the gray briars of the forest outside.

A second later, the soft rustle of leaves signaled his disappearance into the endless gray of the dead scarp.

He was gone..

"Better safe... than never!" Danriv whispered to the air.

A phantom in the mist. Danriv stood alone in the dark larder, his hand shaking slightly as he wiped his blade on his trousers. The heavy bar of the front door shattered inward with a clean, splintering crack.

Garrick stepped through the ruin, his silver-tipped cane ticking against the blood that soaked on the floor. The Omega looked around the room, his eyes assessing the fourteen bodies in total with the cold efficiency, like a tax collector.

Finally, Garrick’s gaze shifted to the larder. He walked over, his boots tracking red crescents across the room. He looked at the empty space between the salt barrels, then down at the small, wet footprints that led to the open grain hatch.

Garrick turned his head slightly, his amber eyes meeting Danriv's. There was no anger in the Commander's face, only a profound and terrifying satisfaction.

"An exceptional clearing," Garrick said softly.

"Fourteen rogues. A whole nest destroyed single-handedly.." He paused, his cane tapping the edge of the empty larder door.

"But this fight must be fair, Danriv. The King asked to wipe out the enemies. He did not ask for mercy."

"He was an eight-year-old child," Danriv said, though his fists were clenched so hard, that his nails drew blood from his palms.

"He was a rogue’s pulp," Garrick corrected, his tone almost gentle.

"In ten years, he would have been a blade at our throats. You chose to let the seed survive. That is a political act, Danriv. And the Alpha King does not tolerate politics from his men."

"I'm sorry. I am not the Alpha King" Danriv replied with a nod, as a sign of respect.

"Tell him, I will kill his enemy, but not the innocence" Danriv said and he turned to walked, back to the eastern gate.

-------------------------

The Great Hall of the capital was long enough to have its own weather system. High above, the iron banners of the House of Alpha King Darius rustled in the drafts from the high clerestory windows.

Alpha King Darius sat upon the High Seat, a throne carved from the skull of the great winter drake, that his grandfather had slain. Darius was a mountain of a man, his grey-streaked mane falling over shoulders covered in heavy bear pelt. His scent was an oppressive wall of cedar and old musk, the smell of a ruler who had held power through thirty winters of war.

Garrick stood five paces behind Danriv, his head bowed in the presence of the throne, his posture perfectly submissive, yet his eyes never left the back of the boy’s neck.

"Fourteen kills," Darius’s voice boomed, rattling the shields mounted along the stone pillars.

"A boy of sixteen years, clearing the Eastern Wing Gate without a scratch upon his armor. The vanguard commanders are singing your praises, Danriv. They say a new wolf has been born to guard our borders." The King leaned forward, his hands resting on his knees. His gaze sharpened, turning from proud to icy in the span of a single breath.

"But my Chief Inspector tells a different story," Darius growled.

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crack stone.

Danriv did not look back at Garrick. He knew then that the Omega had planned this from the moment they left the capital. The trial had never been about the fourteen rogues, it had been a trap designed to expose the core of his soul.

"Is it true? Did you allow a rogue to escape into the scarp?" Darius demanded.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Danriv said.

He did not offer an excuse. He did not mention the boy's age. To the King, an enemy was an enemy, to give details was to beg for mercy, and Danriv would not beg!