Elara POV
The morning air was still biting, but the mood around the new well was electric. I stood by the pump, enforcing the one-bucket rationing rule. Mason and Finn flanked me, their presence a silent warning.
Then, Garrick—a hulking warrior whose bruised ego had been festering since yesterday—shoved a frail Omega into the freezing mud. "Move, runt."
I stepped forward, blocking his path. "Back of the line, Garrick. Everyone gets the same amount."
He sneered, looking down at me with pure disgust. "Or what? You'll wag your tail for the Alpha again, little *wolfless* bitch?"
A low growl ripped from Mason's throat. Before I could blink, my brother's fist connected with Garrick's jaw, sending the massive warrior crashing into the dirt.
Chaos erupted. Garrick's cronies swarmed us. Mason and Finn fought fiercely, but they were outnumbered. My mother, Catherine, threw herself in front of me like a feral she-wolf, while my father, Arthur, formed a human wall with his own body, taking heavy blows to shield us.
"Stand down!" Beta Alistair Knox roared, stepping into the fray, his authoritative aura flaring.
Garrick spat a wad of blood into the snow, laughing maniacally. "I don't take orders from an exiled mutt from the capital!"
Seeing Mason take a brutal, sickening hit to the ribs, something inside me snapped. I wasn't going to let my family bleed for me. I snatched a jagged piece of obsidian from the excavated dirt. As Garrick lunged toward Mason again, I swung with everything I had, slamming the sharp stone directly into his temple.
Garrick howled. Blood poured down the side of his face. Humiliated and gravely injured by a *wolfless*, his eyes turned a feral, murderous red.
"Kill the wolfless bitch! Gut her for me!" he screamed.
Seven steel hunting knives cleared their sheaths. The warriors charged at me, their faces twisted in lethal intent.
I braced for the end. But a shadow blurred past my vision, moving faster than any human or Alpha. Kaelen Blackwood materialized like the Reaper himself. He didn't even draw a weapon. His bare forearms deflected the steel blades with bone-shattering force, shielding me completely. In a blink, he had Garrick lifted off the ground by his throat.
Gasping for air, Garrick fumbled in his tunic and thrust a silver ring into the air. The Luna Queen Seraphina's crest gleamed on the metal.
"You can't kill me!" Garrick choked out, his eyes bulging in terror. "I serve the Luna Queen!"
Kaelen's ice-blue eyes flashed with a terrifying, metallic silver light. He snatched the ring directly from Garrick's hand. The sickening hiss of burning flesh filled the air as the silver seared his palm, but Kaelen didn't even flinch. With a sickening crunch, he crushed the royal crest into jagged dust.
The sheer, suffocating weight of his *Lycan* aura slammed into the clearing. It was a wave of pure, violent dominance. Every warrior, including Garrick's men, dropped to their knees, whimpering as their inner wolves submitted to the apex predator.
Kaelen dropped Garrick into the mud like a broken toy.
He turned to me. That was when I noticed the deep, bone-baring claw mark tearing through his black leather armor. His bracer was slick with fresh, foul-smelling beast blood. He had just come from a slaughter.
Ignoring his sizzling, silver-burned palm, Kaelen reached out. With a clumsy, terrifying gentleness that completely contradicted the monster he had just been, he wiped a speck of mud and blood from my cheek.
"Did they hurt you?" his voice was a dark, gravelly rumble.
I stiffened, overwhelmed by the suffocating scent of pine, blood, and raw power, instinctively shrinking back from his touch.
Kaelen's eyes darkened. His gaze swept over the blood splattered on my coat—Mason's blood, Garrick's blood. He looked back at the kneeling men, his voice dropping to a deadly, glacial calm that froze the very air in my lungs.
"For every drop of her blood on this snow, I'll have a head."
