She shoved me, her voice shaking with fury. "Lynara, who do you think you are?"
"How dare you speak to your senior brother and sister like that?!"
Edwin stepped between us, his expression the picture of composed reason. "Lynara, don't be rash."
"The Dawnveil Pack was always a small, unremarkable pack. Master spent his entire life trying to make it flourish and never could. What chance would we have?"
"Besides, all of us have received our Celestial Rank now. Isn't that a glory the pack can be proud of?"
He reached out and took hold of my arm.
"Come now, be good. I'll take you to see the Supreme Alpha. I'll make sure you get a fine rank..."
But before the last word left his mouth, my short blade was already buried in his chest.
Edwin never even had time to react. He crumpled to the ground, eyes wide and glassy, dead before he hit the stone. The scent of damp parchment and tarnished copper flooded the air, sharp and sudden, the way a wolf's scent always surges at the moment of death.
Every Sovereign Guard in the vicinity went rigid with shock. Weapons sang free of their sheaths, all pointed at me.
Rosalind stumbled back two steps, her face white. "Lynara, what kind of cursed thing are you holding?!"
She asked because Edwin had already received his Celestial Rank. The power of his Wolf Core shielded his body.
An ordinary weapon couldn't have come within a foot of him.
So in her mind, my blade had to be something unholy.
I raised the short blade, letting the light catch its edge. My voice was flat and cold. "Cursed? No wolf of the Abyss is worthy of wielding this."
"But you'll find out what it is soon enough."
I crouched beside Edwin's body and used the blade to carve out his heart.
"Since our dear First Beta had no heart to speak of, his heart's blood might as well serve a better purpose. A blood offering for my spirit wolf."
"Lynara, you vicious monster!"
Rosalind's eyes went red with rage. She called on her wolf's power and lunged at me.
But at the critical moment, a Sovereign Guard beside her seized her arm and hauled her back, his hand trembling as he pointed at the spectral shape coalescing above Edwin's corpse. A translucent wolf, black as the space between stars, lapping at the blood with a tongue made of violet fire.
"Lady Rosalind, look. Your junior sister's spirit wolf... something's wrong with it. It's drinking the blood on its own."
Rosalind didn't care. She scoffed. "Cursed relics never play by the rules. What's so strange about that?"
The soldier shook his head frantically. "No, you don't understand. You've only just ascended to Celestial Rank."
"In all the millennia since creation, there has only ever been one spirit wolf that craves the heart's blood of powerful wolves..."
Rosalind blinked, clueless. "What spirit wolf?"
The soldier's lips trembled around two words: "Soulreaper."
Rosalind's jaw dropped. The color drained from her face.
But before she could gather her wits, a voice split the air from the void above, heavy with authority that needed no anger to terrify. An Alpha aura descended with it, thick and suffocating, pressing against every wolf present like a hand on the back of the neck.
"Silence!"
"I destroyed that Primordial She-Wolf with my own hands. Soulreaper was shattered by my power. It no longer exists."
"You will not spread such baseless fear!"
I knew that voice. I knew it the way you know the sound of your own heartbeat. Fenris Voss. My enemy for as long as I had drawn breath.
And the one who had wounded me deepest of all.
My wolf, buried deep where I kept her still and silent, stirred at the sound. Not with fear. With something older than fear. Something that had no name except the taste of ash on the back of my tongue.
He was right about one thing. I was the Primordial She-Wolf he claimed to have destroyed.
I was also the only other true Primordial Alpha who had escaped the Abyssal Wilds alongside him, the only one who had survived the cataclysm.
The year the Wilds were annihilated, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.
For thousands of years after that, Fenris treated me well.
Primordial wolves are born cold-blooded. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.
Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Wilds.
So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Sovereign Grounds, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.
Three thousand years as mates. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.
Until Fenris met a mortal woman, and everything veered off course.
That woman was Elara, the one he now called his mate.
Elara was flesh and bone, purely human. She could not set foot in the Sovereign Grounds. The only way was to replace the mortal essence inside her body with a Wolf Core and Abyssal power, or with the strength of a Primordial bloodline.
Fenris searched every corner of the Sovereign Grounds and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.
