Ss’s POV
Finished
“Ss,” he drawled, his voice carrying that maddening lilt of satisfaction, “if that girl had taken one wound deeper, how would you live with yourself?”
The words cut through me sharper than any de. My muscles seized. Freya’s face shed in my mind–her blood spilling across my hands, the way she threw herself in front of me tonight, snarling against the Rogues like a wolf with nothing left to lose.
I was on him before my packmates even breathed. My hands shot forward, ws grazing his skin as I mmed him into the stone pir. My grip locked around his throat.
“You dare.” My growl was thunder.
Cassian only smiled wider. That same damned smile he wore the day he nearly broke me as a boy. “You can kill me now, son. End it. Spare yourself the torment of wondering whether I’ll ruin what you hold dear.”
The hall seemed to shrink. Every heartbeat around us stumbled. I could hear my men’s breaths catch, the scrape of boots against the gstones. They’d seen me tear through Rogues a moment ago, and now they saw me with my ws pressed to my own father’s throat.
A Whitmor devouring a Whitmor. The oldest whisper in the Capital.
His eyes burned with deranged amusement, as though he weed the end by my hand. And that was the worst of <i>it</i>–he wanted me to do it. He wanted my soul tainted like his.
I squeezed harder. Cassian’s breath rasped; the scent of his blood teased senses.
“Alpha!” one of my sentries barked, his voice sharp, breaking the haze.
It snapped me back like ash across the spine.
my
I released Cassian with a shove, my ws tearing shallow lines down his neck as he staggered back, coughing,ughter spilling between each choke.
“Why not?” he wheezed. “Why not finish me? Don’t tell me you fear the stain of patricide.”
I lowered my gaze to my hands. These were the same hands still sticky with Freya’s blood, the ones that had shielded her when Rogues lunged for her throat. My hands had killed more than a hundred wolves in my reign. That stain I could bear.
But hers<b>? </b>
No. If I snapped Cassian’s neck here, in the hall my ancestors built, I would see Freya’s eyes looking at me in horror. She was too pure, too fierce, too honest to bind herself to a wolf who murdered his own sire like a beast gone rabid.
I lifted my eyes back to him. “I won’t kill you,” <b>I </b>said, my voice low, dangerous<b>, </b>steady. “But I’ll bury you in chains like Grandfather did. You will never touch her. Never again.”
Cassian froze, then barked out a manicugh. “So that’s it. You alreadyid the trap, didn’t you?“.
I gave themand, my voice echoing like the toll of a death bell: “Shadows!”
From the darkness of the rafters, the Iron Fang Recon Unit emerged–my loyal dark sentinels, the pack’s secret hand. d in ck, eyes glowing amber and silver, they dropped into the hall one by one until dozens circled us.
Casps rippled through the Whitmor kin gathered in the great chamber.
Cassian’s smile curved again, this time with something like pride twisted into it. “Just like your grandfather. He caged me once. Now you’ll do the same. The blood never changes.”
He wasn’t wrong.
<b>12:25 </b>AM P p
Finished
My grandfather had ordered these very Shadows to keep Cassian locked away after Mother’s death, when his grief curdled into madness and his fists turned on me. The only reason Cassian ever breathed free air again was because the old Alpha had died, and with him, the binding order.
And now, I renewed it.
“By my word as Alpha of the Whitmor bloodline, Cassian Whitmor is bound. He is not to set paw beyond Whitmor Isle. Any who aid his escape will be named traitors and ughtered where they stand.”
The Shadows bowed their heads in unison. “As the Alphamands.”
Cassian didn’t fight them as they stepped forward, chains forged of silver–steel drawn tight around his wrists. Hisughter still rang, though, wild and broken.
“You think cages save you? No, boy. Your hands are already stained. And one day, that little heart you protect will see the truth of you. She’ll spit your name as she walks away.”
His words clung like rot, but I didn’t let them show on my face. I turned my head sharply. “Take him.”
The Shadows dragged him through the hall, hisughter echoing until the heavy doors mmed shut.
Silence fell.
I stared at my hands again. The blood of Rogues, the memory of Freya’s fragile body shielding mine. Her warmth. Her scent.
Would she look at me one day and see only the monster Cassian swore I’d be?
“Alpha,” one of my guards said softly at my side. My most loyal. His voice was steady, reverent. “Freya Thorne risked her life for you. Threw herself between you and their ws. A wolf doesn’t do that for just anyone.”
My chest tightened.
Yes. She had bared her throat to death itself for me. She had fought as though I were worth dying for.
But a darker thought poisoned the back of my mind–if it had been another at my side, would she have done the same? Was it me she chose… or just the duty inside her that she couldn’t silence?
The hall emptied around me, my sentries dispersing with uneasy nces. Alone, I flexed my hands, whispering to no one but the stone and the shadows.
“Wil! you still stand at my side when you see all of me, Freya?”
The silence offered no answer.
Only the distant sea crashing against White Isle, and the ghosts of wolves long dead, howling in my blood.
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