Chapter 93: The Alpha’s Fury

Rhydor’s POV

The man did not want to fight, that was the part that kept getting in the way.

Every time I swung, he blocked. Clean and efficient, his massive sword met my axe with a control that said he could end this whenever he decided to. But he never pushed back. Never pressed forward. Never tried to create an opening or finish what I was clearly trying to start.

I swung again. Metal on metal, sparks jumping off the impact and dying in the smoke around us.

"I am not here for you," he said. His voice was low and completely unbothered. Like we were having this conversation somewhere quiet over a meal instead of in a burning corridor with axes involved.

"You attacked my people," I said. "That is enough."

I came at him again. He blocked, stepped sideways, and let my momentum carry me forward without capitalizing on it. The sword in his hand could have taken my head off at least twice. He had not tried once.

He swung toward the wall instead.

The stone exploded. Chunks flew. Dust filled the corridor so thick I could not see my own hand and I stepped back and braced and waited.

When it cleared, he was gone.

Just the cracked wall and the settling dust and the distant sounds of the pack house behind me. I stood with my axe raised and my chest heaving and looked at the empty space where an enormous masked man had been standing thirty seconds ago and tried to understand what had just happened.

He had not come to fight. He had come for something specific. And whatever it was, he had either found it or decided tonight was not the night.

I lowered my axe slowly.

What was he looking for?

****

The pack house looked like something had moved through it with the specific intention of causing as much destruction as possible without actually killing anyone. Doors off hinges. Walls cracked. Scorch marks along two corridors from fires that had been put out before they spread. Furnitures were overturned and broken.

Wounded warriors were being helped toward the healer’s rooms. Some walk on their own. Some are being carried. None of the faces I saw as I moved through the corridors were the specific faces I was looking for.

Silas appeared at my shoulder. He matched my pace without being asked, already reading the situation from my expression the way he always did.

"Attackers pulled back," he said. "All of them. At once."

I looked at him. "All of them?"

"Same moment. Like someone gave a signal." He paused. "Or like they got what they came for. Or realized they were not going to."

I thought about the masked man in the corridor. About the way he had looked past me. About the way he had stood completely still when his eyes moved to somewhere behind me and something in his whole presence had shifted.

He was not here for the pack.

He was here for something specific. And the attack on the pack house had been covered for whatever that was.

My jaw tightened.

I kept moving.

The underground room was full when I pushed the door open. Children pressed together along the walls, some sitting, some standing, the older ones with their arms around the younger ones. Pack members who could not fight sat in whatever space was available. Two guards at the door straightened immediately when they saw me.

Leo was near the far wall. Ethan beside him. Both of them were on their feet, both of them scanning the room the way someone scanned a room when they had taken responsibility for what was inside it.

I looked around the space once.

"Where is the Luna?" I said.

The guards exchanged a look. That look. The one that meant they had information they did not want to be the ones to deliver.

"Where is she?" I said again. Harder this time.

Leo stepped forward from the far wall. He crossed the room without rushing and stopped in front of me and met my eyes directly with a steadiness I had not expected from him and had no time to examine.

"She left," he said. "She went back up to help people who had not made it to safety. She did not come back."

I was already moving before he finished the sentence.

I found her in the east corridor near the back exit.

Not Azura. My mother.

She was standing with her back to me, looking out through the door at the dark beyond the pack house. Still and quiet in the way she was still and quiet when she was thinking about something she had already decided but was waiting to explain.

She heard me coming. She always did. She did not turn.

"Where is Azura?" I said. I kept my voice controlled. Barely.

"Safe," she said.

I closed the distance between us. "Where."

She turned then. Her face was calm. Her eyes were sharp in that specific way they got when she was preparing to say something she knew was going to land hard.

"I sent her away," she said. "With Torin. They are on their way to Hollowcrown."

The words hit like something physical.

I stood completely still for one second. "You sent her away." I heard my own voice going flat. "You sent my mate away without telling me."

"Since when do you call her your mate?"

The question landed exactly where she meant it to and I had nothing to say back to it. Nothing that would come out the way I needed it to. The rage that had been sitting under everything since the masked man disappeared from that corridor found a new direction and moved.

"Of all the people," I said. "Of every person in this pack you could have chosen, you sent her with Torin."

"He was there. He was strong enough. It was the only choice that made sense."

"It was not the only choice. You could have told me. You could have waited..."

"And done what?" Her voice did not rise. That was always the way she fought. Quietly. Precisely. "Left the pack while it was under attack? Left your people and gone with her yourself?"

I said nothing.

My fists were clenched at my sides, and I could feel the tension in every muscle from my jaw down, and I said nothing because she was right, and that made it worse.

"She should not be with him," I said. "She should not be alone with him."

My mother studied me for a moment. Her head tilted just slightly. "Why?" she asked. "Do you not trust her? Or do you not trust yourself?"

"That is enough."

My father’s voice came from the end of the corridor behind me.

I turned. He was standing there with his arms at his sides and his jaw set in that familiar way, watching with the expression of a man who had been listening long enough to have formed a complete opinion.

"You do not speak to your mother like that," he said.

I turned back. "Then tell your mate to bring back my mate."

The words had barely left my mouth before my mother’s hand connected with my cheek.

The sound of it hit the stone walls and came back at me from every direction before the sting did. My head snapped sideways. I stood completely still.

The corridor was silent.

I turned back slowly. My cheek was burning. My jaw was tight. I looked at her.

She did not step back. Did not look away. Did not offer any apology in her expression or her posture.

"You will not speak to me like that," she said. Her voice was cold and completely steady. "I am your mother. I have bled for this pack and I have given everything I had to keep it standing. Including her. Everything I did tonight was to keep her alive."

I said nothing.

She stepped closer.

"You rejected her," she said. "You pushed her away. You made her feel like she was nothing and like she belonged nowhere. And now, when she is somewhere she might finally be safe, you stand here and shout at me about who she went with?"

My fists were still clenched.

"If you want her back," she said, "then be the man who deserves to have her. Not the one who only wants her when someone else might take her away from him."

She turned and walked away.

Her footsteps echoed down the corridor, steady and unhurried, until they faded around the far corner and left nothing behind them.

I stood in the silence she left and did not move.

My father was still there.

He looked at me for a long moment with that same expression, the one that had always made me feel like he could see the exact thought I was having and had already decided what he thought about it.

"Your mother is not wrong," he said. "You need to decide what you want. And if it is her, then fight for her." A pause. "Not the people trying to keep her safe."

He walked away too.

I stood alone in the corridor. The smoke had mostly cleared. The sounds of the aftermath were distant now, the quiet organized noise of a pack putting itself back together. The sting in my cheek had faded but not completely.

Torin.

She was with him now. Alone. And I knew Torin. I knew what he was like when he wanted something. Whether what he felt for her was real or just his nature, I could not say. But either way, he had her to himself tonight with no one around to interrupt anything he decided to do about it.

I knew all of it.

And I was standing here in an empty corridor.

Be the man who deserves to have her. Not the one who only wants her when someone else might take her away.

I pressed my back against the stone wall and stared at the ceiling and breathed through the tightness in my chest that had been there since I walked into that packed hall for the ceremony and found her face in the crowd without meaning to and could not look away.

I did not know if I was that man yet.

But I knew with complete certainty that I was not leaving her in Hollowcrown with Torin for a single day longer than I had to.