Chapter 108: No.

Derek was pinned under a burning beam with a dead thing crawling towards him and she was standing on a stairwell landing because the Alpha had told her to stay.

Her body had listened but her heart had not.

She could still smell the smoke. Could still feel the heat radiating from the corridor above. Could still hear the fire eating through wood and stone and everything between her and the man who had kissed her forehead and called her beautiful and opened her water bottles.

No.

The word was silent because her voice was gone. It was also absolute because her soul was present and her soul did not take orders from Alphas or elders or priestesses or masked bombers or anyone who stood between her and Derek Thunderfang.

She pushed.

The sensation was indescribable. It was like trying to lift a building off her chest while the building was also inside her chest. Every nerve ending was a battleground. The Alpha command was embedded in her muscles, her tendons, her bones, woven into the fabric of her obedience by a voice that carried the authority of the largest pack in Helix, and she was pushing against it with whatever she was made of that wasn’t wolf and wasn’t silver and wasn’t anything she could name.

Her body started to glow. White-gold light bled through her skin the way it had at the sacred fire and at dinner.

Her left foot moved.

One inch. The leg felt like it was made of lead that had been bolted to the floor and the floor was bolted to the mountain and the mountain was bolted to the planet. She dragged it forward with a grunt that was half cough, half something older and more stubborn than any command an Alpha had ever given.

On Maria’s wrist, miniature Maverick’s eyes widened.

"Nova. NOVA. Stop. Let the Alpha get Derek. That is what he went back for. Do not go up those stairs."

Nova’s right foot moved, heavier than the first step.

Her nose started bleeding. A thin line of red that ran from her left nostril down her lip, warm and tasting like copper, the cost of disagreeing with an Alpha command written in a currency her body was paying.

She took another step. The stairs were in front of her. She put her boot on the first one.

"HOW." Maria’s voice came from behind her, thick with disbelief and something that sounded like awe wearing fury’s uniform. "How in the hell did you just break through an Alpha command?"

Nova could not answer that question because "breaking through" would imply that she was through, and she was nowhere close to through. Every second was a war. Every step was a negotiation between her body, which had accepted the command, and whatever lived underneath her body that refused to. The pressure between her ears was building like a balloon being inflated inside her skull, pushing outward against her temples, behind her eyes, and the nosebleed was the release valve and the valve was losing.

Another step. Her knees were shaking so badly that the step almost didn’t count. More blood from her nose. She wiped it with the back of her glowing hand and kept going.

"Nova, you will BURN if you go back in there!" Maria called after her, the words coming out strained, fighting the command that was still holding her in place. Nova could hear Maria trying to move. Could hear the grunt. Could hear the frustration growing. The command had her pinned like a butterfly under glass. The same command that had frozen guards at a dinner table was holding an Emberclaw princess with fire in her blood to a stairwell landing, and the princess was losing.

Nova wasn’t breaking through it. She was inside it. Submerged. The current had her and she was swimming against it.

She made it to the third step.

Stuck.

Her legs locked. Her body trembled from scalp to sole, a continuous vibration that looked like hypothermia and felt like drowning. Blood was running freely from both nostrils now, painting her upper lip red, dripping in a steady rhythm that matched her heartbeat, the only part of her that was still moving at a normal speed.

"NOVA!" Maria yelled. "Unlock mine too!"

"I can’t," Nova rasped, which turned into a full-body cough.

"You are winning against an Alpha command and I need you to know that I have never seen that happen before."

Sure. Nova was winning. If winning meant bleeding from her nose and glowing like a dying star and dragging her body up stone stairs one agonizing inch at a time while every muscle screamed at her to stop. If winning meant tears and blood and the taste of copper mixing with the taste of smoke in a mouth that couldn’t form a single word. If winning meant fighting something invisible and ancient and absolute with nothing but stubbornness and whatever the Goddess had left inside her when the tank was empty.

Then Nova was winning.

On Maria’s wrist, Maverick Emberclaw’s hologram changed. His eyes flooded red. Deep, molten, Emberclaw red. Rage hit Nova like a door being kicked open from the inside.

It flooded into her chest like her own but it felt like someone else’s. It didn’t taste like hers. Hers was desperate and ran on grief. This rage was loud and ran on something that felt almost territorial.

She barely noticed it, too busy fighting for every step. Her eyes were on the archway at the top of the stairs, the orange glow beyond it, the smoke pouring down towards her.

The hall was more ablaze than it had been three minutes ago. The fire was spreading fast and Nova was about to run through it.

To her relief, the flame parted around her like a curtain being drawn by hands she couldn’t see.

She was in the corridor, walking through flame that should have turned her into a memory. The orange peeled away from her skin in ribbons, bending outward, retreating from whatever was wrapped around her body with the territorial certainty of a force that had claimed her and the fire could go fuck itself.

The ringing in her ears was a single high note that drowned the roar of the blaze. Through it, she could feel the borrowed rage pumping through her bloodstream, hot and rhythmic, someone else’s fury running laps inside her chest. She looked down at her arms.

Red flame.