Chapter 114: How To Kill An Ovation

The fire was spreading in Thunderfang Keep.

The side door opened onto a world that had decided snow and sirens were the same thing.

Fire-suppression hovers circled the east wing in formation, their hoses trained on the fourth floor where orange light pulsed behind every window.

Water hit stone and turned to steam on contact, the collision producing a hiss that blanketed the courtyard in fog thick enough to lose a wolf in.

More hovers were arriving. Red and white strobes cut through the snowfall in alternating panic, painting the evacuated crowd in colors that made everyone look injured whether they were or not. Ambulance hovers had landed in a row along the east courtyard, their bay doors open, medical teams already moving.

The High Luna exited the side door first.

Crown on. Robe dusted with ash. Posture unchanged. ℯℯ𝑙.

The pack saw her and the noise shifted. Conversations died. The crowd that had been shivering and speculating and watching the east wing burn fell quiet.

Tavian and Maria came through next, Derek hanging between them like a puppet whose strings had been cut and reattached by amateurs. His head was up and his eyes were open. The burns across his torso were visible even under the ash and the blood and the general state of a man who had been trapped under a burning beam and was currently holding consciousness the way you hold water in cupped hands.

The pack started clapping.

It began in the front row and spread backwards like a wave that had been waiting for permission. Boots stamped snow. The sound grew from applause into something more structural, a rhythm that said our prince is alive and we are making noise about it.

Alpha Thunderfang exited last.

Nova was in his arms, her eyes shut, her face a canvas of dried blood and ash and the specific exhaustion of a body that had given everything it had and was now presenting the invoice. The burst blood vessel in her left eye was hidden behind closed lids. The nosebleed had stopped. The glow had faded to something barely visible, a faint gold pulse.

Celeste Starborne was standing at the perimeter beside a medical hover, wrapped in her silk robe, hair still perfect, lips still lined. She had been watching the door.

Her expression had started at concerned, which made sense for a future Luna whose mate was inside a burning building. It traveled through relief when Alpha Thunderfang appeared. Then it arrived at its destination when her eyes found what he was carrying.

"SHE PUT YOU IN DANGER, LANDON. That slave started this. She started a fire in the east wing and nearly killed the Alpha of this pack." Celeste’s voice cut across the courtyard, sharp enough to slice through the clapping, the sirens, the hissing steam, and the collective goodwill of a pack that had just watched its royal family walk out of a fire.

The clapping died. Every head turned. The courtyard went quiet enough to hear snow land.

Alpha Thunderfang stopped walking.

He turned his head to look at Celeste. The motion was slow.

"You overstep. She didn’t start this fire. She was trapped in it."

The courtyard held its breath. Two sentences. Twelve words. Every wolf present heard them and every wolf present understood that the Alpha of Thunderfang had just publicly corrected his future Luna in front of the entire pack and the correction had come with a temperature that could have frozen the steam rising off the building.

Celeste’s chin lifted. Her composure held because Celeste Starborne’s composure was load-bearing and the load was her entire identity.

"Put her down and get yourself inspected, Landon."

Alpha Thunderfang looked at her for one more second. Then he turned away and walked towards the ambulance hovers without acknowledging the instruction, the suggestion, or the woman who had delivered both.

He set Nova down on the hover ambulance gurney with a gentleness that contradicted his pace and his face and every interaction he’d had with her prior to tonight. Her body settled against the surface and a medic was over her in seconds, scanner out, mask ready.

"She needs oxygen," Alpha Thunderfang stated.

The medic didn’t need to be told twice. An oxygen mask was on Nova’s face before the Alpha finished the sentence, the cool flow hitting her lungs and producing a cough that was somehow both better and worse than the ones that had come before it. Better because oxygen was replacing smoke. Worse because her lungs were learning to breathe again and the learning curve was steep.

The High Luna was already issuing commands from the center of the courtyard, her voice carrying across the crowd with the effortless volume of a woman who had been running this pack from behind its throne for longer than most wolves present had been alive.

"All of them get oxygen. All of them get inspected. Nobody leaves this courtyard until medical has cleared them. That includes you, Landon. And you, Tavian. And the Emberclaw princess."

Medical teams descended on them like a swarm that had been given coordinates and a mandate. Derek was on a gurney thirty seconds later, oxygen mask covering the lower half of his face, a medic already examining his torso.

A second medic was wrapping Derek’s hands, the blisters from the beam still healing under the bandages. His chest rose and fell under the oxygen mask in rhythms that were steadier than they had been on the stairwell and getting steadier by the minute. Alpha healing. The body’s warranty policy kicking in now that the fire had voided the lease.

Next to him, Alpha Thunderfang sat on the adjacent gurney, oxygen mask on, a medic treating the burns on his hands and forearms. The skin there was rebuilding in the same accelerated cycle, new tissue forming over damage that would have been permanent on any wolf below Alpha blood. His injuries were all contact burns from the beam and the corridor, the price of pulling burning wood off his brother with his bare hands and refusing to let go until someone handed him a better idea.