Chapter 124: A Royal Reveal, A Deadly Deal

A shadow grew tall on the cobblestones.

"She said identify yourselves," a voice thundered across the courtyard.

Nova already knew who it was before she saw him because of the gold glow in her peripheral vision. Alpha Thunderfang had arrived with Sebastian behind him, which meant Sierra had gotten a hold of him and Nova’s instincts were correct: this was not a drill.

They stopped on Nova’s other side.

No one moved.

Except the wolf pup, who walked straight up to the lead masked soldier and kicked him in the shin.

The courtyard held its breath.

The masked soldier glared down at the boy. The pup looked up. The standoff was between a four-year-old and a fully armed man and the four-year-old was winning.

Then the masked soldier’s hand moved.

Nova moved faster. Entirely too fast for a wolfless slave. Just the particular adrenaline and instinct that comes when a pup is in danger.

WHISH.

She had already snatched the boy off the ground and cleared the blade before it completed any arc, the air displacing behind her. She ignored her shoulder that was currently on fire.

That was a line crossed.

That man was going to kill this boy and she just saved his life.

The formation froze.

Alpha Thunderfang stepped in front of Nova and the pup. The positioning was deliberate. His body was between them and every weapon in the courtyard.

Nova continued to the door, and put the pup down.

"Go inside," she said softly.

The pup looked at her like he didn’t want to go.

"I’ll be right there," she reassured him.

He gave a nod and ran for the door. It cracked open enough for him to slip through, someone on the inside clearly having been watching.

Nova wasn’t sure what the correct protocol was for this situation. She didn’t want to be in Alpha Thunderfang’s way. But the torches changing color seemed to give these warriors pause so she decided to stay outside.

So she stood in front of the double doors, chin up. Not flinching.

"Weapons down. All of you. Now." Alpha Thunderfang’s Alpha command hit every masked soldier in the formation at once.

None of them moved.

"We want the body. And we want the Moon Princess. That’s it," the leader stated. "Hand both over and this ends quietly. We did not come here to kill."

"Moon Princess," Alpha Thunderfang repeated.

"Yes. The one your kind calls 7709." The masked soldier’s eyes flicked to Nova who had never heard ’Moon Princess’ in her life. "We will pay you what your brother bought her for. Two problems go away for you. This is resolved peacefully. We won’t step foot on your land again."

Nova’s blood went cold and her throat tightened. In her chest, she felt more grief at the words than anything because she knew she was the problem. She had always been the problem. And last time she checked, Derek was in the hospital, Celeste wanted her dead, and the High Luna wanted her gone. The man standing between her and these armed masked soldiers had zero contractual, political, or personal reasons to refuse this offer.

"No," Alpha Thunderfang replied with zero hesitation.

Gratitude landed in her chest and stayed there because her throat couldn’t produce it. It was swallowed by the sight of the armed men recalibrating around a refusal, and the recalibration looked like preparation.

BWAAAAAAH.

A blaring alarm sounded behind them in the keep. The kind that means one thing in every pack on the continent: we are under attack.

The response was immediate.

Thunderfang warriors poured from every entrance. Both sides of the courtyard. Some were shifted, massive wolves hitting cobblestone at full sprint. Others came in human form, armed, holding weapons with edges that pulsed electric blue.

The formation closed around the masked soldiers like a jaw. Tight. Controlled. Every wolf facing inward. Every weapon raised.

The lead masked soldier looked at his team. Looked at the wolves. Looked at Alpha Thunderfang, who hadn’t moved.

"Wrong choice, Alpha."

His team detonated. There was no other word.

The first masked soldier’s blade connected with the nearest Thunderfang wolf and the wolf disintegrated. Fur and bone and muscle unmade in a single stroke.

Nova’s hand flew to her mouth in absolute horror. It was so fast that her brain rejected it.

The second wolf went the same way. One strike. Ash. The body didn’t fall. It came apart. Like sand in wind. Like the weapon was erasing them from existence instead of killing them.

A third wolf lunged from the left. The masked soldier’s weapon caught him mid-air. The wolf exploded into grey dust that rained onto the cobblestones and settled where a living creature had been a second ago.

Nova couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Three wolves in under five seconds. Not dead. Gone. No bodies. No blood. Just ash on wet stone and the echo of a howl that had been cut short.

Two masked soldiers hit Alpha Thunderfang from opposite sides at the same time. His knees cracked against cobblestone. A weapon found his throat before his hands found the ground. The Alpha of the largest pack in Helix was on his knees with a humming black edge an inch away from his skin.

Sebastian moved, cutting off one of their heads.

One of their blades went through Sebastian’s chest, the tip emerging from his back.

Sebastian looked down at it. His skin started to grey. At the edges. Around the wound. The ash was beginning. Spreading outward from the entry point the way frost spreads across glass.

Nova ran.

She didn’t think. She didn’t plan. She didn’t calculate the distance or the danger or the armed masked soldiers between her and the Gamma who was turning to dust in front of her.

No.

She reached him before his knees hit the stone. Her hands found his chest and back. Both palms. Flat. Over the wound. Over the ash. Over the thing that was eating him alive.

Gold.

The light erupted from her hands on contact. Bright. Blinding. The same gold from the dinner table. It poured from her palms into Sebastian’s chest and back like water filling a crack, chasing the grey, pushing it back, flooding the space between alive and ash with something that burned warm instead of cold.

The grey stopped spreading. Held. Then retreated. Inch by inch. Pulling back from his extremities like a tide reversing. The ash at the edges of the wound reconstituted. Grey became skin. Skin became color.

Sebastian gasped. The gasp of a man whose lungs had been offline and just rebooted. His hands found Nova’s wrist. Gripped. Held on. His eyes were wide and wet and locked on hers with the expression of a man who had just watched himself disappear and was now watching himself come back.

Nova didn’t know how she was doing it. Her legs were shaking under his weight. But she wasn’t about to let go of Sierra’s mate, a man who had been nothing but kind to her since she entered Thunderfang.