تسجيل الدخول“Main gate’s holding,” she reported. “Barely. Nina’s keeping the Blackpine group from fully flanking, but they’re organized. Not like the Shadowpine rabble. These ones fight like they’ve trained for siege work.” I wiped blood off my mouth with the back of my hand. “The second cage?” “Still down. Whatever’s inside it is bigger than the first one. It’s not free yet, but the runes are failing.” Gunnar looked at me. Through the bond I felt the question he didn’t speak out loud. *Can you collapse the ground under it without dropping the whole left wall?* I tested the power still sitting under my skin. It answered, but sluggishly. The deep ache in my arms flared in warning. “I can do it,” I said. “But it’s going to cost.” He nodded once. No argument. No protection speech. Just trust and the cold understanding that we didn’t have better options. We moved back toward the main courtyard together. The fighting there had turned messier. With the postern breach pulling warriors in
The second cage never reached the front line. Sunna’s arrows and Nina’s bolts turned the wolves dragging it into corpses before they covered twenty more yards. The heavy iron box slammed down at an angle, one wheel shattered, containment runes flickering hard. Whatever was growing inside it slammed against the bars hard enough to make the whole thing rock. Green light spilled through the gaps in thick, sick pulses. That should have been a win. It wasn’t. Because while we were focused on the cages, Jakob had been doing something else entirely. I didn’t see it happen. I felt it through the sudden shift in the fighting on the left flank. The pressure there changed. The sounds changed. Then Matthías’s voice roared across the courtyard, raw and furious. “They’re inside the lower postern!” The words hit harder than any claw. The lower postern was the small side gate used for supply runs and night patrols. It was narrow, reinforced, and supposed to be sealed. Someone had op
The half-formed Sire ripped free of the last roots with a sound like stone splitting. It lunged straight at me, chains whipping through the air. Gunnar met it head-on. His sword slammed into the creature’s chest and stuck. Green light exploded outward. He was thrown back, boots skidding through blood and mud, but he kept his feet. I was already moving. The bond flared hot and clear between us. I felt the exact second he needed me on the creature’s left. I drove my claws into the soft seam where black stone met green-veined flesh and tore downward. The Sire screamed. The sound punched through my skull. Hot, foul liquid sprayed across my arms and burned where it touched bare skin. Around us the battle had turned into pure slaughter. Ironfang warriors held the gate by sheer stubbornness. Matthías fought like a man who had already decided he wasn’t dying tonight, injured leg and all. Sunna and Nina kept the left flank from collapsing, but the Blackpine force was hitting them hard.
I vaulted the battlement and landed in the courtyard as he reached the bottom of the stairs. We moved together without speaking. The sealed bond made it easy — I felt the shift of his weight, the direction of his next strike, the exact moment he needed me to cover his left. My claws met the first enemy wolf that lunged for him. I tore through its throat and kept moving. The fight around the gate was pure chaos. Bodies slammed into the walls. Blood slicked the stones. A Shadowpine warrior came at me from the side; I ducked under his blade and drove my claws up under his ribs. He dropped. Another took his place. The bond flared hot as Gunnar killed the one behind me before I even turned. We pushed forward, step by step, carving a path toward the tipped cage. The thing inside was thrashing hard enough to crack the iron bars. Green veins of light pulsed through the metal. One of the elders screamed an order. More wolves poured toward us to protect it. Sunna’s voice rang from the tow
We hit the battlements hard, boots slamming against stone as the first war horns from the east ripped through the night. The horizon was no longer just moving — it was flooding. Dark shapes poured out of the tree line in waves, banners snapping black and green under the moonlight. Green light flickered at the center of the mass where the elders rode, and even from this distance I could see the heavy iron cages being dragged behind them on reinforced wagons. Jakob was at the front. His silver hair caught the light as he raised one arm. The army behind him slowed and spread, forming ranks with practiced speed. Eight hundred wolves, maybe more. The ground seemed to tremble under the weight of them. The trap we had planned in the war room was already useless. We had meant to draw them onto the open field between the keep and the ridge, where the spikes and root-traps were waiting. They had arrived too early and too close. Now the fight would happen at our own walls. Gunnar’s han
The lead scout—a man named Daníel with a fresh cut across his cheek—spoke the second we walked in. "The Sire isn't dead. Not fully at least. Fragments of the heart stone must've scattered when you shattered it. The elders are gathering them in the deep caves right now. The thing is regenerating. Slower than before, but it's growing. And they're using the blood from the new packs arriving tonight to speed it up." he paused. "Three packs already camped at the old mill ruins. Another two by tomorrow night. That's close to eight hundred wolves total. They're not hiding anymore. Green smoke is visible from the keep walls." The room went quiet. Merja tapped the map. "The fragments are the key. If even one piece reaches the blood pit intact, the Sire will wake stronger than before. It'll link to every suppressed Old Blood line on the continent. Alphas will start turning on their own people out of fear. Packs will fracture. The elders have spent two hundred years calling your blood poi







