Chapter 6: The Shattered Crest

The border of the Silver Crest territory was no longer a line of lush pines and vibrant wildflowers. It was a scar across the earth. On one side, my side, the Blackwood Ravine’s influence had bled into the soil, turning the mud into a rich, dark loam and the trees into towering sentinels of silver-barked oak. On the other side lay the wasteland Fenris had created through his own hubris—a landscape of gray dust and skeletal branches that rattled like teeth in the wind.

I stood at the center of the bridge that spanned the Dividing River. The water below was black and sluggish on the Silver Crest side, but as it flowed beneath my feet, it sparkled with the iridescent clarity of Kaelen’s alchemy.

Behind me stood my legion. They were no longer the gaunt, trembling refugees who had crawled into my ravine. They were the Vanguard of the Outcasts. Dressed in boiled leather and shadow-fur, their eyes held a terrifyingly calm light. They didn't growl or snap; they stood with the disciplined silence of those who had found a purpose worth dying for.

Thane stood at my right shoulder, his obsidian blade unsheathed, the black metal absorbing the weak morning light. Kaelen was to my left, his fingers dancing over a belt of glass vials, each filled with a different colored mist. Jace was nowhere to be seen, but I could feel his presence in the shifting shadows of the trees above us, a coiled spring ready to snap.

Then, they appeared.

Fenris led the remains of the Silver Crest Pack. It was a pathetic sight. There were barely fifty warriors left, and they marched with the heavy feet of the condemned. Fenris himself looked like a hollowed-out version of the man I had once thought was my fate. His armor was loose, and his golden eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with the desperation of a cornered animal.

Beside him, Bella stumbled, her face hidden behind a heavy veil to conceal the rot that had now claimed half her jaw. She was clutching a rusted iron dagger, her knuckles white.

Fenris halted ten paces from the bridge. He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw a flicker of the old Alpha—the arrogance that had nearly destroyed us all.

"Elora," he rasped, his voice cracking. "Stop this madness. Look at what you’ve done to your people. Your father is dead. Your pack is starving. Does your vengeance know no bounds?"

"My people are behind me, Fenris," I said, my voice carrying across the silent clearing like a crack of thunder. "Those in front of me are merely the ghosts of a debt unpaid. And my father didn't die of vengeance; he died of the vacuum left when the heart of his home walked away."

"You belong to me!" Fenris roared, the sound a weak, hollow echo of his former power. He shifted, his body contorting into a massive gray wolf, but the fur was patchy and his ribs showed through his hide. He lunged across the bridge, a desperate bid to reclaim his 'property.'

He never reached me.

Thane moved like a blur of midnight. He didn't shift into a wolf; he didn't need to. He met Fenris mid-air, his obsidian blade carving a path through the Alpha’s shoulder. Fenris crashed into the stone of the bridge, a whimper escaping his throat.

"Don't touch her," Thane growled, the vibration of his voice making the very stones beneath us tremble. "You are not fit to breathe the air she purifies."

Bella screamed, a high, ragged sound, and rushed forward with her rusted dagger. "You witch! You took everything! My beauty, my mate, my life!"

I didn't move. I simply looked at her. As she reached the mid-point of the bridge, the silver locket—which she had discarded but whose curse still lived in her blood—flared with a blinding white light.

"I took nothing, Bella," I said softly as she fell to her knees, clutching her chest. "I simply stopped giving. You were a hollow vessel filled with my stolen light. Now that the light is gone, you are just... empty."

The Silver Crest warriors behind them dropped their weapons. One by one, they fell to their knees, not out of fear, but out of a profound, soul-deep recognition. They saw the way the earth bloomed at my feet and the way the three most powerful 'discarded' men in the world stood as my pillars.

"The Crest is broken," an elder whispered, bowing his head. "The moon has chosen a new throne."

I stepped past the fallen Fenris, my shadow-fur cloak brushing against his fur. He looked up at me, his eyes fading from gold to a dull, mundane brown. The Alpha spark was gone.

"I am not going to kill you, Fenris," I said, looking out over the dying valley that was once my prison. "I am going to leave you here. You will live to see this land become a garden again, but you will be the one scrubbing the floors. You will be the one whose name is forgotten."

I turned back to my Mates. Jace dropped from the trees, landing silently beside Kaelen. Thane stepped back to my side, his blade cleaned and sheathed.

"The deprivation is over," I announced to the hundreds of wolves now gathered at the border. "The restoration begins. But know this: in my kingdom, there are no Alphas. There are only those who protect, and those who are protected."

The sun finally broke through the gray clouds, bathing the bridge in a brilliant, warm light. As I walked forward into the ruins of my old home, the gray dust turned to green shoots with every step I took.

The Queen of the Outcasts had come home. And for the first time in nineteen years, I was no longer a shadow in someone else’s story. I was the sun.