Chapter 96

Dante's pov

Up on the ridge, where we’re crouched, you can see the whole show. The valley winding below, flashes of armor, and those fires down there, set up in rings. Mira’s army is basically alive... breathing, crouching, waiting. The kind of patience you only see in people who like hurting things. They’ll wait you out, let you get sloppy, then pounce.

My ribs kept throbbing, every inhale reminding me I’m not some immortal. The stupid bandages under my shirt kept digging in. Whatever, pain’s just wallpaper now. Ignore it, keep moving. You stop noticing after a while.

“Elora?” I barely let the word out, lips not even moving. She’s right there, hunched next to me, smaller than most of the men, but way tougher. She sort of blends into the dark like she’s made of it. Up close, I can see her jaw set, knuckles white on her spear. Her eyes are always working, scanning, plotting, I trust her brain more than I trust mine.

Down below, boots scuff across packed dirt. Those Blood Fang banners? Black with a red fang tearing through, waving like they’re already celebrating. Dark Storm’s flag is there too, that deep red under Luca’s crest. Mira promised an army, and damn, she brought one. Enough to make a king sweat.

“She’s running every hustle she knows,” I mutter. “Look at those scouts, layers of them, plus backups in the willows. She wants us to charge where she can gut us.” My throat’s dry. We trained for this, but you never quite believe the enemy’s that smart until you see them moving like predators in a living map.

Elora’s hand brushes mine, a shock, even now. “We can’t let them draw first blood,” she whispers. “They take the ravine, we lose our supplies.” She says it like she’s reciting some ancient playbook. I’d rather have her on my side than half these guys with swords.

We creep along the ridge, every step a little war with gravity and crunchy leaves. Not alone, either, our scouts are out there too, just eyes and outlines. The night’s alive with tiny signals, a soft whistle, fingers tapping wood, strap buckles rattling. In war, patience and silence are currency.

Then her voice cuts through... Mira’s, smooth.

“…and when the NightShade falls,” she’s saying, sounding bored, “we’ll have leverage. Blood Fang holds the south. Dark Storm grabs the north. Dominic’s pack is toast, divided, crushed. You hold the banners while I get to choose who stays breathing.”

“You’d burn your own allies? Use Blood Fangs to take both packs?” someone asked... probably her dad, Alpha Luca.

She laughs, soft but deadly. “Only losers whine about betrayal. You showed me how to take what’s mine. I’m not dying for Dominic’s mistakes. I’ll take what I’m owed.”

That made my blood freeze. Mira’s not just hungry, she’s turned every grudge and heartbreak into a weapon. She’ll gut NightShade, Silver Crest, and anyone stupid enough to trust her. Using Blood Fangs as her battering ram, then swinging around to stab Luca once he’s spent, that’s not desperation. That’s just stone-cold math. She’s not a pack wolf anymore. She’s a wolf who eats packs.

A scuffle behind us, someone’s boots, too close. I grab my knife, melt into the shadow of a busted rock. Elora moves the same way, both of us staring down at the firelit figures. Mira, Luca, the whole game is shifting in front of us.

“She wants to burn it all down,” I breathe. “Stand on the ashes.”

Elora grits her teeth. “So we hit first.”

That’s what we’re supposed to do, right? Strike fast, chop off the head before it coils around your friends. Kill the boss, scatter the minions. Except, the thing is, the head I want to cut off used to be more than just a name. She was someone’s ex, someone tied to my brother. Underneath all this blood and war, there’s still that raw, ugly human mess: betrayal, heartbreak, the rot that set in long before any of these flags or blades.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My fingers found Elora’s, she didn’t pull away, which, honestly, was a small mercy. I was so damn tired of thinking about war like it was some personal checkbook, blood in, blood out, tally it up. Couldn’t it just be... practical? Strategy, not revenge? But then there was Mira, talking about tossing Luca aside like he was some broken toy, and suddenly I felt a new kind of dread crawling up my spine. The kind that says, “She’s not stopping till every throne in that cursed valley’s under her ass.”

“Elora,” I said, and my voice was way sharper than I meant. “We could end this tonight. Take her out before she even makes a move. Before she burns us all to cinders.”

She just stood there, quiet. The wind yanked at her hair and a chunk of it fell into her face. She pushed it back, and her hand was shaking a little. It almost made me laugh. Her eyes flicked from the campfires down below, to Alpha Luca’s shadow, then back to me, then to the ridge, then probably running through every terrible outcome like it was a map.

“It’s a kill that’ll echo,” she finally said, small as a secret. “If we do it now, Blood Fang comes to our side, but then we’ve got Luca to answer to. His daughter, murdered. If we wait... we risk all of us.”

“So we do both,” I snapped. “Hit her when she’s got her guard down.”

She just stared at me, moonlight making her face look almost otherworldly, blue and cold. The air felt tight, dangerous, like something could snap. We could just do it, you know? Step right over the line from planning to killing. Wipe her off the board in one move. I wanted that. I wanted to see her face when it happened, wanted to watch all that smugness drain away.

My grip tightened on the knife at my side. And then, as if summoned, Dominic’s voice crept in, dull, exhausted, ever since the ritual. I thought about the way he watched Elora and me, not jealous, really, just... haunted. Like he was losing something he’d never had. If we killed Mira and handed the valley to a man who’d never forgive what he thought was love... it broke something in me. I still knew anger was right, sometimes, but not if it turned me into her.

Elora’s face shifted, shadows moving across it. “If we do this,” she said, “and people find out we killed her... Luca will lose his mind. He’ll throw everything he’s got at us. Blood Fang won’t stay splintered if their leader’s daughter gets dumped in a ditch by our hand. They’ll come for us like the world’s ending.”

“And if we just do nothing?” I pushed. It felt like the space between what I wanted and what made sense could swallow us whole.