A war and a treaty

TESSA

Less than twenty-four hours ago, my entire life went to complete shit, and now the Alpha of the most powerful pack in the realm is in the next room deciding whether or not I’ll live to see tomorrow.

This all started with an unfortunate accident.

My brother killed one of the members of his pack. It’d been a moment of chaos and bad timing and goddess knows what else — but dead is dead, and Kaz Ryker doesn’t care about intentions when one of his own stops breathing.

A response came within hours, delivered by a single rider who didn’t wait for an answer:

Send us the killer’s head, or we come for you all.

My father refused. Marcus is his only son, his heir, the one thing in this world he loves more than his own life. There was never a world in which he’d hand him over.

So Kaz Ryker came for us instead.

He’s the Alpha who has never lost a battle, never shown mercy, never left anyone standing. They say he doesn’t fight like anything you’ve seen before, and they’re right, because nothing prepares you for the moment you see him across a battlefield and understand, in your bones, that it’s already over.

We never had a chance. We knew it going in.

As a woman, I had no business being anywhere near the front lines — Marcus had tried to stop me himself. But he’d trained me despite everyone’s objections, and I only wish he’d spent more time on my footing, because that’s what cost me in the end. One explosion, one wrong step, and I was tumbling off the edge of the cliff.

***

The memory finds me now as I pace the cold stone corridor outside the throne room.

I can still feel the gravel under my palms when I pulled myself upright. The battlefield was bodies and screams and air so thick with smoke and blood you could taste it. My father was already dead — I’d seen him fall, throat torn open, and there’d been no time to stop or grieve or even breathe. Only the instinct to keep moving.

My sword felt heavy as I searched the carnage for Marcus, chest tight, eyes scanning every face. Then I heard it behind me — a single cough — and every instinct I had told me not to turn around.

I turned anyway.

He stood completely still in the middle of it all, black armor and broad shoulders, blood covering him from collar to boot and slowing him down not at all. The Moonscar sigil gleamed at his chest like a brand.

The stories don’t do him justice. They don’t mention the way he looks at you — like the decision has already been made, and you’re only just finding out.

I stepped back. Then again. He closed the distance before I’d taken a third step, and then my back was on the ground and his hand was locked around my shoulder, fingers bruising deep. I kicked and clawed and swung wildly, fear making me clumsy and loud.

“Get off me!”

My blade arced through the air and he knocked it away without even looking at it. Cold steel pressed to my throat, sharp enough that I could feel my own pulse pushing against it.

“Please.” I hated that it came out. Couldn’t take it back.

He didn’t answer. He reached down and tore my helmet free, and my hair fell loose around us, matted with blood and dirt. I held his gaze with whatever I had left, jaw set, ready to go down fighting.

Then he stopped.

Not confused. Not hesitant.

Like he’d just realized something.

His eyes stayed on mine — not my weapon, not the blood, not the war — just me. And the noise of the battlefield seemed to fall away — no screaming, no movement, just the full, crushing weight of his attention. His sword lowered. Barely. Enough.

I dragged in a breath. “Do it,” I said. “Or let me go.”

He watched me for a long moment. Then he sheathed his blade, reached down, and lifted me over his shoulder like I was nothing.

“Put me down!”

I hammered my fists against his back, twisted, kicked — and he walked through the battlefield like I wasn’t doing any of it. The fighting slowed around us. My people stared. His watched in silence. Nobody moved to stop him.

I still don’t know why.

***

The throne room doors open and drag me back to the present.

Marcus comes out first. His face is the color of ash, his eyes somewhere far away, like a man trying to process something his mind keeps refusing.

I grab his arm. “What happened? Marcus, what did he—”

“It’s over.” His voice is hollow. “The war is over.”

I should feel relief.

Instead my stomach drops, slow and heavy, like I’ve stepped off that cliff all over again. Marcus won’t look at me. His grip on my arm is too tight. And I know that face — I’ve seen it once before, the day they told him Mother wouldn’t survive the night.

“How?” I ask.

“A treaty.” His voice cracks on the word. He clears his throat like that might fix it. “They agreed to a treaty.”

“What kind of treaty?”

His hand finds mine and holds on like I might disappear if he lets go. His thumb presses into my skin hard enough to hurt.

“You’re leaving with him.”

The words don’t land at first. They just sit there, wrong and weightless, refusing to mean anything. “Leaving with him — Marcus, what are you—”

“It means you’re coming home with me.”

The voice comes from the doorway behind him. Low and unhurried and impossible to talk over.

I look up.

Kaz Ryker stands in the entrance to the throne room, dark eyes fixed on me like nothing else in the corridor exists. He steps forward with that same terrible stillness he carried across the battlefield — and something in my stomach tightens despite everything, despite the fear and the fury and the blood still cracking dry on my skin.

“Home,” he says again, like it isn’t a question. Like it’s already been decided.

My brother’s hand tightens painfully around mine.

And then he finishes it.

“As my wife.”