Chapter Six: The Anchor's Choice

It came through the crack like a wound tearing itself open from the inside.

Not a wolf. It moved on too many joints, black hide stretched over jutting, wrong angles, and the smell rolling off it was ash and dead flowers. Its eyes burned the color of a dying star.

"Ava, move." Kael shifted mid-word and threw himself at the creature without hesitation.

He was fast. Stronger than any wolf she'd ever seen fight. For one hopeful second, that seemed like enough.

It wasn't. The creature took his first strike without flinching and drove him backward into stone hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"Kael!"

Draven was already moving. One violent instant, and a man became a hulking mass of midnight fur and ancient muscle, and the sound that tore out of him wasn't a howl. It was older than howling.

Kael fought with technique, years of discipline behind every strike. Draven fought like a weapon that had never needed technique at all, a wolf built before the Goddess decided the world needed anything gentler. The creature feared neither of them.

---

Ava couldn't fight, but she wasn't only watching. Every blow that landed on Kael arrived in her own chest a half-second later, a phantom bruise blooming from the inside out. Every wound Draven tore into the creature's hide sent a matching pulse down the silver thread at her sternum.

The creature noticed the moment she did. It ignored Kael even as he opened a gash along its shoulder deep enough to show void-black ichor instead of blood. It turned toward Ava instead, and a maw lined with jagged needles curved into something almost like a smile.

The Bridge. You bleed for us. You always have.

It came for her.

Kael saw it too late and threw himself into its path, catching the blow meant for her across his own chest. The sound he made going down was the worst thing Ava had ever heard.

"Kael!"

Something in her snapped clean in half.

She would not watch him die because she didn't know how to use what the Goddess had given her. Ava dug her fingers into her own chest, into the burning place where the two threads lived, and pulled, hard, forcing the light out of herself on purpose, aiming it like a thrown blade instead of waiting for it to simply happen to her.

The light became force. Her threads snapped taut and slammed into the creature from opposite directions, throwing it into the far wall hard enough that the mountain groaned. For one second, it didn't move.

One second was all Draven needed. His jaws closed around the base of its skull, and the sound it made dying was, impossibly, close to laughter.

Then it was gone. Ash and dead flowers and silence.

---

Draven shifted back, naked and steaming with ichor. Kael's chest wound refused to close the way wolf wounds should.

"You pulled that," Draven said, crossing to her, something like respect in his eyes. "That wasn't the bond acting on you. That was you." His gaze went to the crack, wider now. "A scout. More are coming, and the barrier won't hold long enough for us to decide this slowly."

"The packhouse, then," Kael said, one hand pressed to his side. "Rurik will kill her the second she's inside those gates."

"Let him try. She's the only thing standing between this kingdom and what's coming through that door."

---

They left before dawn, and the run was not gentle. Kael's breath came ragged beside her, his wound tearing wider with every stride until his hand stayed pressed permanently against it, blood slicking through his fingers. Twice the ground shuddered hard enough to buckle Ava's knees, the mountain behind them groaning like something enormous was clawing its way toward daylight. Nobody spoke. There wasn't breath to spare for it, only the pounding rhythm of feet against frozen ground and the growing, sick certainty that whatever was tearing free behind them would not wait politely for the council to finish arguing about her.

By the time the packhouse gates came into view with the rising sun, Ava's legs were shaking, and she wasn't entirely sure it was only from the running.

---

Rurik stood at the courtyard's center, the full council guard behind him, silver weapons drawn. Half the pack packed the courtyard's edge. Thorne stood apart, leaning on his staff, eyes already on Ava.

"Look at what her bond has woken!" Rurik's voice rang out, aimed straight at the fear in the watching pack's eyes. "The mountain tears itself apart because of her. Every one of you felt it. For this pack to survive, the anchor must be severed. Take the beast. Put the girl down before she takes all of us with her!"

Draven and Kael moved together, placing themselves in front of her without a word.

Nobody moved. Then Ava's knees buckled.

The silver threads stopped glowing and began burning into her skin, spreading down her arms in patterns like frost. She screamed, and the sound tore loose from somewhere far beneath conscious thought.

Power poured out of her, and every wolf in the courtyard dropped at once. Rurik went down hardest, his weapon clattering from his hand.

Only Thorne remained standing. His clouded eyes had gone the exact color of a dying star.

He smiled at her. It was not his smile.

"The door is open, little wolf," he said, in a voice that wasn't his at all. "We are already inside."