Chapter 9

SARA

I don't know how long I was out, I vaguely remember someone named Alpha Rune speaking to me. I have been drifting in and out of consciousness. "Where am I?" I murmured weakly.

Every breath felt like swallowing shards of jagged glass. My lungs, once heavy with the toxic weight of the wolfsbane infection, now burned with a different sensation—the searing, itchy heat of healing. I lay trapped in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, the rhythm of my own heartbeat sounding like a distant drum in my ears.

"You’re awake," a calm, melodic voice said from the corner of the room. It didn't sound like the voice that had spoke to me earlier.

I forced my eyelids open, the light from the small bedside lamp feeling like a physical blow to my retinas. As the world blurred into focus, I saw a man sitting in a high-backed chair, casually peeling an apple with a small silver knife. He wasn't Alpha Rune. This man was leaner, his features less rugged but no less intimidating. I recognized him from the blurry memories of my rescue. 

"I'm not we've met, my name is Kayvon, I'm one of Alpha Rune's men." He said with a smile which seemed out of place considering his physique.

"Alpha Rune's shadow, you mean." I retorted with a weak smile. I vaguely remembered him.

I sensed another presence in the room and turned to find another man, standing beside the window. A towering warrior from the Crescent Moon pack whose name I hadn't yet learned. He stood perfectly still, a silent sentinel draped in the dark, heavy furs of the north.

"Where... where is he?" I rasped, my voice sounding like dry leaves skittering across pavement. "Rune?" There was no way I'd forget that name even if I don't yet know his face very well. I had just seen him in one of the moments thT I gained consciousness.

Kayvon looked up, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips. "The Alpha had urgent business to attend to back at the Crescent Moon territory. Pressing matters of state, as he calls them. But don't worry, little bird. He left me and Silas here to ensure that no one—and I mean no one—disturbs your rest."

"Where am I?" I asked in a strained voice. I still couldn't believe that I was not dead. 

"You are not yet in Crescent Moon, if that's what you mean. We are halfway to Crescent Moon, the Alpha figured you'd be dead before you get to Crescent Moon. Mari has obviously done a good job, I can tell." He was beaming with smile as he spoke. 

I tried to shift my weight, but a sharp spike of agony flared in my side, forcing a strangled gasp from my throat. Immediately, Kayvon was on his feet, setting the knife and apple aside. He moved with a terrifying, predator-like fluidity that reminded me so much of Rune.

"Easy now," he murmured, his hand hovering near my shoulder but not quite touching me, as if he were afraid I might shatter. "Mari says your body is still a battlefield. The wolfsbane is losing, but the fight has left you fragile. You need to stay still."

"Why did he save me?" I whispered, the question that had been haunting the corners of my mind finally slipping out. "I was a dead woman. I was a murderer in the eyes of the law."

Kayvon’s expression softened, just a fraction. "Alpha Rune doesn't much care for the laws of lesser men, Sara. And he certainly doesn't believe you’re a murderer. He sees something in you that you haven't even seen in yourself yet."

I looked away, staring at the moonlight filtering through the curtains. For eight years, I had lived in the shadows of the Twilight Zone pack, an outcast, a rejection, a ghost. Now, I was being guarded by the most dangerous wolves in the world. The irony was a bitter pill to swallow. I felt a strange warmth in my chest—a spark of that 'will to live' Mari had mentioned. For the first time in a decade, I didn't want to die. I wanted to see the sun again. I wanted to know why Rune looked at me the way he did.

"He’ll be back for you soon," Kayvon added, returning to his chair. "He’s already making arrangements for your arrival at the fortress. You’ll be safe there. Tristan wouldn't dare—"

He stopped mid-sentence. His head snapped toward the door, his nostrils flaring as he caught a scent on the air. Beside the window, Silas shifted, his hand moving to the hilt of a massive broadsword strapped to his back. The air in the room suddenly felt electric, heavy with a looming, invisible pressure.

"Kayvon?" I whispered, my heart beginning to hammer against my ribs.

"Stay quiet, Sara," Kayvon commanded, his voice no longer melodic but hard as granite. He stood up, the silver peeling knife still in his hand, though it looked like a toy compared to the lethal aura he was now radiating. "Something is wrong. The sentries outside... they didn't signal."

A heavy, oppressive silence fell over the ward. It was the kind of silence that precedes a landslide—a storm. I gripped the thin sheets of my bed, my knuckles turning white. I was helpless, a lamb in a room full of wolves, and I could feel the darkness pressing in from the hallway.

Then, the world exploded.

The heavy oak door didn't just open; it splintered off its hinges, kicked in with enough force to send shards of wood flying across the room like shrapnel. I screamed, pulling the covers up to my chin as five figures surged into the room.

They were dressed in dark, dampened leather that swallowed the light, their faces obscured by grim, featureless masks. They moved with a synchronized, lethal precision that spoke of years of training.

"Assassins!" Silas roared, his broadsword clearing its scabbard with a metallic shriek that set my teeth on edge.

I still couldn't understand why werewolves fought with sword in this age and time, when guns common among humans. I guess it was because a gun couldn't really kill a werewolf, even a head shot.

Kayvon didn't waste breath on words. He lunged at the first masked figure—a brute of a man who I would later know as Jaxon. The silver peeling knife was a blur in Kayvon’s hand, striking with surgical accuracy toward the gaps in the attacker's leather armor.

The room, which had been a sanctuary of healing moments ago, was instantly transformed into a chaotic slaughterhouse. Silas met another attacker—Vane—at the foot of my bed. The clash of steel on steel was deafening in the small space, the sparks from their blades illuminating the room in jagged, strobe-like flashes.

"Get her!" a voice commanded from the doorway.

My blood ran cold. I knew that voice. Even through the mask, even through the haze of my fever and the chaos of the room, I would know that cold, arrogant tone anywhere.

Tristan.

He hadn't come for justice. He had come to finish what the wolfsbane had started.

One of the masked men, smaller and faster than the others, darted around the main fray, heading straight for me. I tried to scramble backward, but my legs felt like leaden weights. I was trapped against the headboard, my breath coming in ragged, panicked gasps.

"Touch her and you lose the hand," Kayvon hissed. He had been occupied with the brute, but he spun with a feral snarl, throwing his small blade with such force that it buried itself deep in the shoulder of the tracker reaching for me.

The man—Kaelen—cried out, stumbling back, but the opening allowed the brute to land a heavy blow to Kayvon’s ribs. I heard the sickening crunch of bone, and Kayvon was thrown back against the wall, coughing blood.

"Kayvon!" I shrieked.

Silas was fighting like a man possessed, his broadsword keeping two of the attackers at bay, but he was being slowly pushed toward the corner. They were trying to isolate me. They were trying to clear a path for the man standing in the shadows of the doorway.

The air grew colder as the man in the center of the doorway stepped forward. He didn't wear the same light leather as the others; he wore the mantle of an Alpha, and even through the dark fabric of his mask, his eyes burned with a familiar, hateful amber light.

"Step aside, Crescent Moon lapdogs," Tristan growled, his voice distorted by the mask but dripping with venom. "You are protecting a murderer. She is Twilight Zone property, and I have come to claim what is mine."

"She belongs to no one but herself," Kayvon spat, struggling to find his feet, his hand clutching his side. "And if you want her, you’ll have to go through the Alpha Conqueror’s right hand."

"Gladly," Tristan replied.

He lunged forward, and the room dissolved into a fresh wave of violence. Tables were overturned, glass medicine bottles shattered against the floor, and the metallic scent of blood began to overwhelm the smell of antiseptic. I watched in horror as my protectors fought a losing battle against the sheer desperation of Tristan’s elite squad.

I was the prize in this macabre game, a broken woman caught between the man who had left me to die and the man who had promised I would live. As the fighting drew closer to my bed, I realized that one way or another, the peace of Mari’s clinic was over.

All hell had truly broken loose, and I was right in the center of the storm. "It's time you paid for your crime." I heard a feminine voice say, she punched me and everywhere suddenly went blank.