The Shattered Altar

"You want a fight, Elara?" Fenris roared, the sound vibrating through the marrow of my bones. His face was no longer that of the man I loved; it was a mask of desperate, cornered rage. "I gave you a chance to run! I gave you a chance to crawl away with your life! Now, I’ll end this properly!"

The ballroom air crackled as he began to shift. It wasn't the graceful transformation of a leader; it was a sickening symphony of forced evolution. Bones snapped, popping like dry kindling. Skin tore and reformed in a blur of black fur. Within seconds, a massive black wolf with eyes like molten gold stood where my fiancé had been. He lunged, a ton of muscle and predatory fury aimed straight at my throat.

"Elara, move!" Silas’s voice was a whip-crack behind me. He didn't step in. He didn't throw a shadow. He knew this was my blood-debt to settle.

I didn't move. I didn't even breathe. As the wolf’s jaws snapped inches from my face, I raised my hand—the one marked by the thorned moon.

"Kneel."

The word didn't come from my vocal cords; it erupted from the earth beneath us. An invisible, crushing weight slammed into Fenris mid-air. The floorboards shattered into splinters as he was forced down, his belly hitting the marble with a heavy, sickening thud. He whimpered, a high-pitched sound of pure terror I’d never heard from an Alpha.

"What... what is this?" Sarah shrieked, her fingers digging into the lace of her stolen wedding dress. "Fenris, get up! Kill her! She’s just a human girl! A freak!"

"He can’t," I said, my voice carrying a resonance that made the crystal chandeliers overhead chime in a frantic, glass-shattering melody. I walked toward the pinned Alpha, each click of my heels on the broken floor sounding like a heartbeat. I felt the Vespera diamond at my throat humming, a deep, tectonic vibration. "He’s a wolf. And a wolf cannot stand in the presence of its King."

I looked at the crowd—the warriors who had spat on me, the elders who had turned their backs. "Do you see your Alpha now? Groveling before a 'human defect'?"

I placed my foot on Fenris’s head, pressing his snout into the dust and splinters. He growled, but it was the sound of a beaten cur, not a leader.

"This is for the rejection," I said, pressing harder until I heard his jaw groan. "And this is for the hunt you sent after me. Did you think I was prey, Fenris? Did you think I was something you could just discard when you found a shinier toy?"

"Please..." Fenris managed to shift his head just enough to gasp, his voice muffled by the floor. "Elara... mercy..."

"Mercy is for the weak, Fenris. Isn't that what you told me when you threw me out into the rain? Isn't that what you told the pack when you stripped me of my name?"

I looked up at Sarah, whose face was pale as death. "Now, little sister. It’s your turn to see what happens to thieves."