The Last Oath

The arena’s roar haunted Lena long after the wards fell. Even as the crowd dispersed, their voices clung to the night like smoke—rage, fear, doubt, all woven into a knot of tension that refused to unravel.

Kade didn’t speak as he guided her from the stone circle, his hand a steel shackle around hers. His silence was heavier than any outburst, a storm contained in flesh. Only when the shadows of the Blackwood camp swallowed them did he finally stop.

He turned, his golden eyes burning like wildfire in the dark. “They mean to kill you.” His voice was raw, scraped down to bone. “Not just test you, not just bind you—they want you gone. You understand that?”

Lena met his gaze, the bruises on her skin still throbbing, the taste of ash still on her tongue. “I do.”

“Then why aren’t you afraid?” His fingers tightened as if to shake the fear into her, to force her to feel the terror he carried for her. “Why aren’t you trembling? Because I am, Lena. Every second. Every breath. I can’t—” His words fractured, his jaw clenching hard enough to crack. “I can’t lose you.”

Her wolf stirred, not in defiance, but in answer to his pain. She stepped closer until their foreheads touched, his breath ragged against her lips. “Because I don’t feel like prey anymore,” she whispered. “Not with you beside me. Not with her”—she pressed a hand to her chest, to where the wolf clawed—“inside me.”

Kade’s growl was low, rough, but his hands framed her face, desperate. “You think that wolf will be enough against a council Alpha? They won’t send some half-trained brute. They’ll send someone old, powerful. They’ll send their blade.”

“Then I’ll sharpen mine.”

Her words dropped between them like iron.

For a moment, silence stretched, broken only by the pulse of the pack beyond the tents, their unease a living thing. Then Kade kissed her—not with tenderness, but with the violence of someone drowning, clawing for air. His lips crushed hers, his teeth scraping, his tongue fierce. A promise. A curse. A last oath made flesh.

When he pulled back, his voice shook, low and rough. “If they want a war, we’ll give them one. But Lena—if you step into that circle again, you don’t step in alone. You step in carrying me, carrying Blackwood. And if you fall…” His chest heaved, his grip on her trembling. “…then I fall too.”

Lena’s throat tightened. She didn’t argue, didn’t soothe. She only lifted his hand to her lips, pressing a kiss against the scars across his knuckles. “Then we don’t fall.”

A howl split the night. Not Cassian’s. Not familiar. A warning.

The council’s envoy wasn’t finished. The second trial was only the beginning.

The Blackwood pack gathered under the blood-brushed moon, every wolf drawn by the call that rippled through the trees. Tension curled around them like smoke. No one spoke, but their eyes followed Lena as if she already stood trial—not before the council, but before her own people.

Kade stood at her side, shoulders squared, every line of him screaming Alpha. Yet his silence weighed heavy. He didn’t command them, not this time. He waited. He gave the moment to her.

Lena’s pulse hammered. She could feel her wolf pacing beneath her skin, restless, demanding she speak. So she did.

“I didn’t ask for this mark.” Her voice carried, strong even though her heart threatened to break her ribs. “I didn’t ask for this wolf. I didn’t ask to be bound to Blackwood. But the moon doesn’t care what we ask. It gives. It takes. It chooses.”

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Some nods, some scowls.

Lena’s gaze swept across them, catching faces in the firelight—scarred, young, old, broken, fierce. “The council thinks I’m weak. They think I’ll fall in their trials. But they don’t understand. I’m not fighting for power, or for blood. I’m fighting for this.” She gestured around them, to the camp, to the wolves who had sheltered her when they could have cast her out. “For us.”

A growl of approval rumbled through the gathering.

Her chest heaved, but she wasn’t done. “So hear me now. If I fall, I fall as Blackwood. If I bleed, I bleed as yours. And if I survive…” She lifted her chin, the fire catching in her eyes. “…then I rise not as outsider, not as burden, but as pack.”

The silence that followed was suffocating. Then a single wolf dropped to one knee. Then another. And another. Until the circle of firelight was filled with bent heads, their voices rising in one low, unified growl.

Kade’s golden gaze locked on hers. He didn’t kneel. He didn’t need to. He took her hand instead, pressing it against his chest where his heart pounded like war drums. His voice was quiet, but it carried. “Then let it be sworn. Lena Carter, marked of my blood, wolf of Blackwood, moon’s chosen—you are bound. By oath, by fang, by fire.”

The pack repeated after him, the words vibrating through the night like thunder.

Lena’s breath shuddered. Heat licked at her veins, her wolf howling inside her skull. The vow didn’t just bind her to them—it sealed her. Made her more. Stronger. A thread in the tapestry of the pack that could never be cut.

When the last echo faded, Kade kissed her knuckles, his voice breaking like a blade against stone. “Now let them try to take you from me.”

From us, the pack howled.

Above, the moon swelled, watching. Silent. Waiting.

The envoy’s trial had begun.