Chapter 17

Katla

My eyes fluttered, and took in the shapes and sounds around me. “Katla,” I heard a distant male voice call, “Katla, get up.” My head was cradled against a strong, sinewy arm, and the smell of the sun cascading through a damp forest mixed with smoke filled my nose. “Katla, we must go now!” Aurelia rang in my head.

At first shadowy figures snarling against a blazing background confused me, but as I roused, I quickly took in what was happening around me. The glade was ablaze in a ring of smoke and fire. My father was on the ground next to me, crumpled and unbreathing. Blood was trickling from his mouth and ears. Damien had himself protectively around me in the center, and around us, those remaining had shifted, heckles raised, growling at the threat beyond the flames.

Behind the flickers, I could see figures, most shifted to wolf form, yellow eyes were staring back, locking in on the remaining Iceclaw. Rogues. Four on the other side had not shifted though, and Viti’s black eyes pierced straight to my soul. Around him, my step-mother, Hekla and Vargur stood, taking in the scene. “Traitors!” Aurelia howled.

“Katla Iceclaw,” Viti’s wolf , Hati, spoke, “Submit and go free. It doesn’t have to end badly, but Icelaw is mine. I am Alpha.”

Aurelia, who had been bubbling below the surface, pushed forward to speak back, “No Viti, it is you who need to submit. I will spare you and those who betrayed the Pack.”

“Hah. This is why you are too weak to be Alpha. How can someone like you lead Iceclaw if you hesitate to kill?” I could feel Hati willing Aurelia to submit, but she stood her ground, and pushed back.

“You are the mutt offspring of a rogue and a whore, only a true descendant can lead. The Pack will never accept you.” I felt him flinch at that. I had never called him a mutt, and I knew the vileness of the word would bite.

Hati took over, and Viti shifted. His mud-brown wolf was small and nimble. The fur on his shoulders and dark ridge along his spine stood. His jaws snapped. When we were younger, my wolf had easily overpowered his despite his speed and agility, and Aurelia teased, “Still so small.” His wolf was no Alpha.

“The Pack has no choice, the Alpha named me before he died. I hadn’t anticipated that when I poisoned him, but it does make it so much easier.” I looked at my father’s lifeless body, and rage washed over me, my eyes blazed blue, and my fingers began to sharpen into claws.

“My father was more of an Alpha in a single hair than you could ever hope to be. He took in you and your whore mother when lesser men would have left you packless, and this is how you repay his kindness toward you? You are no Iceclaw, and you will never be Alpha.” Viti’s wolf’s ears flattened and just as he broke his gaze to submit, the rogue wolves leapt through the flames, snarling, attacking the Iceclaw surrounding what was left of my pack.

Behind me, Alpha Damien shifted with a low rumble forming in his chest, a warning. “Magnificent,” Aurelia gasped as she took in Damien’s wolf form, and I had to agree with her. He was glorious. The embers in his eyes smoldered and glowed a deep blood red, and he was massive. Standing, my head was at his shoulder, and I had only ever heard myths about white wolves. Direwolves, somehow I knew that’s what they called them. Watching the flickering light dance off his beautiful coat, I caught shimmering flecks of silver around his eyes, head, down his muzzle, and along his back. “Magnificent,” I had to agree.

Damien’s wolf let out a howl, and emerging from the trees more white wolves stalked out joining in the howl with their Alpha. Aurelia pushed forward, joining in the howl, and locking eyes with Damien. “He is our mate,” she told me as she watched him spring forward and in a swift, bloody movement, rip the throat from a rogue wolf with a violent jerk. Blood sprayed from the open wound, and red dripped down his muzzle as he looked at me with the windpipe still dangling between his teeth. He tossed it to the side, and sprang forward.

All at once, it was a blur of color as Iceclaw and Silverburn attacked Viti’s pack of rogues. I turned and locked eyes with Viti’s wolf and began to lunge forward through the flames, vowing that he would pay for my father’s death with his own. Hati snapped and growled a warning, but my wolf was bigger and stronger. “Bitch,” he called through our mind link. “If the little she-wolf thinks she’s Alpha, why not give a command and see for yourself. Better yet, watch and see.”

Viti’s wolf raised his head to the night sky and howled, a long high pitched howl to command the pack. The bright blue eyes of the pack whipped around to see where it was coming from, and as they saw Hati calling their attention, many shook their heads as if trying to swish away something annoying or unpleasant, others growled, pushing back against the call, but one by one, each wolf around us submitted, joining in with their new Alpha’s call. Each looking at me, as if to say sorry before joining Viti. “My father had said his name. They didn’t have a choice,” I said to Aurelia.

“That usurping bastard will pay for this,” she snarled back.

A new voice called to us, “We must go. Now.” Damien, after everything that happened, he wanted me to come with him and abandon my pack?

“But Iceclaw is my pack, I can’t just leave them,” I called back.

“Katla, listen to me, this is no longer Iceclaw. If you want to survive, you need to come with me now. We will come back, I promise.” I believed him. I took one last look at my father, lying in the glade as embers and smoke swirled, vowing to return and destroy Viti.