Chapter Three

Kane Blackwood’s POV

They say the Silver Crest Pack was once mighty. Wolves touched by moonlight. A lineage steeped in prophecy and pride. But when I looked at their lands now, all I saw was rot.

The wind carried the stench of decay. Not the kind that lingered in corpses, but the moral kind, the filth of liars cloaked in tradition, a once-noble bloodline strangled by its own vanity. Their buildings, though tall and old, stood like brittle bones. Their warriors, armored in rusting pride, watched us arrive with trembling hands.

They lined up in front of their territory gates like cowards when we crossed the border. Some tried to look bold, but I could smell fear in the sweat beneath their armor. The alpha, if he even deserved the title stepped forward with a forced calm. His hair had gone white, but not from age. It was the kind of white bred by fear, shame, and too many nights lying to his own people.

“Alpha Blackwood,” he greeted, dipping his chin just low enough to be insulting. “You honor us with your presence.”

Honor???

My wolf growled beneath my skin.

“You broke the pact.” My voice was low but carried like thunder across the courtyard. “The agreement your elders signed with my father wasn’t a suggestion.”

He gave a smile, a pitiful expression that might have charmed a fool. “That was decades ago. A different time. A different war.”

“You benefited from our blood,” I said, stepping forward, ignoring the twitch in the hands of their warriors. “We fought beside you. We buried our dead in your soil. And when our treaty called for your support last winter, when rogues nearly broke our borders, what did you do? you sent nothing.”

“Miscommunication,” he lied without blinking. “We thought your alliance with the Ironwood Pack would hold.”

I wanted to tear his throat out right there but instead, I smiled.

“You thought wrong.”

He straightened. “We are willing to… amend the breach. Perhaps a negotiation”

I gave a sharp and dry laugh. The kind that silenced every breath around me.

“This isn’t a meeting, Alpha Clay. This is retribution.”

Around me, my warriors readied themselves. Their weapons gleamed. We were not a delegation. We were executioners.

A she-wolf stepped forward from the Silver Crest side — tall, muscular, with the hard eyes of someone used to climbing on the backs of others. She bared her teeth. “You come with blades drawn and call this justice?”

“You mistake justice for mercy,” I said coldly. “This is neither.”

She moved as if to draw her sword.

I didn’t wait.

My claws burst forth before her fingers could even close around the hilt, and in one stride, I was upon her. She gasped, but it was too late. My hand slammed into her chest, sending her flying into the pillars behind her. She crumpled like a broken doll.

No one else moved.

Bunch of cowards and traitors.

I stalked past them toward the heart of their stronghold. “Burn it.”

At the signal, my warriors swept in behind me. Fire torches lit. Arrows ignited. Magic hummed from our shaman as she raised her arms to the sky, chanting an old, forbidden tongue. It wasn’t chaos, it was orchestration, rage with rhythm.

Screams rang out as flames consumed the outer walls.

But I wasn’t done yet.

I marched through their hall, knocking aside their sacred artifacts — symbols of a legacy they’d long betrayed. My wolf paced inside me, furious and hungry. This was the pack that once claimed to walk with moonlight. The Silver Crest. So noble, so pure.

And yet in the corner of a back hall, I passed a girl.

No older than seventeen. Barefoot. Her skin mottled with bruises. A bucket in her hands, water sloshing over the rim. Her head was bowed, hair like tangled night falling over her face. She didn’t look up when I passed, but she didn’t run either.

This is strange to me.

A servant? No, they called their omegas something else.

More like a stain.

She was still when everyone else fled. Still like stone, or like someone who had long since given up running.

There was something in her… something that made my wolf twitch. But I didn’t stop.

Not yet.

Outside, the shrieks of those who had once ruled echoed against the stone. My warriors were swift. Controlled. We only took what was ours.

That is blood for blood.

At the edge of their sacred temple, I stood still. It was said the Moonborne once stood here that their ancestors had made pacts with the stars on this very ground. If that were true, the stars had long since abandoned them.

The elders gathered now, old, panicked, bitter. “Alpha Blackwood,” one of them wheezed. “Surely you wouldn’t destroy—”

“Your lies have destroyed enough.”

One tried to speak again, but I silenced him with a flick of my hand. My Beta, Derick, stepped forward and ran his blade across the man’s throat before he finished his plea.

I looked up.

Smoke curled into the sky like blackened vines. Sparks danced in the wind. Somewhere beneath the burning roofs, wolves screamed for mercy.

But there would be none.

Not for them, not for traitors who wore the face of honor and bred cruelty in silence. I had seen the truth in their eyes. They weren’t just broken, they were proud of it.

“I want nothing left standing,” I said. “Not a banner, not a memory.”

The flames roared higher.

As I turned to leave, something pulled at me again like a whisper in my bones. I glanced back, toward that hallway where the girl had been.

She was gone.

Smoke rolled around me. The heat was blistering now. Ash rained from the heavens like cursed snow.

I didn’t know her name.

Didn’t know her face.

But something about her stayed behind.

Like the faint scent of starlight in a sea of rot.