LOGINKiera's POVI closed my eyes, falling back as the pressure of the explosion hit me. The ground was hard and sent pain shooting up my spine. I lay there, waiting for the brightness to fade. As the brightness faded, it was eerily silent. I woke again, raising my head to look around, as I wiped a lone ball of sweat from my forehead. Silence. I could see no one else but another lonesome head, coughing up something. He didn't look like any other soldier. He looked like Theron.He looked like he was collapsing, coughing and shifting back into his human body. His body was covered in round black patches that I couldn't see well enough from where I lay. Panic enveloped me.I got up, propping myself up with my elbows and crawling to him slowly. I heard sounds of the crackle of fire and looked around me to find trees burning. Soldiers moaned from their different wounds, and there was a distant sound of horns of the Iron Fang army retreating. They'd finally been dissuaded. I heaved a sigh of
Theron POVI was sprinting down the final slope of the ridge with Marcus and a dozen warriors right behind me, and I was desperately trying to keep my eyes on the spot where the black-clad figure of Keira was cutting through the Iron-Fang ranks, but then the entire world suddenly turned a blinding shade of white. A roar like a thousand thunderclaps shook the ground so hard that I stumbled into the dirt, and when I looked up, I saw a beam of pure, concentrated light shooting across the valley from the enemy’s rear lines. It wasn't fire and it wasn't magic like I had ever seen, because it looked like a piece of the sun had been dragged down to earth and pointed directly at the woman I had just spent five years mourning."Keira! Get out of there!" I screamed, but my voice was completely swallowed by the sound of the air sizzling around the beam, and I watched in horror as the light struck her squarely in the chest.She didn't even have time to scream before the force of the blast sent h
Alpha Kaine POVI stood on the back of my massive black war-steed and watched the chaos unfolding at the edge of the Blackwood valley, while the smell of burning pine and the copper tang of fresh blood filled the air in a way that usually made me feel like a king, but right now I was just feeling annoyed. My lead warriors were supposed to be the best in the northern territories, yet they were being tossed around like straw dolls by a single woman in a broken bone mask, and I could see my men starting to pull back in fear because every time she moved, another head rolled into the dirt. I adjusted the heavy fur collar of my cloak and spit into the grass, while my second-in-command, a scarred wolf named Garrow, rode up beside me with a look of pure disbelief on his face."Alpha, we’ve lost forty men in the last ten minutes alone and that hybrid girl isn't even slowing down, so if we don't do something soon, the morale of the front line is going to break before we even reach the main gat
Keira POV I stood at the very edge of the Blackwood border where the grass met the rough dirt of the main road, and I watched the massive line of Iron-Fang warriors stop just a few hundred yards away while their torches flickered like a sea of orange fire in the dark. I had tied the two broken halves of my mask back onto my face with some rough twine I found in the armory, because even if it didn't hide my scars anymore, it kept the wind out of my eyes and made me feel like the mercenary I was supposed to be. I didn't care about what Theron had said in the garden or the weird flashes of memory that were still trying to surface in my mind, because the only thing that felt real right now was the dull ache in my gums and the way my blood was humming with the witch's potion."You really think you're going to stop all of us by yourself, little hybrid, because my Alpha told us to bring you back in one piece but he didn't say we couldn't break a few of your bones first," a scout yelled fr
Theron POVI stood in the center of the war room and felt the air getting thinner while Marcus’s words echoed in my ears, and I looked at my father who was still trying to straighten his collar after being punched, but his face was pale and he wouldn't meet my eyes. The maps on the table were fluttering from the sheer pressure of my aura, and I heard the wood of the heavy chairs beginning to groan and crack as my power expanded without me even trying to control it, because the rage inside me was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. The elders were backing away toward the stone walls and the guards were looking at the floor, since they could feel the weight of my command settling over the room like a heavy iron blanket that made it hard for anyone to even draw a breath."Look at me, Silas, and tell me to my face that Marcus is a liar, because I want to hear the words come out of your mouth before I decide what to do with you," I said, and my voice sounded like grinding stones
Marcus POVI stood by the narrow window of the war room and looked out at the horizon, and the sight of the Iron-Fang army was enough to make my stomach turn because there were hundreds of them spilling out from the tree line like a dark wave. We had known they were coming, but seeing the actual scale of Kaine's forces made it clear that we were outnumbered at least three to one, so I turned back to the map on the table where Theron was leaning over the blueprints of our perimeter walls. The room was crowded with high-ranking warriors and elders, and the air was thick with the smell of sweat and old parchment while everyone tried to talk over each other about which gate was the weakest."We need to start moving the omegas and the children into the underground bunkers right now, because if those front gates give way, they’ll be trapped in the main house with nowhere to run," I said, while I pointed to the secondary tunnels on the map that led toward the northern cliffs."We can't spa
Theron POVThe morning was already a disaster because the courtyard was full of nervous warriors and the smell of the dead messenger was still hanging in the Great Hall, so when a black carriage with the iron seal of the Mercenary Guild rolled through the gates, I knew things were only going to get
Kiera's POV I was sitting in the corner of my new room in the Alpha wing, trying to ignore the dull throb in my shoulder while I wiped the dried blood of Theron’s warriors off my knuckles with a damp cloth, because the sound of their screaming was still ringing in my ears.I didn't feel bad about
TheronMy chest always felt like it had a giant hole in it. It was a cold, empty space where my soul used to be. Every time I breathed, the hole hurt. Doctors said I was fine, but they were wrong. I was an Alpha with an empty heart. Five years ago, I had ripped it out and thrown it away when I rej
KeiraMost werewolves hunt by using their noses to smell or their ears to hear, but I was different now. I had changed. I did not need a nose to find my prey. To me, the whole world looked like a map of heat and the steady thump-thump-thump of hearts beating in the dark.I sat very still on a shar







