chapter 5

Calhoun's pov

I had spent my life building a fortress around my heart, turning myself into a man of stone so that I would never again be the boy crying in the mud, watching his mother get raped and strangled to death. But watching Jinx scream in agony, the stone slowly began to crack.

"The cage! Now!" I roared, my voice vibrating with a frequency that shattered a crystal decanter on the side table.

Damon immediately pulled the lever behind the tapestry. A heavy iron lift appeared, heading deep into the fortress.

I scooped Jinx up, sheets and all. She was burning a fever so intense it felt like holding a dying star.

"It's going to be fine Jinx," I said to her.

"Calhoun... please... it’s burning..." she cried clawing her fingers into my shoulders

"Focus, Jinx. Do not fight the bone break," I hissed, though the cruelty I usually wore like armor was starting to feel heavy. Very heavy.

We descended into the dark basement and I laid her in the center of the cold runic floor.

crack!

The sound of her spine snapping and reforming made even my stomach churn. she twisted and, an agonizing haunting howl ripped from her throat.

"Alpha, her scent..." Damon whispered from the shadows of the doorway, his eyes wide with a terror I had never seen in him. "It’s... it’s changing. It’s not just a wolf."

He was right. The sweet innocent floral scent of the weak girl I knew was being incinerated and in its place rose something heavy, metallic, terrifyingly cold and ancient. It smelled like wet earth and old magic.

"Out, Damon," I commanded, my eyes locked on her.

"But Alpha, if she loses control..."

"I said OUT!"

I slammed the iron bars shut, locking myself inside the cage with her. I wasn't going to watch her from behind a fence like a spectator.

If she was going to become a monster, she would have to face the King of monsters first.

Jinx’s purple eyes suddenly blew wide, the pupils swallowing the iris until they were twin voids of endless night. She looked at me but the girl was gone. There was only the Predator with a darkness so suffocating, I found it hard to breathe.

"You... did this..." she growled. Her voice was no longer human. it was a multi tonal snarl that seemed to vibrate.

"I gave you the Mark, but i didn't know this would happen," I said, stepping closer as my own wolf, Zeke, pushed against my skin sensing the danger she posed, but I was not afraid. I am Calhoun the demon wolf, nothing under or above the heavens and below the ground frightens me.

"The Mark triggered the bloodline. You’ve been suppressed, Jinx. I'm guessing someone in your pathetic pack must have kept your wolf asleep with drugs or spells. I didn’t create this. I just woke it up."

Another pop echoed, her ribs rearranging and she collapsed to all fours. White fur, tipped with a shimmering silver, began to sprout rapidly.

She wasn't just an Omega. She wasn't even an Alpha. She was something else, something divine.

Her form expanded growing larger and more muscular than any female wolf I had ever seen.

I had read about this form in the myths and legends of my kind. Jinx wasn't an ordinary wolf. She was a Lunar Blood. A direct descendant of the first wolves, a line thought to be divine and extinct.

"Jinx, look at me!" I commanded, putting the full weight of my Alpha Aura into the words. I tried to crush her spirit into submission to make her bow like every other wolf had.

But She didn't bow, instead she stood up.

She lunged with a speed that defied physics but I caught her mid air, my Alpha strength the only thing keeping her teeth from my jugular.

We crashed into the silver lined walls. The contact burned us both, the silver sizzling against our skin, but I didn't let go. I pinned her massive, snowy white head to the floor, my hands buried in her thick, glowing fur.

"I order you to Look at me!" I roared.

For a split second, the little mouse, the scared and heartbroken little girl peered out from behind the gaze of the giant white wolf. Then, her lips curled back, revealing fangs that glowed with a faint, ghostly light.

She spoke, not with her throat, but directly into my mind. A telepathic blast that felt like a physical punch to my brain.

"You think you own the Moon, you arrogant little King?,You are nothing but a thief playing in the dirt."

Before I could breathe, a shockwave of pure lunar energy exploded from her body. It threw me across the cage, slamming me into the bars with enough force to dent the steel.

I scrambled to my feet, blood dripping from my forehead, my heart hammering against my ribs in a way it hadn't since I was seven years old. I never wanted a mate, I wanted a breeder.

But as the white wolf rose to her full height, her head nearly reaching the ceiling, her eyes burning with the cold fire of a thousand stars, I realized the terrifying truth.

I hadn't brought a slave into my home. I had brought in danger. And by marking her, I hadn't just claimed her body, I had tied my soul to a force that could burn my entire world to the ground.

She took a step toward me, the floor cracking under her paws.

"Jinx?" I whispered, my voice sounding foreign even to me.

The wolf tilted its head, a cruel smirk appearing in its gaze.

"My turn to watch you bleed, Alpha Calhoun."