Chapter 18: The river.

Chapter 18

THIRD PERSON POV

The sunny sky over the Blackstone pack quickly changed. One moment, the sun had been a sharp, the next, the light died.

Dark, bloated clouds swirled violently above the tree line, churning in direct response to the King’s escalating fury.

Lucian stared at the vibrant green of the wolf lands, his lips curling back to reveal fangs that had grown to lethal lengths.

He wanted to tear through. He wanted to shred every tree and house in that pathetic territory until he found the source of the panic echoing through his soul.

But the barrier was there. A shimmering, holy wall of Moon-blessed energy. He had tried to force his way through minutes ago, and the black, sizzling welts on his chest were the price he’d paid.

To cross it again so soon would be to invite a slow, agonizing dissolution of his very atoms. “Cowards,” he hissed, eyes now glowing a terrifying, blown-out red.

His vision cut through the physical world, looking past the border, past the first layer of trees, past the clusters of wooden houses where the pack families lived.

He looked miles into the Southern distance, his sight skimming over the rooftops of the place like a bird of prey.

At the very edge of his enhanced vision, near a distant, jagged ridge he hadn’t noticed before, he saw it.

Movement. It was a blur of gray and brown. A scout. Or perhaps a patrol of wolves. They were moving with a frantic, coordinated speed toward the deep ravine.

They were hunting something. No—they were cornering something. The bond in his neck spiked.

A jolt of pure, unadulterated terror from the bond hit him so hard he stumbled, his hand clutching a tree trunk and splintering the wood to toothpicks.

Since he couldn’t cut through the heart of the land, he turned and began to run along the very edge of the boundary, a blur of shadow that moved so fast he became a literal rip in the air.

He skirted the border, keeping to the neutral ground of the ravine’s edge. The movement in the distance became clearer. The wolves were closing in on a river.

He could see the dust rising from their paws. He could hear the faint, distant rhythm of a heart that was rapidly running out of places to hide.

Lucian didn’t slow down. He moved along the jagged line of the neutral zone. he intercepted the tail end of the patrol he had seen from miles away.

Three wolves. They were massive, shaggy beasts, their noses to the ground as they tracked the scent of something.

They didn’t even have time to whimper as Lucian reached the first wolf, he simply extended his hand, breaking the neck of the beast.

From deep within the forest, coming from the river bank, a collective, agonized howl erupted.

It was a psychic scream that tore through the forest. The Alpha had felt a thread of his pack snap.

Good, Lucian was already on the second. The wolf lunged, its yellow fangs bared, Lucian stepped inside the beast’s guard and drove his palm into its skull.

The impact was sickeningly dull. The wolf collapsed into a heap of gray fur, dead before it touched the dirt.

The third wolf, a mottled brown creature, skidded to a halt, its haunches trembling as it realized it was no longer the hunter.

It tried to turn, to bolt back toward the safety of it’s pack but Lucian was there. He didn’t kill this one.

Not yet. He reached out and seized the wolf by the scruff of its neck, his fingers digging deep into the muscle.

With a strength that defied his slender frame, he slammed the beast against the rough bark of an oak tree, pinning it there.

“Where is she?” Lucian hissed. The wolf thrashed, snapping its jaws in a frantic, useless effort to bite the iron-cold hand holding it.

Lucian’s red eyes bled into a deep, mesmerizing gold. He leaned in close, his face a mask of predatory beauty that promised only pain.

He didn’t have time for games. Every second the wolf struggled, tht girls heartbeat grew more frantic in his ears.

“Shift.” The wolf’s eyes widened, its pupils dilating in sheer terror. It fought the command, its animal instinct screaming to stay in its stronger form.

“I said… Shift.” Lucian whispered, his voice vibrating with an ancient power. He tightened his grip, the sound of the wolf’s neck straining under the pressure.

A sickening crunch of bone followed as the wolf’s body was forced to obey. The fur receded into skin, the snout flattened, and the massive paws elongated into human hands.

Within seconds, a young, trembling man hung in Lucian’s grasp, naked and gasping for air as his feet dangled off the ground.

“The… river ,” the boy wheezed, his voice cracking with shock. Blood leaked from his nose—a result of the forced, violent transformation.

Lucian tossed the boy aside like a piece of refuse as soon as he got what he needed. He didn’t wait to see where the boy landed.

He turned toward the sound of the churning water, his speed blurring the world into a smear of gray.

The river was close; he could smell the spray of the water, the scent of wet stone, and the sharp tang of the girl’s panic.

He was less than a mile away when the ground seemed to erupt. A massive, slate-gray wolf that had been lying in wait, launched itself.

It didn’t aim for Lucain’s throat, it aimed for his momentum. With a guttural snarl, the beast’s jaws clamped down on Lucian’s thigh, its teeth sinking through the expensive fabric of his trousers and deep into his flesh.

Lucian slammed into the ground, the impact uprooting a small sapling. The wolf didn’t let go, its head thrashing as it tried to tear the muscle from his bone.

Lucian didn’t scream, he didn’t even grunt. He simply looked down at the beast with a gaze so frigid it should have frozen the blood in the wolf’s veins.

He reached down, sinking his fingers into the wolf’s snout and forced the jaws apart with a sickening pop of the hinge.

He threw the wolf aside, not bothering to finish it. He looked toward the riverbank. There she was.

The girl was a small trembling figure. Three massive wolves were closing in semi-circle, forcing her to the very edge of the cliff.

Across the distance, all eyes snapped to lucain at the sound of the dead wolf. Lucain gazes locked only to the girl, who’s eyes were wide, flooding with a terror so absolute it threatened to snap the bond between them.

In that look, she wasn’t asking for a savior; she was saying goodbye. She looked down at the violent current behind her, then back at the snarling monsters in front of her.

No, Lucian thought, his red eyes blowing out until the world was nothing but her. He saw the moment her balance shifted.

He saw her body begin to tilt backward, gravity reaching out to claim what the wolves could not.

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