They came from the forest like splinters of night, detaching themselves from the moonless shadows between the trees. There was no warning, no snapped twig, only the sudden, cold glint of silver blades. Five of them, clad in dark, supple leather, moved with a fluid deadliness that spoke of countless contracts fulfilled. On their collars, the faint moonlight caught the insignia of the usurper: a snarling wolf's head, Guntram's mark.
The attack was a silent, coordinated storm. Connall met it with a roar, his own blade a blur as he parried a strike aimed for his throat. He felt Althea move to his back, a reactive, desperate alliance. They were a chaotic island in a sea of disciplined killers.
Connall fought with the raw, brutal economy of a cornered Alpha, each block a punishing blow, each swing meant to cripple. Althea was his opposite, a whirlwind of agile defense and precise, darting strikes. She flowed where he held firm, her movements a desperate dance of survival. But for every assassin they engaged, another pressed the attack, their blades weaving a cage of glittering steel. They were being herded, contained, their space shrinking with every passing second.
The agonizing thrum of their bond was a constant, grinding distraction, a pain that gnawed at his focus and shortened his breath. He could feel her ragged panic through the connection, a sharp counterpoint to his own cold fury. An assassin lunged at him, a clear feint. Connall sidestepped, his blade deflecting the man's sword with a shriek of steel. It was the opening they'd been waiting for.
From his blind spot, a second attacker struck. The blade sliced deep into Althea's arm.
She cried out, a sharp sound of pain that cut through the night. The cry hit Connall not through his ears, but through the bond. It was a white-hot spike of agony that lanced directly into his soul. Her pain was his pain. Her blood was his blood.
Something inside him snapped. A decade of walled-off rage, of vengeful hate, shattered. It was replaced by a singular, possessive fury so pure and primal it almost brought him to his knees. *Mine.* The thought was not his own; it was an instinct, an absolute truth that erupted from the very core of his being.
The energy of the bond, fed by his incandescent rage and her searing pain, twisted. The constant agony didn't just spike; it transformed, coiling into a volatile, humming power that demanded to be unleashed.
A wave of pressure, silent and immense, erupted from them. It was a physical force that made the air crackle and the leaves on the forest floor tremble. The assassins froze, their professional deadliness faltering for a crucial, fatal second. A faint, silvery aura shimmered to life around Connall and Althea, casting the clearing in an ethereal glow.
The torment of the bond vanished. In its place was a terrifying, intoxicating surge of raw power, a river of lightning flooding their veins. Connall's eyes burned with a feral, golden light. Althea's shone with the luminous intensity of a silver moon. They were no longer in control. The bond was.
They moved as one.
There was no thought, no plan, no exchanged glance. When Connall's arm swung with inhuman force, smashing an assassin back against a tree with the sound of cracking ribs, Althea was already spinning into the space he'd created, her blade flashing across the man's throat in a final, silent arc. She ducked under a wild slash from another, and Connall's hand shot out, grabbing the man's wrist and twisting until bone snapped.
It was a seamless, synchronized slaughter. They flowed around each other in a dance of death, two predators guided by a single, bloodthirsty mind. Their movements were brutally efficient, utterly inhuman. The assassins, the confident hunters of moments ago, were now just bewildered prey. Their coordination shattered, their training useless against this display of primal, untamed power. One tried to flee, only to be run down by Althea, who moved with a speed that wasn't her own.
The last assassin stood paralyzed, his blade lowered, his face a mask of disbelief and terror. Connall was on him in an instant, a shadow of vengeance, and the fight was over.
They stood in the center of the carnage, chests heaving, the stench of blood thick and coppery in the air. The silver aura flared brightly around them for a final, violent moment before extinguishing, plunging the blood-soaked clearing back into silence and shadow.
The power receded as quickly as it had come. It left a deafening psychic void, and in its wake, the familiar, agonizing pain of their bond crashed back in. It was a hundred times worse than before, amplified by the sudden, violent exhaustion that seized their bodies.
Their legs gave out. Connall staggered, collapsing to his knees with a choked gasp. A few feet away, Althea did the same, her head bowed, her breath coming in ragged sobs. The silence of the forest was broken only by their desperate gasps for air and the drip of blood from her wounded arm onto the damp earth.
Slowly, Connall raised his head. He didn't look at her. He looked at the bodies strewn around them. This wasn't a victory; it was an annihilation. A cold horror washed over him, not for the dead men, but for the terrifying efficiency with which they had dealt death. He felt Althea's gaze and finally, finally, forced himself to meet her eyes.
He saw no triumph, no relief. Reflected in her luminous, silver eyes was the same emotion churning in his own gut: sheer, unadulterated terror. It was a terror of what they had just done. Of what they had just *been*.
His survival instincts, honed over a decade of running, warred with the paralyzing shock. *Move.* The command was a faint spark in the storm of pain and exhaustion. *They sent five. They will send more. Move.*
He forced his protesting muscles to obey, pushing himself onto unsteady feet. "We can't stay here," he rasped, his voice raw. He started toward the nearest body, his movements stiff. "We need to know who they were. What they had."
Althea flinched at the thought of touching the dead men, but the cold logic in his voice cut through her fear. She nodded, a jerky, uncertain movement, and pushed herself up, cradling her bleeding arm.
Connall knelt by the assassin he'd crushed, his stomach turning as he forced himself to search the man's leather armor. Tucked into an inner pocket was a dagger, its hilt inlaid with a snarling wolf's head carved from obsidian. Guntram Volkov's personal crest. Not just his pack's mark, but his own. This wasn't a general order. It was a personal death sentence. The proof felt like a cold stone in his hand.
Across the clearing, Althea let out a small, sharp gasp. Connall looked up, instantly on alert. She was holding a small, oilskin pouch, her eyes wide. "I know this scent," she whispered, her voice filled with a strange mix of disbelief and dawning recognition. She fumbled it open, revealing a fragrant paste of crushed herbs. "Moon-herbs. For soothing bond-strain."
It was lore she shouldn't have known, a Luna instinct surfacing from a past she never had. He watched her, skeptical, as she cautiously smeared a small amount of the paste onto the back of her hand. The agonizing thrum between them didn't vanish, but it subsided, the razor's edge of pain dulling to a bearable, insistent ache. The relief was so profound they both let out a shuddering breath.
He crossed the space between them in two strides. "Let me see." He held out his hand, and she dolloped a small amount of the paste onto his palm. The effect was the same, a blessed quietening of the storm within. He looked at the deep gash on her arm, then back at the paste. Gritting his teeth against the forced intimacy of it, he gently took her arm and began applying the salve to her wound. Her skin was cold under his touch. For a moment, they were just two wounded wolves, caught in a moment of unwanted, necessary care.
With the pain lessened, clarity returned. There was one more body to check—the one who had tried to flee. On him, tucked away and sealed with wax, was a rolled piece of vellum. It wasn't paper; it was cured hide, covered in symbols neither of them recognized. It was a map, encrypted and utterly alien.
Connall took it, his gaze shifting from the cryptic map to the damning dagger, then to the soothing herbs in Althea's hand. They weren't just fugitives anymore. They had proof of the usurper's direct treason, a temporary cure for their curse, and a map that led… somewhere.
Their desperate flight had ended. In the blood and the silence, something new and far more dangerous had just begun.