Aria POV
The war room was a cavern of shadows, lit only by the flickering blue flames of the sconces and the glowing silver ring of the map on the table. Outside, the wind screamed against the stone of Obsidian Crest, but inside, the air was heavy with the smell of old parchment, cold iron, and Gabriel.
He stood opposite me, his hands braced on the table's edge. The leather of his vest creaked as he leaned forward, the flickering light catching the hard, unyielding line of his jaw.
"The Silver Moon's southern outpost is a festering wound," Gabriel said, his voice a low vibration that seemed to buzz in the soles of my feet. "It's where they keep the 'undesirables.' The wolves they haven't exiled yet, but have broken through labor and starvation. It's Logan's primary source of timber and iron. If we cut it, we bleed his treasury dry before the first snow falls."
I stared at the map. I knew that place. The Blackwood Timber Yard. I remembered visiting it as a child, tucked away in my father's carriage. I had seen the workers then gaunt men and women with hollow eyes, their collars too tight, their spirits crushed under the weight of the "Alpha's tithe."
"You want me to lead the strike," I said. It wasn't a question. I could feel the Primal stirring in the back of my mind, her silver claws itching to tear through the map.
"I don't want you to, Aria. You must," Gabriel replied. He stood up, walking around the table until he was inches from me. He didn't crowd me, but his aura that vast, abyssal vacuum swirled around us, isolating us from the world. "These Rogues don't follow titles. They don't care that you're a Primal. They care that you can lead them through the fire and bring them back alive. Show them who you are."
I looked at my hands. The bruises were fading, replaced by a strange, pearlescent shimmer beneath the skin. "They think I'm a fluke. I heard Kael talking. They think I'm your pet project."
Gabriel's hand moved, his fingers catching my chin and forcing me to look up. His eyes were twin voids, dark and hungry. "Then prove them wrong. Burn that outpost to the ground, and they won't just follow you. They'll worship you."
The Descent
Two hours later, I was standing at the edge of the forest, the frost biting at my cheeks. Behind me stood fifty Rogues. They were silent, a pack of ghosts in the dark, their eyes glowing with a dozen different hues of blue, amber, and violet.
Gabriel was not with us. He was watching from the heights, a shadow among shadows. This was my test.
"Listen to me," I whispered. My voice didn't carry, but through the Primal link I was beginning to master, I felt it resonate in their heads. "We aren't here for the timber. We aren't here for the iron. We are here for the people they treat like cattle. If a Silver Moon guard raises a weapon, you end them. If they surrender... you remind them why they should have run."
Kael, standing to my right, shifted his weight, his dual daggers gleaming in the moonlight. "And the Alpha-heir's commander? Silas's favorite pet, Captain Marek? He's known for flaying Rogues alive."
I felt a cold, sharp smile spread across my face. Marek. The man who had laughed when I was exiled.
"Marek is mine," I said.
The Strike
We moved like smoke.
The outpost was a sprawl of wooden barracks and iron-barred pens, surrounded by a jagged palisade. The Silver Moon guards were lazy, tucked away in their watchtowers with flasks of ale, relying on the "safety" of their territory.
Amateurs.
I didn't give the signal with a shout. I let the Primal out.
I didn't shift not fully but I let the silver fire bleed into the air. The temperature dropped forty degrees in a heartbeat. The frost on the trees turned to jagged crystals of ice.
Go, I commanded through the link.
The Rogues hit the gates like a tidal wave. The sound of splintering wood and the first screams of the guards tore through the night. I didn't run. I walked.
Every step I took, the silver light around me grew brighter, a luminescent shroud that turned the mud to glass under my boots. A guard charged me, his spear leveled at my chest. He was a Beta, his eyes glowing red with a forced aggression.
"Die, Rogue!" he shrieked.
I didn't even raise my hands. I looked at him, and I let him see the void. I let him feel the weight of ten thousand years of apex predator instinct.
The guard froze. His spear clattered to the ground. He fell to his knees, his eyes rolling back as his wolf simply... quit. It curled up and died of terror inside him. I walked past him without a second glance.
"Aria!"
A voice roared from the center of the camp. Captain Marek stepped out of the main barracks, his massive broadsword unsheathed. He was a beast of a man, his chest scarred from a hundred skirmishes. When he saw me, his eyes widened, then narrowed into slits of pure malice.
"The little princess," Marek spat, his voice thick with a forced bravado. "Logan said you'd found some parlor tricks in the Wastes. I'm going to enjoy sending your head back to him in a box."
"You talk too much, Marek," I said.
He lunged. He was fast for his size, the sword swinging in a lethal arc meant to decapitate me. I moved not with human speed, but with the fluid, impossible grace of the White Wolf. I was behind him before the blade even finished its sweep.
I slammed my palm into the small of his back.
BOOM.
A shockwave of silver light exploded. Marek was sent flying, crashing through a stack of timber with enough force to splinter the logs. He groaned, coughing up blood, trying to push himself up.
I walked toward him, the silver fire humming in my veins, a delicious, predatory heat.
"Please..." Marek wheezed, the bravado gone, replaced by the stench of his own fear. "I was just following orders. The Alpha... he told us..."
I knelt beside him, my eyes burning into his. "Logan rejected a mate because she was weak. My father exiled a daughter because she was useless. What does that make you, Marek? Beaten by a girl with no wolf?"
I reached out and touched his throat. The skin sizzled where my fingers met his flesh.
"Tell the Goddess I said hello," I whispered.
I didn't kill him with a blade. I let the Primal's aura expand until it crushed his heart. He went limp, his eyes staring at nothing.
The Aftermath
The outpost was ours. The Rogues were rounding up the survivors—not the guards, but the laborers. They were stepping out of the pens, their chains broken by Kael's daggers, looking at me with a mixture of terror and hope.
I stood in the center of the burning camp, the orange flames reflecting in my silver eyes. I felt Gabriel before I saw him.
He appeared at the edge of the light, his abyssal eyes scanning the carnage. He looked at the fallen guards, then at Marek's body, and finally at me.
He walked over, his boots crunching on the glass-like frost. He stopped in front of me, his hand reaching out to wipe a smudge of soot from my forehead.
"You didn't just break them, Aria," he murmured, his voice thick with a dark pride. "You erased them."
I looked at the laborers the broken wolves of the Silver Moon who were now kneeling in the dirt, bowing not to Gabriel, but to me.
"This is only the beginning," I said, my voice sounding older, colder. "Logan wanted a Luna of power. I'm going to show him exactly what that looks like."
Gabriel leaned in, his lips ghosting over my ear, his scent of cedar and mountain rain a grounding force in the chaos. "The world is watching now, my Queen. Make sure they don't blink."
I looked at the horizon, where the first hints of dawn were breaking. For the first time, the sunrise didn't feel like a threat. It felt like an invitation to a funeral.
Logan's funeral.