Three days after the commanders departed, the first reports arrived of their operations launching across human territories. Mireth read them aloud in my private study while I reviewed the ritual preparations.
"Southern region. Commander Vorsk deployed infiltration teams into the Kingdom of Altheria. They poisoned three major wells serving the capital city. Estimated casualties in the thousands before discovery. The king has declared martial law."
"Good. Chaos benefits us."
"Western territories. Commander Heleth's forces burned six grain silos awaiting distribution to border garrisons. The garrisons are now undersupplied heading into winter. Soldiers are already deserting to protect their families."
"Excellent. Hungry soldiers make poor containment forces."
"Northern passes. Commander Brethan assassinated the Duke of Ravenmoor and his entire family, then staged it to look like an internal succession conflict. The duchy has fractured into civil war as three different claimants fight for control."
I nodded, making notes on the tactical map. Each operation represented a crack in the human containment strategy, forcing them to redirect resources inward rather than maintaining pressure on Lycan borders.
"Mireth, what is the projected timeline until their containment collapses completely?"
"If operations continue at current intensity, three months. Possibly two if we escalate." She set down the reports. "However, the human kingdoms will eventually adapt. They will implement countermeasures, increase internal security, perhaps attempt retaliatory strikes against our civilian populations."
"Let them try. Our populations are already militarized and dispersed across difficult terrain. Theirs are concentrated in cities and farmlands, vulnerable targets requiring extensive protection." I marked several positions on the map. "Send orders to all commanders. Escalate operations. I want the humans drowning in crisis, unable to maintain coordinated strategy."
A knock interrupted us. Thorne entered without waiting for permission, his expression grim.
"We have a problem."
"Define a problem."
"The Riverside Alpha is dead. Murdered in his own hall three hours ago. His entire bloodline, seventeen bonded warriors, dropped dead simultaneously. Someone severed their connections with surgical precision."
I stood immediately. "Severed, how? Bonds do not break except through the death of one partner."
"Exactly. Which means either magic we do not understand, or the resurrection sect has developed new capabilities." Thorne unrolled a dispatch on my desk. "Witnesses say the Alpha was meeting with two visitors claiming to bring trade proposals. Mid conversation, he gasped, clutched his chest, and collapsed. His bonded warriors throughout the territory fell at exactly the same moment."
Mireth had gone very still. "That should be impossible. The mate bond is an individual connection, not a network. You cannot collapse an entire bond structure through a single point of failure."
"Apparently you can." Thorne pointed to details in the report. "The visitors disappeared immediately. No one got clear descriptions. But several witnesses mentioned they moved strangely, mechanically and precisely, without normal body language."
"Resurrected," I said. "The sect sent dead Alphas disguised as merchants to assassinate a living Alpha through bond manipulation."
"But why target the Riverside Alpha specifically? He was loyal, competent, managing his territory efficiently."
I looked at the map where Riverside territories connected to three other major regions. "He was structurally important. His territory serves as a trade nexus. With him dead and his entire bond network collapsed, that region destabilizes. Which forces me to redirect resources to maintain control there instead of focusing on external threats."
"So this is coordinated," Mireth said slowly. "The human containment from outside, the resurrection sect attacking internal infrastructure. They are working together."
The implications settled like poison in my gut. If humans and the resurrection sect had formed an alliance, they were not just trying to defeat me. They were trying to dismantle the entire Lycan power structure, replacing it with something they could control.
"Send investigators to Riverside immediately. I want those territories secured before chaos spreads. And I want every piece of information about those visitors recovered. Interview everyone who saw them, sketch their appearances, track their movements before and after the assassination."
Thorne made notes. "What about the bonded warriors who died? Do we recover their bodies for examination?"
"Yes. Mireth, I want you personally examining those corpses. Understand how the bond severance worked. If they can kill seventeen warriors by striking one Alpha, they can theoretically eliminate entire military units through targeted assassination."
"I will need to travel to Riverside."
"Take whatever security you require. And take samples. If this is a magical process, there will be residue traces we can analyze." I turned back to the map. "This changes our timeline. If the sect can strike anywhere through hidden agents, nowhere is secure. We need to accelerate the ritual preparations."
"We are still weeks away from being ready," Mireth protested. "Rushing it increases the chance of catastrophic failure."
"And waiting increases the chance we lose too many Alphas to targeted assassination. Every day gives them more opportunities to strike." I made the decision with the same cold certainty that governed all my choices. "Four weeks. That is your new deadline. Whatever is not ready in four weeks gets improvised."
"Improvising with this level of magic could kill everyone involved."
"Then be very careful with your preparations."
She left, her face showing the strain of compressed timelines and impossible expectations. Thorne remained, studying me with that direct gaze that missed nothing.
"You are afraid," he said.
"I am realistic. Fear is emotion. What I feel is a tactical assessment of deteriorating conditions."
"You can dress it in whatever language makes you comfortable. But I have known you for fifteen years. I recognize when you are reacting from fear rather than strategy."
I considered denying it, then decided honesty with Thorne cost nothing. "Fine. I am afraid. Not of death. I have made peace with dying violently. But I am afraid of losing, of everything I built collapsing because I failed to adapt quickly enough. Satisfied?"
"Admitting fear is not a weakness. Acting from fear without acknowledging it is." He moved to stand beside me at the map. "The ritual you are planning, removing bonds from every Lycan in the empire, is fear driven decision making. You are gambling everything on untested magic because you feel control slipping."
"The resurrection sect is using unbonded dead Alphas. Fighting them with bonded living Alphas is disadvantageous. Therefore, remove the bonds. Simple tactical logic."
"Except the bonds are what hold your empire together. They create pack cohesion, emotional connection, reasons for Lycans to cooperate beyond fear of punishment. Remove them, and you do not create an empire of powerful individuals. You create thousands of isolated predators with no reason to follow you."
"They will follow me because the alternative is extinction. Individual survival becomes impossible when external threats require coordinated response."
"You hope they will follow you. You are betting the species on that hope." Thorne's voice carried weight. "And if you are wrong, you will have destroyed us more thoroughly than any human army or resurrection magic could manage."
The critique was valid, but alternatives were lacking. I had spent three days analyzing options, running scenarios, and calculating probabilities. Every path forward involved catastrophic risk. The ritual was simply the risk I believed we could survive.
"Your objection is noted. The decision stands." I rolled up the map. "Increase security protocols around remaining Alphas. I want constant surveillance, restricted visitor access, food tasters, the full range of paranoid precautions. If the sect wants to assassinate our leadership, make them work for every kill."
"That will slow administration to a crawl. Every decision will take three times as long when every Alpha is locked in secure locations with limited communication."
"Better slow than dead. We can recover from inefficiency. We cannot recover from systematic decapitation of leadership."
Thorne nodded, accepting the order despite his clear disagreement with the underlying strategy. He moved toward the door, then paused.
"When you perform this ritual, assuming Mireth makes it ready in time, what happens to you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You already lack bonds. The magic is designed to sever connections you do not possess. Will it affect you at all? Or will you be the only unchanged element in a transformed empire?"
I had not considered that aspect. Another variable in an equation growing more complex by the hour.
"I do not know. Mireth will need to calculate that specifically."
"And if the ritual kills you while leaving everyone else transformed? You would succeed in your goal while eliminating yourself. The empire would face complete chaos, unbonded and leaderless."
"Then I would have at least changed the fundamental conditions of the conflict. Someone else could capitalize on that change, even if I am not there to do it myself."
"You would sacrifice yourself for a species you do not particularly like, in service of an empire you rule through fear rather than love." Thorne smiled faintly. "There might be something noble in that, buried deep beneath all the pragmatism."
"There is nothing noble in survival. Only necessary and unnecessary actions. The ritual is necessary. Whether I survive it is irrelevant to that calculation."
He left then, leaving me alone with maps and reports and the growing certainty that I was running out of time to implement solutions before problems overwhelmed my capacity to respond.
I moved to the window, looking out over the empire I had forged through blood and brutality. Somewhere in the darkness, the resurrection sect was raising more dead Alphas, creating an army that grew stronger as we grew weaker. Somewhere beyond the borders, human kingdoms tightened their containment, slowly strangling our trade and resources.
Somewhere in my own territories, Lycans whispered about prophecies and wondered if their king could actually be defeated.
Four weeks until the ritual. Four weeks to verify magic that could save or destroy everything. Four weeks to gather fifteen thousand sacrifices without revealing the true purpose until too late to resist.
Four weeks to become either the king who saved his species through terrible necessity, or the monster who ended it through catastrophic miscalculation.
I had made my choice. Now I would live with its consequences, however brief that living might prove to be.
The empire would transform, one way or another. And I would be the instrument of that transformation, regardless of personal cost.
Because that was what kings did when their worlds were ending. They made impossible choices and bore the weight of outcomes alone.
I turned from the window and began drafting orders for what came next.