Lyra POV
Her father was lying.
Lyra could feel it in the way his jaw clenched when he told her to go. The way his hands gripped the table like he wanted to break it. The way he wouldn't meet her eyes.
Viktor Soren didn't send his daughter to handle his biggest business crisis because she was ready. He sent her because he was scared.
She sat in the transport heading toward the border camp and tried not to think about what that meant. The contracts lay open on her lap. Numbers and percentages and all the ways her father's company was falling apart. Ashcroft Innovations had stolen seventeen major contracts in the last year. Seventeen. Each one was a piece of the empire her father built from nothing.
Lyra had trained her entire life to protect that empire. Not through business deals. Through violence.
Her father had taught her since she was six years old that the world was war and she was his weapon. So she learned to fight. She learned to kill. She learned to move through a room the way a predator moves through a forest, seeing threats before they materialized.
But contracts and negotiations were different. Lyra had never led one alone.
"You won't fail," her father had told her that morning, his hand heavy on her shoulder. "You're smart. You're cold. You won't crack under pressure."
What he meant was: You're a weapon. Do what weapons do. Break the enemy.
The transport slowed as they approached the neutral camp. Three of her best warriors sat across from her, checking weapons, staying alert. They knew something was wrong too. You didn't send a warrior princess to negotiate unless something had gone very wrong.
The camp came into view and Lyra's skin prickled.
Something was off.
The guards at the entrance were different from what she expected. Too many. Standing too close together. Their posture wasn't relaxed. It was aggressive. Ready.
Lyra stood before the transport even stopped. Her warriors noticed and their hands moved to their weapons.
"Stay sharp," she said quietly.
The camp was supposed to be neutral territory. Safe ground where both packs could meet without threat. But the air itself felt wrong. The morning was too quiet. No birds. No movement. Just the wind pushing through the trees like something was holding its breath.
Lyra stepped out of the transport and kept her movements smooth. Controlled. Never show fear. Never show doubt.
"We're here for the nine o'clock negotiation," she said to the nearest guard, keeping her voice level.
The guard looked past her. That's when Lyra's instinct screamed.
Fire.
It came from the south side of the camp, spreading faster than fire should spread. Orange and black and smoke that burned her lungs with just one breath. The guards weren't peace keepers. They were soldiers. And they were moving toward her.
This wasn't a negotiation.
This was a raid.
Lyra moved before her mind caught up with what her body already knew. She pulled the blade from her thigh holster and turned toward the closest guard. He expected negotiation. He didn't expect her to kill him.
She did it anyway.
His body dropped and Lyra was already moving toward the next one. Training took over. Everything her father taught her. Everything she'd practiced a thousand times. Fight like someone with nothing left to lose because you will always have something to lose.
Warriors poured out of the trees like they'd been waiting. Kael's warriors. Nightshade Pack. The realization hit her like a punch.
This was Kael.
Kael was attacking them. Not negotiating. Attacking.
Lyra killed the second warrior with a knife to the throat. The third one fought back and she felt his blade slice across her ribs but adrenaline burned it away. She countered and drove her blade up under his jaw.
Three dead. That's how many she got before the hands grabbed her.
She thrashed and screamed and fought like an animal but there were too many of them. Someone had come prepared for exactly this. For her. For her strength. The hands that grabbed her from behind were strong enough that even her years of training couldn't break them.
A man's voice cut through the chaos. Deep. Cold. Certain.
"The Alpha wants her alive. She's Viktor's daughter."
Lyra felt the words like ice water down her spine.
Alive. They wanted her alive.
That was worse than death.
Her mind raced through possibilities even as the fire spread closer. Her warriors were fighting but they were outnumbered. The smoke was getting thicker. Someone was screaming. The world was burning and the hands holding her didn't loosen for even a second.
Kael Nightshade had orchestrated this. All of it. The negotiation. The trap. The timing.
And he wanted her.
Lyra stopped struggling for just a moment and looked back at the warrior holding her. She saw the mark on his arm. Nightshade Pack insignia. She saw the way his grip didn't waver even as the camp burned around them.
Then she did the only thing she could do.
She drove her head back toward his face and felt his nose crunch. He cursed but didn't let go. Instead, he started moving, carrying her toward the forest. Away from the burning camp. Away from her warriors. Away from everything she knew.
Through the smoke and chaos, Lyra saw a figure on horseback watching everything burn. Tall. Dark hair catching the firelight. Even from this distance, there was something about him that made her skin recognize danger.
That had to be him.
That had to be Kael.
He watched the camp burn like he was watching a sunset. Like destruction was beautiful. Like this was exactly what he planned all along.
Her father had told her a thousand times that Kael Nightshade was a monster. That he killed his own family to start a war. That he was weak and cruel and everything she was trained to hate.
But the man watching his trap unfold didn't look weak.
He looked like the one thing she'd been raised to fight her entire life.
He looked like her reckoning.
The warrior carrying her began running deeper into the forest and Lyra stopped resisting. She was thinking now. Calculating. Weapons didn't panic. Weapons didn't break. Weapons figured out how to survive long enough to find an opening.
She'd escaped worse.
She would escape this too.
But as the Nightshade territory got closer and the burning camp faded behind her, something in her chest twisted. Something her father hadn't trained away. Something that recognized the moment everything changed.
She'd walked into a negotiation.
She was being dragged out as a prisoner of war.
And the Alpha of the Nightshade Pack was probably already planning how to use her against her father.
The warrior threw her over his shoulder as he ran and Lyra's last glimpse of freedom was the sky turning darker as they plunged deeper into enemy territory.