Page 82 of Curses and Casualties
The Alpha strikes first, using his size advantage to try to bowl her over. Scarlett flows around him like water, raking claws along his flank as she passes. First blood to her.
He spins with surprising agility, jaws snapping where her throat was a heartbeat before. She’s already gone, dancing backward, then darting in to harry his other side. She’s using her speed, her agility, trying to wear him down with a thousand cuts.
But the Alpha didn’t hold his position through size alone. He’s smart, patient. He lets her dart in again, then pivots at the last second, his shoulder catching her mid-leap. She goes flying, hitting the crater wall with a crack that makes me wince.
“Scarlett!” her father cries out, earning a boot to the ribs from Elder Gray.
She’s up again, but slower now. Blood mats her left shoulder. The Alpha presses his advantage, driving her back with snapping jaws and swiping claws. Each exchange costs her—a gash here, bruised ribs there. She’s fighting beautifully, courageously, but she’s losing.
Georgia presses against my side, muscles coiled to spring. ‘We can’t interfere,’I tell her through our bond, though every instinct screams to help our friend.
‘I don’t care,’she insists. ‘I’m not letting our friend die here.’
I look at her and give her a slow nod, because she’s right. We intervene.
We move into position just as Scarlett stumbles, her injured leg buckling. The Alpha sees his chance and lunges, jaws wide for the killing blow. Time slows as those teeth descend toward her exposed throat.
That’s when the world explodes.
A howl unlike anything I’ve ever heard splits the night—rage and love and desperate protection woven into a sound that speaks directly to the soul. Even the Alpha freezes, his killing bite arrested inches from Scarlett’s throat.
“Impossible,” someone breathes. “He was dying.”
But impossibility doesn’t matter when your mate is in mortal danger.
Fenris erupts from the forest like the wrath of ancient gods, and I realize with a shock that he must have heard me call him, must have dragged himself from his sickbed to claim his right as her champion. He’s enormous, silver-gray fur matted with dried blood from his earlier battles, moving on what should be broken legs. But mate-bond trumps injury, love conquers pain, and he’s beyond anything but the primal need to protect what’s his.
“The broken Alpha,” Elder Gray whispers, and for the first time tonight, he sounds afraid.
Fenris doesn’t even slow down. Three hundred pounds of desperate fury slams into the Alpha, sending him tumbling across the crater floor. They roll in a tangle of teeth and claws, but this isn’t really a fight anymore. This is execution.
The Alpha tries to recover, tries to use his experience and cunning. But Fenris fights like something already dead and too stubborn to realize it. He takes wounds that should drop him—the Alpha’s claws rake his sides, teeth find his shoulder—but he doesn’t even flinch.
There’s a moment where they lock together, jaws clamped on each other’s necks, a stalemate of mutual destruction. Then Fenris does something I’ve never seen. He releases his hold, exposing his own throat. The Alpha lunges for it, instinct taking over. That’s when Fenris strikes.
His jaws find the Alpha’s extended throat and clamp down with the force of a steel trap. The Alpha thrashes, tries to break free, but Fenris just bites deeper, harder, with the inexorable pressure of a wolf who’s already decided to die for this.
With a savage wrench of his head, Fenris tears the Alpha’s throat out entirely.
Blood sprays in a crimson arc across the moonlit stone. The Alpha’s body convulses once, twice, legs kicking uselessly at nothing. Then the transformation begins.
His wolf form stiffens, fur hardening to gray stone. The process spreads from his torn throat outward—flesh becoming granite, blood crystallizing to crimson quartz. Within seconds, the Alpha is a perfect stone statue of his final moment, jaws still open in a silent snarl.
Then he crumbles.
The stone wolf collapses into dust, cascading across the crater floor in a gray avalanche. When the dust settles, only onething remains—a heartstone, dark as old blood, pulsing with the last echoes of the Alpha’s power.
For a heartbeat, no one moves. No one even breathes. The only sound is Fenris’s labored panting as he stands over the remains, swaying like a tree in a hurricane.
Then Scarlett moves.
She shifts back to human form and stumbles forward, her face a mask of fury and pain. Without hesitation, she raises her foot and brings it down on the Alpha’s heartstone with all her remaining strength.
The stone shatters.
The sound is like breaking glass and screaming wind combined. Dark energy erupts from the fragments before dissipating into nothing. The Alpha is truly, irrevocably dead.
“Good riddance,” Scarlett spits at the dust.
