Chapter 4 Blood on the Stones

Selene POV

The doors didn't open.

They exploded.

Both of them at once, oak and iron ripping off their hinges like they were made of paper, crashing to the stone floor hard enough to shake the walls. The sound hit Selene in the chest like a fist.

For one full second nobody moved.

The entire feast hall froze. Every glass half raised. Every conversation half finished. Every wolf in the room holding their breath at the same time.

Then the soldiers poured in.

Crimson and gold. The Alpha King's colors. But these weren't the ceremonial guards Selene had seen at regional gatherings, the ones with their polished breastplates and their bored expressions and their perfectly pressed uniforms. These men were different. Their armor was scratched and dented and stained with old brown marks that Selene's brain refused to name for three whole seconds before it did.

Blood. Old blood. Blood that had never quite washed out.

Silver weapons caught the candlelight as they raised them.

"Attack!"

The scream came from somewhere to her left and then the hall just came apart.

Tables flipped. Platters hit the floor with sounds like small explosions. Wine sprayed across stone in wide dark arcs. People ran in every direction at once and the noise, the screaming and the snarling and the crash of overturning furniture, slammed into Selene so hard she couldn't move.

She watched a visiting Beta lord shift mid-run. His formal coat shredded. Gray fur burst through. He was fast, faster than the soldiers expected, and he hit the nearest one with his full weight and knocked the man sideways.

The second soldier's blade was already moving.

Silver flashed.

The wolf dropped.

He hit the stones and didn't get up and his eyes were already empty before he finished falling and Selene thought, distantly, that she was going to be sick.

More wolves shifted. The hall filled with fur and teeth and the sound of things breaking that were never meant to break.

"Selene!"

Her mother's hands landed on her shoulders from behind, hard and gripping, and Selene gasped and came back to her body all at once.

Lady Elara was still in her gown. Her hair was coming undone from its pins. Her eyes were wide and terrified and completely focused.

"Isolde!" She grabbed Selene's sister with her other hand. "Both of you. With me. Now."

She didn't wait for an answer. She pulled them backward, away from the main doors, away from the flood of crimson and gold pouring into the hall.

Glass shattered to their right. Then their left.

Soldiers were coming through the windows.

Every window. All at once.

Selene looked at the room and understood in one cold, horrible second that this wasn't a raid. Raiders took things and left. Raiders didn't seal every exit before they walked through the door.

This was something else.

"Protect the children!"

Her father's voice. Big and commanding and she could hear the fear underneath it and that scared her more than anything else had yet.

Lord Matthias tore his formal coat off in one motion and dropped it. His body changed the way it always did, fast and total, bones reshaping under his skin, fur pushing through, the sound of it like something being pulled apart and put back together at speed. In seconds the man was gone and a wolf stood where he had been.

Massive. Gray. Coiled with fury.

Selene had seen her father's wolf form before at pack ceremonies and hunting demonstrations. She had always thought he was beautiful.

Right now she thought he was the most terrifying thing she had ever seen and she was so glad he was on her side.

He launched himself at three soldiers without hesitating.

His jaws closed on the first man's arm and she heard the bone give. The soldier's scream cut through everything. Her father threw him sideways and went for the next one and the soldiers fell back and Selene felt something loosen in her chest.

He was strong. He was so strong. He could stop this.

Then she saw the blade coming low.

One soldier, smaller than the rest, staying back and watching for an opening, swung under her father's guard. The silver edge kissed his flank and where it touched the fur sizzled and the smell hit her a second later, burning flesh and something sharper underneath it, and her father's howl tore out of him like something being ripped loose.

Isolde buried her face in Selene's side.

Selene couldn't look away.