I Will Strip Them to the Bone (Chloe's POV)
I settled Tara onto the bed.
Her back had been torn open to the bone.
I cut away the fabric that had dried and bonded to her wounds, retrieved the Silver Pack's finest Snow Lotus salve from the supply cabinet, and applied it with careful hands.
As I listened to the delirious sounds she made when the pain crested beyond bearing, the last trace of warmth in my eyes went cold and stayed there. Six years of devotion — and all it had purchased was a beast's unbridled cruelty.
I rose, pushed open the door, and faced the Silver Guard commander stationed outside.
"Issue a Supreme Directive in the name of Silver Pack."
The commander dropped to one knee. "Your orders, Luna!"
"Operation Permafrost. Full activation."
I looked past him at the main hall blazing with light in the darkness below — that building that wore prosperity like a mask — and spoke without a tremor in my voice:
"First: drain every circulating account held by Blood Moon Pack before dawn. Every gold coin, every banknote bearing the Silver Merchant Guild's mark — pulled out. Freeze all their credit lines at the Apothecary Market."
"Second: cut off the underground water infrastructure we funded and built within their territory. Lock down every fuel store, every winter grain reserve, every weapons cache."
"When the sun rises tomorrow, I want these parasites — these leeches who've been feeding off me for years — unable to heat a single cup of water. Unable to find a single match to warm themselves."
The commander drove his fist hard against his breastplate and bowed his head low. "As you command! The silver claws will tear out the throats of every last ingrate!"
That night, a biting wind swept in and the season's first blizzard arrived without warning, driving the temperature well below freezing.
By morning I was seated at the fireplace, a cup of tea warming my hands. The wood popped quietly in the hearth.
Rapid footsteps sounded outside the door. The Silver Guard adjutant responsible for monitoring the main hall entered, his eyes alight with barely contained glee.
"Luna, you really should see the state of those leeches over there."He dropped to one knee and delivered his report with evident relish.
According to his informants, Selena had been jolted awake by the cold in the master bedroom. The entire packhouse had gone frigid — no trace of floor heating, no residual warmth anywhere, cold as a tomb. The woman had stormed out barefoot in a fury, screaming at the servants for hot water and roasted venison.
The servants, lips already turning blue, had wept as they told her: the firewood was gone, the water lines were dry, and the kitchen stores had been stripped to the last grain.
I raised my teacup and took a small sip, watching the snow lash against the window. A thin smile crossed my lips. "I imagine she assumed that even with the treasury empty, she could run a tab with the Merchant Guild."
"Exactly what she thought!" The adjutant gave a short, cold laugh. "But when the servants told her the Silver Guild had pulled every coin overnight, the water valves were sealed, and Silver Pack elites were standing outside the lumber stores with drawn swords — she went white as a sheet. Word is Selena grabbed a coat and ran straight for the Council Hall."
I set down my cup and tapped the table lightly with one finger. "Council Hall must be quite the scene right now."
"Absolute chaos." The adjutant struggled to keep a straight face. "Every elder who's ever sat high and lived like royalty — all of them hunched in their chairs, wrapped in whatever moth-eaten blankets and old quilts they could scavenge, shaking so hard their teeth rattled. Frost on their beards."
"The Third Elder went for Selena like a starved dog, jabbing his finger in her face, demanding to know how — without your funding — they couldn't even get a bowl of hot soup. The Second Elder smashed his teacup and called her a fool who'd grabbed at the throne without the first idea how to hold it together."
I closed my eyes and let the image take shape — a room full of them tearing into each other.
Selena, with her Gamma status, would have tried to use her rank to cow those old wolves. She'd have attempted to pin the blame for the missing supplies on me, hoping to pressure the Council into forcing my hand.
"You anticipated every move, Luna." The adjutant's smile sharpened. "But with Silver warriors deployed in full defensive formation outside the north wing, they don't have the nerve to come anywhere near you. These wolves — so proud of their pure bloodlines — the moment your gold stopped propping up their dignity, they ripped off the civilized veneer and became exactly what they are. Animals fighting over scraps."
I dismissed him with a wave.
Then I turned back to the window and, through the reinforced glass, watched the chaos unfolding in the snow-swept main hall.
This was only the beginning. The cruelest blade is the slow one — the gradual stripping away of every comfort they'd taken for granted. I intended to do this carefully. Methodically. To peel back everything they had, layer by layer, until they understood what genuine despair felt like.
Then —
"ROOAARRR——!!!"
A roar of pure, annihilating rage exploded from the direction of the Alpha's suite — a sound so savage it bore no resemblance to a wolf's howl. It was something rawer, something that carried the weight of destruction itself. Even from a hundred meters away, the shockwave of that feral pressure rattled the glass throughout the north wing.
Then a crash. A massive, splintering boom.
The double doors on the second floor of the main hall didn't swing open — they were blown apart. Fragments of wood flew like shrapnel and punched through the corridor windows.
Caleb came through the wreckage like something that had discarded reason entirely. His eyes were a burning, bloodshot crimson. His shirt had split across the shoulders, the fabric giving way under the violent swell of muscle beneath. His skin had flushed an alarming, fever-dark red — the kind of heat that radiates off a body pushed far beyond its limits.
Even from inside the room, I could smell it—that Cedar scent bleeding through the air, thick enough to choke on. It was nothing like the cool, steadying presence it usually carried. Now it was something else entirely: venomous, suffocating, coiling with barely contained rage.
Last night, I had severed the Mate bond. His soul had recoiled from that severance like a wound. And now, piled on top of that — a broken territory, no water, no food, no loyalty, no anchor.
Under the compounding weight of those extremes, Caleb had shattered.
His Rut had arrived — not gradually, but in its most lethal, most savage form, detonated ahead of time by everything I had done to him.
An Alpha in Rut without his fated mate to anchor him is nothing more than a killing machine. He stood in the snow, locked onto the north wing with those bloodshot eyes, breath tearing in and out of his chest in deep, guttural rasps.
"Chloe——"
I could read his lips even through the driving snow. Reason was gone. What remained was nothing but a single, primal, all-consuming drive — claim his fated mate, mark her, crush every trace of resistance out of her.
"ROOAARRR!!!"
In one convulsive instant, he shifted. The massive black wolf that replaced him seemed to devour the light around it. Then it launched — a streak of black fury through the blizzard, every muscle driving toward the north wing where I stood —
Straight at me.
