Then Let's See Who Meets the Devil First Tonight (Chloe's POV)
I stood at the top of the second-floor staircase, looking down at the man who had once thought himself untouchable.
"Do you honestly think you deserve an answer?"
I turned away. Even one more glance at him felt like a waste of my eyes.
"Throw him out." I said. "He's dirtying my floor."
The Silver Elite posted outside pushed the doors open at once. Two warriors grabbed Caleb by the arms and hauled him off the ground.
"Aaargh——!"
The wrenched bones tore a scream out of him—raw, ugly, nothing like the composed Alpha he pretended to be. The great Alpha of Blood Moon Pack, who had always held himself above everyone else, was dragged out half-naked, black blood crusting at the corner of his mouth, and hurled through the iron doors on the north wing's ground floor.
Bang. The heavy metal gate slammed shut and locked behind him.
I turned and walked back to my room. The dark-gold emblem in my hand had gone cold again—just metal, smooth and indifferent—but I knew exactly what kind of man stood behind it, and exactly how much power that gave me.
Over the next two days, Blood Moon Pack descended into a panic unlike anything it had known before.
The main building had no running water, no food, no firewood for heat. The elders, long accustomed to every comfort, shivered and fumed in equal measure. Their complaints were loud enough to rattle the rafters.
Meanwhile, the newly appointed Co-Luna, desperate to win back the crowd, not only distributed the supplies she had borrowed at ruinous interest rates, but made a great public show of handing out fresh Wolfsbane antidotes to the frontier patrol teams.
"Luna." My Silver Guard lieutenant stepped forward and placed an intelligence report in my hands. "Selena, the fool, bought a batch of dirt-cheap counterfeit antidotes off the black market to plug the hole in her budget. They're laced with heavy doses of paralysis weed. The compound doesn't neutralize Wolfsbane at all—it accelerates the poisoning."
I read through the report, fingers tapping slowly against the desk.
"Should we quietly tip off the men on the front line?" he asked, lowering his voice.
"No."
I tossed the report into the fireplace. "Do you remember how those warriors cheered for their great Co-Luna when Selena came rolling back with cartload after cartload of supplies two days ago?"
"They made their choice. They can live—or not—with the consequences."
Without a cut deep enough to draw blood, these wolves, blind with devotion, would never understand what kind of creature they were worshipping.
As it turned out, the reckoning came faster than I had expected.
The third night.
Awoooo——!!!
Three long, piercing blasts from the emergency horn split the darkness over Blood Moon Pack's territory—the death toll signal, the highest-level alarm.
I pulled on my coat and walked to the floor-to-ceiling window in the north wing.
Across the grounds, torches blazed across the main square. A border patrol unit staggered back through the gates, every one of them drenched in blood. Behind them, ten bodies lay stretched out on the ground, each one covered with a white sheet.
Blood Moon Pack erupted.
I walked out of the north wing with my guards and took up a position in the shadows at the edge of the square.
What I saw in the torchlight was grotesque.
The ten dead warriors' flesh had rotted black, the skin split and weeping. Their veins had burst beneath the surface. Their faces were locked in expressions of pure agony—eyes bulging from their sockets, mouths frozen open in their final, silent screams.
"My son——!! My son——!!"
"How did this happen?! Weren't they given top-grade antidotes? How could they still die like this?!"
The families threw themselves over the bodies, their grief raw and savage.
The patrol captain—badly wounded himself—dropped to his knees in the middle of the square, his eyes burning red as he shouted his account: "The antidotes were poison. We ran into rogue wolves with venom blades. We took the antidotes and felt nothing at first—no pain, nothing. Then, not even ten minutes later, the toxin detonated all at once. Our men never got the chance to shift and heal. The venom burned straight through their hearts."
Boom.
Those words hit the crowd like a grenade.
Every grief-stricken, furious gaze in the square swung toward Selena, standing on the steps—sharp as blades, all of them landing at once.
"It was you! You're the one who bought the antidotes!"
"You liar! You said they were top-grade! You killed our brothers with fake medicine!"
Rage swept through the crowd in a wave. Some of the bereaved families had already begun to shift into half-wolf form, snarling as they surged toward the steps, ready to tear Selena apart with their bare hands.
Caleb—still wrapped in thick bandages across his chest—went pale and stepped in front of her, trying to invoke his Alpha's authority over the chaos: "Everyone, calm down. There is no way those antidotes were counterfeit. There has to be an explanation—"
"An explanation?! There are ten corpses right here, and you're telling us there's been a misunderstanding?!" The senior elder's voice shook with fury, his walking stick jabbing toward Selena's face. "She poisoned our finest warriors with defective drugs. She is not fit to be Co-Luna. Execute her—let her pay with her life!"
"Kill her! Kill her!"
The mob closed in around the two of them on the steps.
Selena completely fell apart.
She looked out at the crowd below—hundreds of eyes glowing with bloodlust, every one of them wanting to tear her open—and her face drained of all color. Her whole body was shaking.
Then, without warning, she dropped.
Both knees hit the stone steps with a crack.
"It wasn't me! I swear it wasn't me!"
She wept—fragile, desperate, almost convincing. And then she flung her arm out and pointed directly at me, where I stood in the shadows at the edge of the square.
"It was her! It was Chloe!"
Selena's voice cracked into a shriek.
"I bought the highest-quality herbs available! But Chloe used the Silver Pack's authority to strangle our budget, and then she bribed the black-market dealers to swap the real antidotes for fakes during transport! She's never forgiven Alpha for naming me Co-Luna—she hates this entire Pack! She did this deliberately—she wanted to destroy us all as her revenge!"
One second of absolute silence.
Then the square detonated.
"That is filth!" Tara exploded behind me, already lunging forward to rip that lying mouth off Selena's face—I caught her arm and pulled her back.
"Luna, she's framing you! We can't just let her bury you in this!" Tara was nearly in tears.
Blood Moon Pack had already been simmering with resentment toward me over the past two days of cut water and cut food. Selena's lie was a lit match thrown into a room full of gas. The bereaved families—already past reason—latched on instantly, desperate for somewhere to put their pain.
"It's the Wolfless! That vicious woman killed my husband!"
"She starved us—now she's killing us! She was never fit to be our Luna!"
"Burn her! Burn the Wolfless witch—make her pay for our brothers!"
The mob turned as one. Hundreds of them—torches raised, eyes blazing red—surged toward the north wing, screaming.
On the steps, Caleb watched the tide roll toward me. Something complicated moved behind his eyes for just a moment.
Then he did nothing.
To protect Selena. To protect the last shred of his pathetic Alpha pride. He stood there and silently ratified every word of her lie, and let the mob push me toward the fire.
"Fall back to the north wing." I gave the order.
The Silver Elite closed around me and we withdrew fast, the gate crashing shut at our backs.
An instant later, a storm of torches, rocks, and burning bottles rained against the bulletproof glass of the north wing—relentless, frantic, each impact another snarl from the crowd outside.
"Come out, you murderer!"
"Burn her! Burn the bitch alive!"
They howled and cursed, a pack of animals that had lost every last scrap of reason.
"Luna, they've lost their minds." My commander's hand closed around his sword hilt. "Do we put them down?"
I stood at the window, my gaze cutting through the firelight to where Selena stood on the steps, far across the square.
"Not yet."
Slowly, I reached into the inside lining of my coat and drew out a single sheet of paper. A faint, unmistakable smell of blood clung to it.
It was the Blood Pact collection notice—delivered express from the underground lending house just tonight—stamped in Selena's own bloody thumbprint.
Want to burn me alive?
I watched the screaming mob below.
Then let's see who meets the devil first tonight.
