KAELLEN
The sound of Ronan’s voice, sharp and urgent in the frozen corridor, was a welcome, brutal shock to the system. It was an anchor, yanking me back from the treacherous, intoxicating cliff-edge of Iris’s desire. The fog of lust that had clouded my mind, the frantic, primal need to sink into her, to claim her so completely that nothing and no one could ever come between us again—that fog receded, leaving behind the cold, sharp clarity of a commander. The cost of my momentary lapse in control was staring me in the face: a failing ward and a magical enemy at the gates.
"I'm on my way," I bit out, the words a low, harsh rasp. I didn't look back at Iris. I couldn't. If I saw her in that bed, her hair a dark halo on the furs, her body still flushed from my touch, her eyes wide with the same frustrated, desperate need that was clawing at my own insides, I would be lost. The storm-wraith would win, not by draining us, but by making us devour each other instead.
I slammed the door behind me, the heavy thud a final, brutal punctuation to the moment. Ronan was already striding down the corridor, his face grim, his breath fogging in the unnatural cold. "The eastern shield is the main barrier protecting the living quarters," he said without preamble. "If it falls, the wraith's energy will pour in. It won't just be cold anymore. It will start leaching life force directly from anyone inside. We'll have minutes, not hours."
We moved through the dark, silent stronghold, a place of shadows and groaning stone. The cold was a physical enemy, seeping through the walls, through the soles of my boots. But it was nothing compared to the cold that had settled in my gut the moment Ronan had called my name. It was the cold of my own failure. I had let my guard down. I had let my primal instincts, my possessive need for Iris, override my strategic mind. I had almost let myself be ruled by my d*ck.
When we reached the eastern corridor, the air was thick with the scent of ozone and a strange, metallic chill. The magical ward, usually a shimmering, invisible barrier of Lycan energy, was visible now—a flickering, pale blue curtain of light that was tearing in places, wisps of it breaking off like smoke in a gale. Beyond it, the swirling white of the storm-wraith was a solid, opaque wall of malevolent energy.
My commanders were already there, a handful of my most trusted Enforcers. Their faces were grim, their hands on their weapons, but they were useless here. This was not a fight of claws and steel. It was a fight of will, of magic, of life force.
"Report," I commanded, my voice the flat, hard tone of an Alpha, pushing down the chaotic mess of emotions still warring inside me.
"It started an hour ago, Alpha," Joric, my head Enforcer, said, his voice a low growl. He was a mountain of a man, his face a roadmap of old scars, but right now, he looked worried. "A slow drain. We thought it was just the cold. But in the last ten minutes, it's become a focused assault. It's… intelligent."
It was. I could feel it. A cold, calculating intelligence behind the storm, a focused will that was probing the ward for its weakest point. Marius. Or one of his allies. This was not a random act of nature. It was a targeted assassination attempt, using the very elements as a weapon.
"Can we reinforce it?" I asked, my mind already racing, calculating options, resources, weaknesses.
"We've been pouring our own energy into it," a younger Enforcer, Lena, said. Her face was pale, drawn. "But it's like trying to hold back the tide with a bucket. It's absorbing our power and using it to fuel its own assault."
That was the trap. The more we fought it, the stronger it became. The only way to win was not to fight its energy, but to cut it off at its source. And its source was somewhere in the heart of that magical blizzard.
"Get everyone back from the ward," I ordered. "Now. Form a secondary line fifty feet down the corridor. Don't touch the barrier. Don't expend any more energy on it."
My Enforcers looked at me, confusion warring with their ingrained obedience. "But, Alpha," Joric protested, "if it falls—"
"It will fall whether we pour our lives into it or not," I cut him off, my voice hard as steel. "My orders are not to defend it. They are to survive what comes next. Now move."
The command in my voice, the unshakeable authority of an Alpha King, finally cut through their hesitation. They moved back, their boots scuffing on the stone, forming a nervous, defensive line. Only Ronan remained by my side, his gaze fixed on the flickering ward.
"What are you going to do?" he asked, his voice low and quiet, for my ears only.
"The only thing I can," I said, my gaze locked on the tearing curtain of light. "I'm going to meet it."
"Kaelen, no," Ronan said, his hand clamping down on my arm like a vise. "That's suicide. It's a focused storm of pure anti-life energy. It will shred your spirit before it even touches your body."
"I'm not just going to walk into it," I said, shaking off his hand. "I'm going to give it something else to focus on. A bigger target. A stronger life force."
I closed my eyes, shutting out the sight of the failing ward, the worried faces of my men. I reached inside myself, past the king, past the commander, past the man who had just been moments away from claiming his bond-mate in a storm of mutual desire. I reached for the beast. For the raw, untamed power of the Lycan that lived in my blood, in my soul.
It responded with a eager, terrifying surge. Power, hot and violent, flooded my veins. My bones ached, my muscles spasmed. The change was not a full shift—I couldn't sustain that here, not without losing myself completely to the primal rage—but it was a partial, controlled transformation. My senses sharpened to an impossible degree. I could hear the frantic, panicked heartbeats of my men. I could smell Ronan’s fear, sharp and metallic. I could feel the intricate, deadly weave of the ward, every thread of energy, every point of strain. And I could feel the storm-wraith, not just as a cold presence, but as a conscious, malevolent will. It was hungry.
With a roar that was more animal than man, I slammed my fists against my own chest, a brutal, percussive blow that was not about pain, but about focus. I was gathering my own life force, my own Lycan energy, into a single, explosive point. A beacon. A challenge.
*Come and get me,* I projected, the thought not a word but a raw, primal scream of pure defiance. *I am the Alpha King of the Lycan Empire. I am the heart you want to stop. Face me.*
The effect was instantaneous. The storm-wraith, which had been methodically tearing at the ward, paused. The swirling white vortex outside the window seemed to solidify, to turn its full, malevolent attention toward me. The flickering blue ward didn't just tear; it shattered, exploding in a million points of pale blue light that died before they hit the floor.
A wave of cold, absolute and suffocating, washed down the corridor. It was a cold that wasn't just a temperature; it was an absence of everything. Of heat, of life, of hope. My men cried out, stumbling back, their faces pale with terror.
But the cold didn't touch me. It parted around me, flowing around the sphere of violent, red energy that now pulsed from my body in a steady, protective rhythm. I was the eye of the storm. The calm, furious center of its own destruction.
A shape began to form in the shattered doorway where the ward had been. It was not a solid creature, but a coalescence of the blizzard itself, a vaguely humanoid form made of swirling snow and shadow, with two points of cold, blue light where eyes should be. It had no face, but I could feel its focus, its malevolent glee, as it locked onto me.
I took a step forward, my body a coiled spring of raw power. "You want my life?" I snarled, my voice a deep, guttural sound that vibrated through the stone. "Come and take it."
The wraith flowed forward, not walking but gliding, leaving a trail of frost on the stone floor. It raised a hand, a limb of sharpened ice and shadow, and pointed it at me. A beam of pure, concentrated cold, dark and absolute, shot toward my chest.
I didn't dodge. I met it head-on.
I threw my own hands up, not to block it, but to absorb it. The beam of anti-life energy slammed into my palms, a force that felt like it would unmake me, atom by atom. It was a pain beyond the physical, a spiritual agony that threatened to tear my soul from my body. My vision went white, my muscles locked, and a silent scream tore from my throat.
But I didn't break. I held it. And I began to pull. Using the raw, furious energy of the Lycan, I drew the storm-wraith's power into myself. I was a lightning rod for its hate, its cold, its hunger. I was taking its poison into my own veins.
Through the blinding agony, I felt a new connection. A cool, silver current of power. Iris. The bond, which had been a muted, guilty hum of frustrated desire, now roared to life, a desperate, terrified surge of her own energy. She could feel what I was doing. She could feel the agony, the self-destruction. And she was trying to stop me, to pull me back, to shield me with her own magic.
*No!* I roared at her through the bond, the thought a sharp, violent command. *Stay back!*
I couldn't afford the distraction. I couldn't afford her soft, healing magic. I needed the fire of my own rage, the brutal, destructive force of the Lycan. I needed to be a monster to defeat a monster.
I poured more of my own life force into the pull, drawing the wraith further and further into me. The form in the doorway began to destabilize, its humanoid shape wavering, losing cohesion as I drained its power source. The beam of cold intensified, a final, desperate attempt to shatter me. My bones felt like they were turning to ice, my blood to slush. The pain was a white-hot supernova behind my eyes.
With a final, guttural roar that was torn from the deepest part of my soul, I gave one last, massive pull. I drew not just its energy, but its very essence, its cold, malevolent will, into my body.
The wraith gave a silent, spectral scream, a sound that was felt in the mind, not the ears. Its form collapsed, imploding in on itself with a violent, implosive rush of air. The beam of cold cut off. The shape in the doorway was gone.
The oppressive, suffocating cold vanished. The air in the corridor, though still chilled, was just air again. The howling of the wind outside died down to a normal winter gale.
I stood there for a moment, my body trembling, my breath coming in ragged, painful gasps. The red aura of my Lycan power faded, and the pain of what I had just done crashed down on me like a physical weight. Every muscle screamed. Every bone ached. The foreign, anti-life energy I had absorbed felt like a poison, a sludge of ice and shadow in my system that my own body was desperately trying to burn out.
My knees buckled, and I crashed to the floor, the impact jarring my entire body. I was on my hands and knees, gasping for air, shivering not from cold, but from the violent, toxic shock of the wraith's energy.
"Kaelen!" Ronan was at my side in an instant, his hands on my shoulders, his voice tight with a fear he rarely showed. "Gods, man, are you insane?"
I couldn't answer. I just knelt there, my body trembling, my mind a chaotic mess of pain and exhaustion. I had done it. I had broken the siege. I had saved my people.
But as I knelt there on the cold stone floor, shivering with a poison that was not my own, I was forced to confront a cost far higher than I had anticipated. In that moment, when I had needed to tap into the most raw, brutal, and honest part of myself, I hadn't thought of my kingdom, or my men, or my duty.
Through the haze of pain and exhaustion, the single, clear thought that had fueled my last, desperate surge of power was not of the Alpha King. It was of the man.
It was an image of her, pale and shivering in the bed, her body aching for a completion I had selfishly, cowardly denied her. The thought hadn't been *I must save my people.*
It had been *I must get back to her.*
The realization was a fresh, more devastating wound than any the wraith could have inflicted. I had faced a storm of pure anti-life energy, and the thing that had given me the strength to win was the one thing I was most terrified of: the depth of my own need for the woman I was bound to. And in that moment, I knew with a cold, terrifying certainty that Ronan was right. I was a coward. Not for facing the wraith, but for running from the truth of what she had become to me.