Chapter 28: The Battle

Selene’s POV

They were ready to head into battle.

Tessa and Kael had finished plotting the strategy. Every detail was mapped out, every angle covered.

Tessa stepped out and returned within seconds, carrying Lucian’s armour ... fully polished and gleaming under the light. I studied it carefully. It was sophisticated, the kind of armour built to bounce back bullets and arrows both. Lucian was going to be protected from every angle.

"Here’s your armour, Alpha," Tessa said, holding it out to him.

"Thank you, Tessa. Set it down," he replied.

Always performing. That was Tessa ... never missing a chance to make an impression.

Beta Kael stepped out and retrieved his own armour shortly after. I watched them and couldn’t shake the thought ... if this enemy was so minor, why did the king need to ride out and fight them himself? It didn’t sit right with me. It didn’t feel necessary.

But Lucian was never the type to sit still. He lived for battle. Always had.

Tessa slipped out of his room too. I wasn’t sure if she was going with them. She had the battle skills ... I’d heard that much from the breeders ... but I couldn’t imagine they’d take her into an actual war.

Then it was just me and Lucian, alone in his room.

"Is it a must that you go fight this enemy?" I asked him.

He was fastening his armour as he answered, not even pausing to look at me.

"I’m the Alpha. It’s my duty. My responsibility."

His tone left no room for argument. He sounded like the decision had already been carved in stone long before I ever opened my mouth.

He was too attached to responsibility. So consumed by it that he never once stopped to think about himself ... about his own safety ... when he walked into battle.

"What if they’ve planned an ambush on your way there? Anything could happen," I said, pressing on even though I already knew it was hopeless. The least I could do was try.

By the time I finished speaking, he was already kitted up. Fully armoured. Fully ready.

He reached out and held my hand. "I’ll be back. Okay?"

"I owe you my life," I said. "Let me go with you."

"No." He released my hand ... which was the last thing I wanted. "It’s too risky."

I stood there as he walked out, the weight in my chest heavier than I wanted to admit. Deep down, I hoped to see him again. But I couldn’t shake the fear ... the quiet, gnawing terror that something tragic might happen before that chance came.

I followed him outside. And that’s when I saw her.

Tessa. Fully dressed for war. Armoured up and ready.

What the fuck.

How was she going and I wasn’t?

"Wolves! For the love of Winterwood!" Lucian called out, his voice carrying over the entire yard.

"For the love of Winterwood!" the soldiers thundered back. The sound shook the air around me.

They loaded into the vehicles. Lucian and Kael climbed into one with Tessa. The rest piled into the armoured truck. And just like that, they were gone.

I didn’t think twice.

I grabbed whatever clothes I could find and disguised myself fast. I wasn’t about to leave Lucian out there on his own. If he died, I was the one who would have to carry that ... carry everything. I wasn’t willing to find out what that felt like.

Everyone had retreated into their homes even though it wasn’t dark yet. I slipped out under my disguise. It was holding up well enough.

By the time I made it out, they were already twenty minutes ahead of me.

I spotted a bike parked nearby, belonging to a member of a neighbouring territory within Winterwood. He didn’t recognise me under the disguise.

"Take me close to the Alpha and his army," I said.

"Isn’t that dangerous?" he asked.

"That’s why I said close."

"Who are you? How am I sure you’re not a..."

"I belong to Winterwood too," I cut him off. "Are you taking me or not?"

He agreed. We drove far enough back that we stayed out of their sightline.

The route led us across Winterwood’s borders, deep into a stretch of land that the Morvaine maps marked as uninhabited ... unoccupied. A barren, desert-like expanse where no living soul was supposed to exist.

But rogues never cared much for what was supposed to be.

We arrived not long after they did. The bike man dropped me close to the site and immediately turned back without a word. I ran the rest of the way on foot.

I pressed myself behind a corner and watched.

The enemy didn’t wait for Winterwood’s soldiers to settle in. They launched their attack the second they arrived ... a barrage that flooded the space instantly. Shootings. Missiles. Within two seconds, the entire area was thick with tear gas.

So much for a minor enemy.

But Winterwood had come prepared. They returned fire three times as hard. The rogue wolves began dropping under the soldiers’ relentless shots. In minutes, half of them were already down ... injured, grounded, defeated.

The scene was gory before I could fully process what I was watching.

Then Lucian moved.

He came out and drove straight for their leader, cutting through everyone in his path. He was a brutal, precise fighter. Resilient in a way that was almost frightening to witness ... and still, somehow, he looked good doing it.

Tessa held the line with her guns. Kael pushed deep into the battlefield. Between the three of them and the soldiers, the rogue wolves ... sixty-three of them, I counted ... never stood a real chance.

Bombs. Grenades. Gunfire that didn’t stop.

One by one, they fell.

Until only two were left, kneeling on the ground before Lucian, who stood over them like a wall.

"You rogue cursed wolves," he spat, his voice raw with fury. "You wanted a bite of something you can’t handle!"

Silence pressed down on everything. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

One of the kneeling wolves opened his mouth to speak. Lucian smacked him across the face with the gun before a single word left his lips.

He hit the other one harder.

"Let this serve as a lesson to anyone who ever tries to double cross me or Winterwood." He turned and swept his gaze over his soldiers. Then he grabbed one of the rogue wolves by the chin, forcing him to look up. "Look at yourself. You’re down. Defeated. Nowhere to run."

"Please ... have mercy," the other one wept, his voice cracking under the weight of it.

Lucian laughed.

My stomach dropped.

I already knew what that laugh meant.

He raised his gun.

I wanted to rush out and stop him. The urge burned through me like fire. But I caught myself ... because the second Lucian saw me here, at this war zone, after he’d told me to stay behind, I’d be in more trouble than either of those wolves.

Fuck.

"Mercy?" Lucian said, his voice dropping low and cold. "You know me too well to have crossed me like this. You just wanted to see what I’d do." He cocked the gun. "Now you’ll go join your fathers."

"No ... no, Lucian..." I whispered it under my breath, the sound swallowed up before it could reach anyone.

He fired.

One shot. Then another. Clean, deliberate, final.

I couldn’t watch. I turned away and covered my eyes and ears until the echo faded.

When I finally gathered the courage to look back at his face, the same Lucian I’d seen the day I first arrived in Winterwood stared back at me. That fierce, cold Alpha ... the one I’d almost let myself forget existed ... was standing right there, the bodies of two wolves at his feet.

There was no hesitation in his posture. No flicker of doubt.

He turned, said nothing, and they all loaded back into the vehicles and headed for Winterwood.

Not one face among the soldiers, Kael, or Tessa carried a trace of remorse. No weight. No softness. They had been bred in cruelty, every last one of them ... and I had been living among them this whole time.

It was a flawless victory.

But I knew what I knew. More was coming for Winterwood ... something that would demand far more than armour and physical strength to survive.