Chapter 141: The glamor falls

BRADLEY

"Get that door open," I shouted at the nearest sentinel. My voice came out rougher than I intended, scraping against the walls of the infirmary hall like gravel against stone. "Now. And I want the best of the best in here immediately. The Regent’s healer in the private ward is priority one. Nothing else matters."

They moved. Boots struck marble in perfect unison, a mechanical precision that usually calmed me. It didn’t now. My hands were still shaking from the realization, from the scent of blood that wasn’t mine drying against my jaw, from the look on that thing’s face when the glamour had finally slipped.

I turned back to the center of the hall.

She stood there in Kaelen Voss’s uniform, except it wasn’t Kaelen anymore. The cropped military hair had grown past her shoulders in thick, dark waves. The shoulders had narrowed. The jaw had softened into something angular and sharp, all cheekbones and bitter amusement. Willow. The witch who had been wearing another person’s skin like a coat.

She looked at the sentinels sealing more exits, at the guns drawn and pointed at her center mass, and sighed. "This sucks."

I stared at her. The confirmation hit harder than I expected. I had gambled on instinct back there, on the too-steady pulse and the perfect recitation of protocol. I had been right. The knowledge didn’t bring satisfaction. It brought a hollow terror that started somewhere in my chest and spread outward like frost across glass.

"I do not understand." I took a step closer, my boots sticking slightly to the blood drying on the tile. The scent of copper hung thick enough to taste. "What could you possibly have against the werewolf royal family? You were invited here to help."

She smiled then. It wasn’t the expression of someone cornered. It was the look of someone who had been waiting for exactly this question, who had rehearsed the answer until it tasted like scripture.

"If you royals fall," she said, and her voice had changed too, losing the military bark of Kaelen Voss and taking on something lighter, almost musical, "know that it all falls. Every crown built on someone else’s back eventually collapses under its own weight."

The words landed like a physical blow.

My breath stopped. The hall narrowed to a tunnel, the sounds of sentinels securing the perimeter fading to a distant buzz. I knew those words. I had heard them before, spoken in a different voice, in a different place, with a different kind of finality. The hung Omega. That had been what had been written in her letter.

She was quoting her.

She smiled as she did it.

Which meant this was the killer. We finally had it.

Something inside me tore loose. It wasn’t a decision. It wasn’t a strategy. It was an animal recognition that the thing standing in front of me had participated in that death, had probably orchestrated it, and now wore the memory of his last words like jewelry.

"You will beg for death," I whispered. My hands were curling into claws. I could feel the shift starting in my spine, the bones preparing to restructure themselves, the rage looking for an exit.

Willow tilted her head. "I doubt it, High Beta."

I didn’t remember moving. One moment I was standing ten feet away, and the next I was crossing the distance in a lunge that wasn’t entirely human. My jaw elongated. My teeth sharpened. The partial shift ripped through me with the violence of a gunshot, fur sprouting along my forearms, my nails becoming talons that could gut stone.

She raised a hand. A fuzzy light erupted from her palm that could only be described as what oil looked like in water, and a wall of force that hit me square in the chest. I should have flown backward. I should have crashed into the wall behind me and broken my spine. Instead, I let the berserker rage take the wheel.

I met the magic with my shoulder, feeling the sizzle of it burning through fur and skin, and I kept coming. My claws raked toward her face. She twisted, impossibly fast, and the uniform sleeve tore away in ribbons. Blood welled along her arm, black in the fluorescent light, and she hissed.

"Beta Bradley!" Madeline’s voice cut through the red haze.

I didn’t stop. I pivoted, tracking Willow as she danced back toward the supply cabinets, and I lunged again. This time lightning cracked between us, a jagged bolt of white that didn’t come from the witch in front of me. It came from behind me.

Willow threw up a shield. The lightning struck it and scattered into sparks that ate into the floor tiles. The smell of ozone mixed with blood and something sweeter, the lingering scent of the witch’s magic that reminded me of rot hidden beneath perfume.

"Contain her," Madeline snapped. She moved up beside me, her hands already glowing with that golden healing light, except now it looked different. Sharper. "Don’t kill her yet. We need answers."

I knew that, of course. Even if I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The partial shift had taken my voice, reduced my vocabulary to growls and the rhythm of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. But I understood the strategy. I could work with strategy even when the bloodlust screamed for me to rip out the witch’s throat and worry about the consequences later.

Willow glanced at the one sealed door being opened to lead people out, to prevent casualties and bring in more fighting sentinels. She was calculating escape routes. I could see it in the way her eyes tracked the windows, the ventilation shafts, the heavy barricades. She was trapped, and she knew it, but she wasn’t afraid. She was planning.

"Evacuate the non-combatants faster," I managed to force out, the words thick and misshapen around my lengthening canines. "Now."

The sentinels moved to comply, herding the Omegas and the healers toward a different exit that hadn’t been sealed yet. They went quietly, eyes wide, pressing against the walls to give us space. Good. I didn’t want collateral damage when this went fully sideways.

It went sideways immediately.

Willow struck first, not at me, but at Madeline. A lance of ice formed from the humidity in the air, sharp as a spear, and it flew toward the witch’s heart with the speed of a bullet. Madeline didn’t flinch. She didn’t dodge. She simply raised one hand, and the golden light wrapped around the ice, melting it into steam before it had crossed half the distance.

"Sloppy," Madeline murmured. "You’re eating through mana without a plan. It shows."

Willow’s smile flickered. "And I guess you’re using training. But let’s see which runs out first."

She moved. I moved faster.

I caught her on the side, my shoulder driving into her ribs with enough force to lift her off the ground. We crashed into a supply cart, sending metal instruments scattering across the floor like shrapnel. She grunted, the air leaving her lungs in a sharp exhale, and then her knee came up between my legs.

I was sure she wanted to pop my head right there and then. But she clearly needed some concentration, and one second of slacking off could render her dead or worse.

I twisted at the last second, taking the blow against my thigh instead of where she aimed. It still hurt. It hurt enough to make my vision white out at the edges, but the berserker state ate the pain and turned it into fuel. I backhanded her across the face. She spun with the blow, using the momentum to create distance, and her hand came up trailing green fire.

"Down!" Madeline warned.

I dropped. The fire passed over my head, close enough to singe the fur along my scalp, and it struck the wall behind me. The paint blistered. The drywall blackened. I rolled to my feet and charged again.

This time Madeline joined the assault properly. While I came from the front, all teeth, claws and brute force, she attacked from the flank with precision strikes. Lightning forked from her fingers, not the wild bolts she had used before but focused, surgical strikes that forced Willow to divide her attention. Wind followed, a concentrated blast that knocked the witch off balance just as she prepared to counter my charge.

I raked my claws across her back. She screamed, a high, furious sound, and whirled. Her hand connected with my chest, not a strike but a push, and magical force threw me backward. I hit the floor hard, sliding through the blood and debris, but I was already scrambling up before I stopped moving.

She was healing. I could see it. The wounds I had opened along her back and arm were knitting together, flesh crawling obscenely as it sealed itself. But Madeline had been right. The healing was tacky, visible, taking too much concentration. It wasn’t seamless. It wasn’t natural. It was the work of someone who had learned the technique from books, maybe rather than talent and bloodline, and it cost her.