Chapter 80: Eighty: A Vow of Blood

Eighty: A Vow of Blood

Ronald's POV

The world smelled of smoke, silver, and her.

"Mara."

I forced my eyes open, lungs dragging in air like broken glass. The ground beneath me was scorched, the night still thick with the stench of burned fur and blood. The battle was over but not finished.

“Mara!” My voice cracked, torn between a roar and a plea.

“Alpha, stop!” Lucas’s hands pressed down on my shoulder, trying to hold me still. “You’re bleeding out, don’t move.”

“She’s gone.” My voice rasped out the words I didn’t want to believe. “They took her.”

Lucas’s jaw tightened. “We’ll find her, but not if you die here.”

I shoved his hands away, staggering to my feet. Pain tore through my ribs, white-hot, where the silver blades had bitten deep.

My wolf snarled beneath the surface, furious, wounded, alive.

“She’s still breathing,” I said. “I can feel it.”

Lucas looked away, as if afraid to argue. Around us, the surviving warriors shifted uneasily, bloodied, shaken, and waiting.

The ground was littered with bodies, half-buried in the mud. My warriors. Her attackers. All dead. All except the ones who had dragged her away.

I clenched my fists, ignoring the tremor in them. “They’re heading to the Council’s keep.”

“Ronald..”

I turned on him, eyes burning gold. “Say it again, and I swear I’ll tear your throat out.”

Lucas’s voice softened, low and steady. “You won’t make it there if you keep pushing. You’re poisoned. The silver’s still in your veins.”

“Then I’ll bleed it out.”

“You can’t fight the Council like this.”

I stepped closer until we were almost nose to nose. “If she dies, I die. That is the bond.”

He didn’t flinch. But something in his eyes cracked, a quiet understanding, a resignation.

“You were always going to chase her,” he murmured.

“I was born to.”

For a heartbeat, everything was still. The wind shifted, carrying the faintest echo, a pulse through the air, through the pack-bond that connected us all.

My wolf howled inside me, the sound raw and ancient, reverberating through the trees and into the hearts of every wolf still standing.

The others stiffened. Heads bowed. Their own wolves stirred in answer, instinct bending them toward mine.

“Alpha,” one of the warriors whispered. “We ride?”

I looked toward the horizon. The sky was dark, the edges trembling with red light. “We ride.”

Lucas sighed, shaking his head, but grabbed his weapon all the same. “Then let’s make it worth dying for.”

I managed a grim smile. “We’re not dying today.”

The wolves gathered, bloodied, limping, but ready. I mounted my horse, pain screaming through every muscle, but the moment I lifted my gaze to the distance, the scent hit me again: smoke, iron, and faint traces of her blood.

The trail to the fortress.

Every step forward hurts. Every breath scraped. But I kept moving, because I couldn’t stop.

“She’s strong,” Lucas said quietly, riding beside me. “She’ll fight.”

“She’ll try,” I muttered. “But they’ll come for her mind first. That’s what the Council does. They break what they fear.”

“And what do they fear in her?”

“The truth,” I said. “And me.”

Silence followed, broken only by the pounding of hooves.

Hours bled into night. The forest thinned, revealing jagged peaks and distant towers carved against the sky. The Council’s fortress, its silhouette rising like a blade.

My wolf bristled, teeth bared.

Then I saw it…the moon.

It shouldn’t have been that high yet. But it hung above the fortress, swollen and red, light spilling across the land like spilled blood.

Lucas swore softly. “The Blood Moon… it’s early.”

I stared up at it, the crimson glow washing over us, turning armor and skin alike to the color of war.

“She doesn’t have time,” I whispered.

The pack fell silent, all eyes lifting to the sky.

The air grew heavy, charged, as if the earth itself knew what was coming.

My wolf rose inside me, howling so loud the trees trembled, and somewhere, faint but real, I felt her heartbeat answer.

Mara.

The vow formed in my chest like fire.

“I’m coming for you,” I said that night. “And I’ll burn their walls to ash if they touch you again.”

The Blood Moon flared brighter, bleeding across the clouds.

And under that cursed light, we rode toward the fortress, toward war.