Chapter 174 You're their home
Chapter 174 You're their home
Lyric led us past a heavy, hanging curtain made of stitched-together canvas truck tarps. Behind it, the cavern widened into a cluttered workshop that looked like a graveyard for human military tech. Broken drone wings hung from the stone rafters; stripped engine blocks of old scout-bikes sat on wooden pallets like hollow ribcages, and the far wall was dominated by a massive, vibrating generator that humed a low, rhythmic bass.
Working in the shadow of the generator, illuminated by a single, harsh halogen work-lamp, was a man.
He was massive,easily matching Rayder’s human height,but he moved with a slow, heavy deliberation that lacked the effortless, spring-loaded grace of an active Lycan. He wore grease-stained canvas overalls, the sleeves torn off to reveal arms mapped with horrific, thick white scars.
But it was his face that made me stop, my hand tightening instinctively on the leather of my jacket.
The left side of his face and neck was a landscape of ruined, shiny scar tissue,the unmistakable, rough branding of a silver-injected weapon. A thick linen bandage was wrapped tightly around his throat, held in place by dirty leather straps. His left eye was clouded over, a pale, milky blue, but his right eye,a deep, ancient gold flickered up as our boots clicked against the stone.
"He doesn't talk much," Lyric said, her rough voice dropping into a rare, quiet solemnity as she stepped up to the workbench. She reached out, her dirty hand resting gently on the giant’s unscarred shoulder. "The silver didn't just take his skin, Selene. It took his vocal cords. And his wolf."
Rayder took a slow, heavy step forward, his golden eyes widening as he stared at the scarred giant. The air in the cavern instantly thickened with the silent, vibrating frequency of two royal bloodlines meeting in the dark.
"Julian," Rayder breathed, his voice a low, reverent rumble. "The Crown Prince of the West."
The giant slowly set down a heavy iron wrench, the metal clinking sharply against the steel workbench. He didn't bow. He didn't offer a warrior's salute. He simply stood up to his full height, his broad chest rising and falling beneath his grease-stained overalls. He looked at Rayder, then his golden eye shifted to me, and finally down to the sleeping toddler tucked securely against my chest.
A faint, incredibly sad smile touched the unscarred side of his mouth. He nodded once—a silent, dignified acknowledgment of a brother Alpha.
"The Western council told the world he died holding the southern pass during the Redmoon purge," Lyric said, leaning against the edge of the workbench, her sarcastic facade completely gone. "They built a massive marble monument to him in the western capital. They carved his name in gold. But they didn't search the ditches for him. Kael and I found him three miles from the pass, face-down in a frozen creek, his blood turning the ice black. The silver weapon my father's vanguard used on him... it didn't just poison him. It burned his internal pack link. It severed his connection to the moon."
I felt a cold chill run straight down my spine. For a Lycan, losing your wolf wasn't just a physical injury; it was a spiritual execution. It was living as a ghost in your own skin, hearing the wind but never being able to run with it again.
"They left you to rot," Rayder said, his large fists clenching at his sides, his jaw tight with a cold, protective fury. "Your own brothers knew you were alive, didn't they?"
Julian didn't answer. He simply reached over to a small, grease-stained notepad on the workbench, picked up a stubby pencil, and wrote three words in a thick, heavy scrawl:
They checked first.
The silent confession hung in the damp air of the cave like smoke.
"Garrick and his younger brother, Lucan, were the ones who led the search party," Lyric explained, her voice tight. "They found Julian lying in that creek. They saw that the silver had burned out his wolf. An Alpha who cannot shift, an Alpha who cannot project his command frequency to the pack... to the old Western court, that’s worse than a corpse. It’s an embarrassment. So they took his sword, took his signet ring, and left him to the crows so they could go home and start planning their own coronation."
She spat onto the dirt floor of the cave, her gray eyes burning with the old, familiar hatred of the patriarchal courts that had broken us both. "But the old man didn't die when they wanted him to. The old Alpha lived for three more years, holding the territory together by sheer spite, waiting for his crown prince to return. Now that the old man is finally in the ground, Garrick and Lucan are burning the West to the ground trying to steal the seat."
Rayder walked over to the workbench, standing directly in front of the scarred prince. Despite the physical differences,Rayder in his pristine, expensive wool sweater, and Julian in his greasy rags,they looked like two matching bookends of a violent history.
"Your people are dying, Julian," Rayder said, his deep voice carrying the heavy, administrative gravity of the Southern court. "The southern farmlands are being looted by your brothers' factions. The integration grids we built are being dismantled for scrap metal. If you don't stand up, if you don't show the West that their true prince is still breathing, there won't be a Western territory left to save."
Julian slowly shook his head. He pointed to his scarred throat, then to his chest, before writing on the pad again:
A wolf without a pack is just a dog. I have no voice.
"You don't need a voice to lead, Julian," I said, stepping forward until I was standing beside Rayder. I shifted Winter’s weight to my hip, the toddler letting out a soft, sleeping sigh against my collarbone. "I spent four years wearing a dead boy's armor. I didn't have a voice—I had to whisper in the dark, pretending to be a phantom named Cyrus just to save my own life. I thought my identity was gone. I thought the girl named Selene had died in the ashes of the North."
Julian looked at me, his single golden eye tracking the silver-lined dagger in my boot, then moving up to the fierce, unyielding set of my jaw.
"But the name didn't make me," I whispered, leaning closer. "The title didn't make me. The people didn't follow the armor, Julian. They followed the person who refused to let them freeze. Your wolf might be gone, but the blood in your veins is still the blood of the West. You are their home."