Chapter 174 CHAPTER 174

Chapter 174 CHAPTER 174
HUNTER'S POV

Every part of my body was screaming at me to lie down and die.

Ace was barely holding on, his breathing shallow, his fur matted with blood that was ours and blood that wasn't. I couldn't tell which wounds were healing and which had given up trying.

But I was standing. Somehow.

Thane was beside me, equally wrecked, his massive frame swaying as he surveyed the field. We'd just ripped apart the most powerful creature either of us had ever faced and I couldn't even feel the satisfaction of it because the bond was silent.

Cold. Empty.
Like someone had scooped out the warmth from inside my chest and left a hole.

"Incoming," Stephan growled in my head, using that power I'd taught him to use to alert me and sure enough, another wolf was rushing at me, healthier than us by a far chance.

But instead of us fighting individually, we went at him together.

I caught his shoulder and Thane's paw dug into his neck.

Slowly, his howl died down.

Our men were still fighting but we just stood, breathing in, seeking the connection that had become a lifeline to us for months now.

I didn't know why Cassie cut us off. I didn't know if she was hurt, dying, or already gone and the only reason I wasn't losing my mind was because I could still see Red across the field, standing over Zyrell's body.

She was alive. That would have to be enough until I could reach her.

But first, an army was swarming around us from the ridge.

When Caleb's warning rippled through the link, every wolf on our side tensed. I'd turned my back and saw them, hundreds of wolves in a formation so tight it could only mean one thing.

More fighting.

Ace growled inside me, a pitiful sound compared to what he usually produced but still defiant. Still ready to die fighting.

Afterall, why win the biggest war only to die from a regular one?

We must fight.

But then the wolf at the front howled.

And my legs nearly gave out for a different reason.

"Alpha Roman?" I breathed, exhaustion warring with tentative relief inside me.

I knew that howl. I'd heard it at the Council meeting, the same meeting where I'd sat beside a nervous, mid-ranked Alpha who was watching his Pack's territory dispute get dismissed by corrupt councillors who had already been paid off by his opponent.

I'd leaned over to him during a recess and told him what I knew. That the council member judging his case had taken a bribe. That I had proof and that if he wanted justice, he'd have to find it outside these walls because the system was designed to fail wolves like him.

He'd looked at me with wide eyes and asked why I was helping him.

"Because someone should," I'd said. And then I'd slipped him the documents my spy ring had gathered, enough evidence to overturn his case without the council's hindrance.

I didn't think much of it afterwards. That was just what I did, what Blood Moon was built on, helping wolves the system had abandoned.

Alpha Roman's army poured down the ridge and I watched, stunned, as they crashed into the remaining Council wolves from behind. Fresh, rested, furious, they tore through the opposition like a blade through wet cloth.

Stephan was equally exhausted and relieved as I was and we stood next to each other and watched as the war unfolded. I feared that if I got back in there, someone might accidentally cut me so deeply that I would bleed to death because I was barely healing.

But it wasn't just Roman's Pack. Behind his wolves came others, Packs I recognised from the Council, smaller Packs that had stayed silent during the war, waiting to see which way the wind blew.

The wind had blown and they were here.

The Council wolves, already exhausted from fighting our depleted forces, crumbled under the fresh assault. Some surrendered, dropping to their bellies, throats exposed. Others ran. A few fought to the death because their pride wouldn't allow anything else, but they were outnumbered now and it was over in minutes.

When the last snarl faded and the field went quiet, I shifted back to human form and nearly collapsed from the pain of it. Everything hurt in ways I didn't have names for.

Alpha Roman shifted too. He was younger than me, stocky, with a scar across his nose that he'd had since I first met him. He walked toward me with purpose and when he reached me, he did something I wasn't prepared for.

He dropped to one knee.

Behind him, one by one, the Alphas who had followed him did the same.

"Alpha Hunter," Roman said, his voice carrying across the silent field. "We came because you helped us when no one else would. Every wolf here owes you a debt. We heard Zyrell was attacking and we couldn't sit by and watch the one person who ever gave a damn about wolves like us fight alone."

I stared at him, then at the sea of wolves kneeling behind him, and something I wasn't ready for climbed up my throat and sat there, burning.

These weren't my Pack. They weren't Blood Moon. They were wolves from different Packs, different territories, different lives, and they came because years ago, I'd slipped a document to a scared Alpha during a council recess.

"Get up," I said, my voice rough. "All of you. This isn't a hierarchy, it's an alliance."

Roman smiled and stood. "We'll be back in a week to discuss the way forward. Whatever you're building here, we want in."

He gripped my forearm, the traditional Alpha greeting between equals, and I returned it because I didn't trust my voice to do anything else.

They left the way they came, organised and purposeful, carrying their wounded, leaving behind a field that was finally, mercifully quiet.

Around me, wolves were shifting back. Some were crying and some laughing in that broken way people do when they've survived something that should have killed them. Red Moon and Blood Moon wolves embracing each other like the divisions between them had been burned away in the fighting.

I should have felt it. The victory. The relief. The pride of surviving the worst night of our existence.

But all I felt was fear.

Because the bond was still silent.

I walked across the field, stepping over bodies and debris, ignoring the wolves who called my name, ignoring Liam who tried to grab my arm and check my wounds.

I had to find her.

She was exactly where I'd last seen her, kneeling beside Zyrell's body, shifted back to human form, naked and covered in blood that could have been anyone's.

"Cassie," I said, dropping to my knees in front of her.

She looked up at me and I searched her eyes for the thing that was always there, that spark, that warmth, the part of her that saw me and made me feel like I existed for the first time in my life.

She was looking at me. She could see me. She could hear me.

But the connection between us was gone. Not stretched, not faint. Gone.

I reached for the bond and my hand closed around nothing.

"I can't feel you," she whispered, and her voice cracked on the last word. "I disconnected to fight her and now I can't undo it."

Her tears broke me further.

The field was celebrating around us. Wolves howling in victory, the dawn breaking gold across a sky that had been black for hours.

And I knelt there in front of the woman I loved, holding her face in my bloody hands, feeling absolutely nothing through the bond that was supposed to connect us for life.

This was supposed to be the moment we won.

It didn't feel like winning.