Chapter 222 – Our Help

Chapter 222 – Our Help

Keal

It's was late evening. The sky paint in orange. Silvermoon was a battlefield was a map of ruin...blackened tents, broken banners, blood dark on the stones.

Men and women moved like ghosts, some dragging wounded, some standing so still they might already be dead.

Liora fell near Lucian as the mark of his rune pulse.

He crouched beside her like a man who had fallen and could not stand. His chest rose and fell in ragged gasps.

The rune on his skin pulsed slow and steady, a dim, ugly heart inside him. The magic that burned in him had a sound like teeth grinding stone. It felt to me like a hand inside my chest ... cold, hungry.

Storm was concerned, his breath a rumble in my skull. He is burning her. He is stealing her powers, he said. We cut the wolf and the poison together.

My hands were sticky with blood I did not remember spilling. My nails bit into my palms. I tasted copper and grit. I wanted to kill Lucian. I wanted to tear him open and tear the dark inside him so she would be free.

He had lied. He had killed. He had betrayed my sister and made my mate taken away from me. He had helped Marcus overpowered us.

Yet when Lucian looked up at me, something like shame and desperation blurred his face. His silver eyes were not the steady things I knew; they were raw. He looked, for a moment, smaller than the man I had fought against.

“Keal,” he said in a voice that was almost not his. “Help me. He is stronger than I thought. Marcus... he marked me deep. If I do not break him, he will break her. He will take her power. And she will... ”

“Why should I help you?” I asked. My voice came out rough and small. I felt older than the skin I wore. I felt empty with everything pushed out. “You lied to my face. You killed whats dare to me. You burned us.”

Lucian’s lips trembled. He swallowed and answered low, “You think I wanted any of this? Do you think I would drag her into this if I could choose? Marcus is more than the uncle i thought. He is my father. He bound me since I was born. He fed my hate. He fed my plans with lies. But now he wants Liora’s blood... her power. He bever told me that we'll be using my mate. I followed because I thought.. I we were on the right—”

“Right?” Storm’s voice thundered in me. You were of evil that feeds the wolf. And you thought its right.

Ronan stood a little to the side, bandage loose at his arm. His jaw worked. He looked at me. Then at Lucian. “If he is telling the truth, Marcus didn’t just use him... he made him. He made him into a weapon.”

Elias spat into the dust. “Weapons can be turned.”

I wanted to burn his words with flame. None of it fixed what had been done. None of it brought Derek back. None of it brought back Elara. But I am Alpha. My anger cannot be law alone. My pack still looks to me. They will break if I drive us on blind hate.

I watched Liora. She lay pale as ice, her white hair now black with ash. The mark on her throat gleamed faint silver, like a single star in a dark sky. Snowfall’s presence was quiet in my bones, a thread of wool and steel. She will burn with him or save him, Snowfall said, low and clear. She chooses now.

Liora’s eyes opened slowly. The light inside them was not the same as before. She sat up, small and fierce, like a blade someone had sharpened on their own skin. Her voice was flat. “We kill Marcus,” she said. “Not for him. For Mom. For Silvermoon.”

She said the word “Mom” and the pack around us breathed as one. The hope in that breath was small and thin, but it was there. Her face broke for a second, tears wet on the ash. Then she straightened. “If we do nothing, Marcus will take every thing we hare.”

I held the fury down like a beast under a lid. “You trust him?” I said to Lucian, hard. “You expect me to follow the man who kissed my sister’s hand while he was cutting her throat?”

He flinched. “I will not ask for your trust,” he said. “Only for your help. Marcus made me into a servant. I can show you where he hides his power, where he keeps the runes that bind him. I can break some of them, but not all. I need allies. I need men who will move like wolves, not like hunters. Smarter than my royal rogues. I need Alpha like you.”

A silence fell. The air smelled of burnt rope and the sour tang of fear. My throat felt like hollow metal. I thought of Derek’s face, easy and bright. I saw my mother in the circle of her fire, the way she used to laugh and then hush us when night was too loud. I wanted Marcus to die so badly my teeth ached.

“Eira,” I said to the healer. She stepped forward, her hands stained with powdered herbs. Her face was steady and old. She looked at Lucian with the eye of a woman who had seen too many wars. “Can we remove the rune? Will our strength break his bond?”

Eira knelt and placed her fingers lightly on Lucian’s wrist. The rune reacted like a living thing. A cold shiver ran through me. “It’s not simple,” she said. “The rune is tied to blood. To old law. It will not break with fire or steel. It will need truth and sacrifice. He needs to choose to cut it or it will cut him.”

Lucian put his hands over hers. They shook. “I will cut it,” he whispered. “I will burn it out with my own blood if I must.”

Storm snarled inside me. Words are soft. Flesh answers true. He speaks like a wolf on a ledge ... he will jump or be pushed.

I looked at Liora. Her jaw was set like the blade she carried in her bones. Up close, the ash on her cheeks looked like war paint. She met my eyes. There was no forgiveness there, only a promise of fire. “If he tries to fool us again,” she said, “I will kill him with my own hands.”

Her voice was small and powerful. It grounded me. I nodded once. It was not the nod of trust. It was the nod of command. Command is what an Alpha gives for the pack.

“Fine,” I said, hard. “We move at first light. We strike for the hall where he keeps his magic and the rune. Lucian will show us the way. Any sign of trickery, any more lies ... we cut him out.”

Lucian looked like a man who had been given an impossible mercy. “Thank you,” he said, voice broken. “I will not betray you again.”

Ronan spat. “You can prove it on the way. We watch every step.”

We formed the plan like a map on the ground. It was ugly, practical. We chose three columns. Elias and Ronan would lead the flank. I would take the center. Liora would hold the frost path at the rear, ready to cut off retreat. Lucian would guide us to Marcus’s hidden ring of stones ... the place he used ut as his sanctuary. It was inside the ruin of the old shrine. It was where Marcus kept the rune-work and the horn calls.

We packed for the march. Torches flared. Boots sounded like a promise. I felt Storm’s hunger like iron in my bones. He was ready to run at the throat of the world.

As we moved out, the pack whispered. Survivors watched from the shadows with eyes like holes. Some people cheered, half-crazy with relief at the sight of soldiers coming. Others looked at us like strangers. Trust had been broken like glass. It could not be repaired with words.

We walked toward the heart of the battlefield. The sky burned like old blood. Smoke clung to our clothes. The scent of ash and boiled meat filled my nostrils. Every step made my feet heavy as if the earth itself were holding us back.

Then the night broke open with a sound that made my spine jump.

A horn. Not the soft call of men. A war-horn, bright and cruel. It cut the air like a blade.

We halted. The map we made in the dust was still in our heads. Plans are only good until the world changes.

Keal lowered his chin. Storm pressed closer, eager, dangerous. He smells us, Storm said. He waits with a raven in his hand.

I swallowed. My mouth tasted of smoke and metal. I felt the hair at my neck rise.

“He knows we’re coming,” I said, too quietly for comfort.

Ronan’s hand went to his sword. Liora’s fingers tightened on the hilt of her knife. Even Lucian, broken and blood-stained, looked up as if the sound had pierced him to the bone.

We crouched in the shadow of a ruined column, breathing the same air, ready as we could be. The pack behind us shivered with tense fury.

The war horn sounded again in the distance, and the night answered with a low, terrible chorus.

Some plans die on the ground. Some plans live to be buried under new blood.

I looked at Liora. Her eyes burned with a mild, fierce light. “We go,” she said. “We go now.”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to throw Lucian into the fire and watch the rune burn out. I wanted to tear Marcus from the world and ended every lie.

Instead I pull out my claws, it felt the weight of command settle hard across my shoulders, and answered in the only voice a leader can use. calm, cold, and sharp.

“We fight.”