[POV: Draven]
We smelled the smoke before we saw the fires.
It hit us two miles from the southern border—a thick, acrid wall of burning pine and something worse beneath it. Flesh.
"That's the eastern tree line," Kobe said, his nostrils flaring. "They're burning the perimeter to flush out the defenders."
"How many?" Ava demanded, sprinting to keep pace.
"From the smoke spread? Hundreds. This isn't a probe, Draven, but a full assault."
"Then we stop talking and start running," I said, already accelerating through the trees.
Atlas ran beside me, his crescent mark blazing silver through the forest gloom, his body moving with the fluid power of a wolf who no longer knew what exhaustion felt like.
We crested the final ridge and the battlefield opened below us like a vision from the worst kind of nightmare.
Crimson Fang was under siege. Nightmaw wolves pouring through breaches in the outer perimeter from three directions. Midnight Crest fighters held the flanks, pressing inward with disciplined formations.
Aaron's defensive lines were holding, but barely. I could see him near the packhouse steps in his massive brown wolf form, rallying bloodied warriors who'd been pushed back to the inner courtyard.
"Aaron!" I roared through the pack link, pushing my Alpha command across the bond with everything I had. "We're on the southern ridge. Status!"
The relief in his voice was instant and staggering.
"Draven! Thank the Goddess. They hit us twelve hours after you left, full combined force. We've held the inner perimeter but we're losing ground every hour. Levi's back on the line despite his shoulder, Theo took a gash across the ribs, and we lost four more overnight."
"Where's the command structure? Who's leading their assault?"
"Damian's wolves are running the siege from the eastern ridge. I can see his lieutenants coordinating from there, but he himself hasn't shown. And Dominic—"
Aaron hesitated. "No one's seen Dominic since the attack began. He's not here, Draven."
Dominic wasn't the type to miss his own war. If he wasn't on the battlefield, he was somewhere worse.
"Hold the inner perimeter," I commanded. "Reinforcements are coming through the south in sixty seconds. And Aaron, Atlas is with me. He's different now, so be ready for what you're about to see."
I shifted. Sirius erupted from my skin with a roar that shook pine needles from the branches, and I launched down the ridge with claws tearing furrows in the frozen earth.
Behind me, Atlas shifted—and the surge of power through our bond was staggering, a detonation of silver energy that made every hair on Sirius's body stand rigid.
We hit the enemy flank at full speed. I crashed into the first line of Nightmaw wolves like a battering ram, jaws closing on the nearest throat, momentum carrying me through three more before the line even registered the breach.
Kobe struck from my left, Ava from my right, the three of us carving a wedge through the enemy formation with practiced, savage efficiency.
Then Atlas entered the field, and the war changed.
Silver light erupted from his body in a radiating wave that washed across the clearing like a blizzard made of starlight.
The energy hit the nearest Nightmaw wolves and they froze. Their paws locked to the ground, ice crystallizing up their legs in jagged, branching patterns, their bodies rigid with shock. Twenty wolves, immobilized in a single pulse.
Atlas strode through the battlefield in his wolf form, and the shadows bent to his will. Darkness peeled from the tree line and reshaped at his command, forming barriers that cut off retreat routes, walls of living shadow that herded Nightmaw fighters into kill zones where Crimson Fang warriors could overwhelm them.
"What the hell is that?" one of Damian's lieutenants screamed from the eastern ridge, and I could hear the terror fracturing his voice even from two hundred yards away.
"That's the Alpha-Mate," Aaron answered through the pack link, and beneath the exhaustion I heard something I hadn't heard from my Beta in days. Hope.
The tide turned violently.
Atlas moved through the battlefield with a precision that defied what I'd seen in the forest. The uncontrolled bursts replaced by targeted strikes, silver energy freezing clusters of enemy wolves while shadows redirected their formations into disarray.
He wasn't just fighting. He was reshaping the entire engagement, bending the battlefield itself around Crimson Fang's defensive positions.
I tore through another Nightmaw fighter and caught a moment to watch him. The wolf I'd carried on my back three days ago was now the most devastating force on this field.
His crescent mark blazed like a second moon above the chaos: a beacon that told our pack salvation had arrived and told the enemy their strategy had been gutted.
"They're breaking!" Theo's voice crackled through the pack link, ragged with exhaustion and elation. "The eastern flank is collapsing—Nightmaw's pulling back toward the ridge!"
"Don't let them regroup!" I commanded, shifting back long enough to survey the field from higher ground. "Kobe, take your squad and cut off the northern retreat. Aaron, push the inner courtyard forward and reclaim the eastern gate. Ava, stay with Atlas and watch his flanks."
"On it!" Kobe barked, already running.
"The packhouse is secure," Aaron reported, his brown wolf emerging from the courtyard with blood-matted fur and fierce, burning eyes. "We held it, Draven. Barely, but we held it."
I shifted back to Sirius and rejoined the push, driving the retreating Nightmaw forces toward the border with Atlas's silver energy herding them from behind.
The battlefield was ours: the inner perimeter reclaimed, the enemy in full retreat, Crimson Fang's warriors howling victory into the smoke-filled sky.
But as the last of Damian's forces fled into the eastern tree line, I stopped and shifted back. I stood in the ruined clearing, chest heaving, and scanned the carnage with mounting dread.
Dominic had planned this siege down to the hour. He orchestrated it, timed it precisely. And he wasn't here.
"Aaron," I said, my voice cutting through the aftermath. "You said no one has seen Dominic since this started."
Aaron shifted back, wiping blood from his jaw. "Not once. His wolves were here. His magic was in the wards they used, but Dominic himself never set foot on this battlefield."
The realization settled through me like cold poison.
The siege was never Dominic's endgame. It was his distraction—hundreds of wolves sacrificed to pull every defender to the perimeter and empty the packhouse interior.
"Where's the packhouse guard?" I asked, already turning, already running. "The interior detail I ordered before I left—where are they?"
Aaron's face went white beneath the dried blood on his jaw.
"I pulled them to reinforce the eastern gate when we were about to be overrun. The packhouse interior has been completely unguarded for hours."
I was sprinting before he finished the sentence, boots pounding across the blood-soaked ground. Sirius howled in my skull, because I knew exactly where Dominic had been this entire time.