Evadne stood at the altar, tall and broad-shouldered, her beauty was like a blade.
Long red hair spilled over black silk, and her golden eyes burned with the quiet fire of her bloodline.
She looked every inch a bride, but one of iron, not silk. She wore the Blackfang wedding dress, a garment passed from bride to bride for generations, wrapped around her frame.
A bride should look radiant and hopeful.
Evadne felt nothing but rage as she clenched her fist.
Alpha Garrick, the man who was supposedly her mate, stood across from her. His blond hair caught the light, his yellow eyes sharp and wolf-like, his jaw set in arrogance.
Once, she had believed he was the future of their pack. Now he looked at her like something he was already done with.
"Who told you to wear that dress, Evadne?" Garrick's voice cut through the hall.
The crowd gasped with shock. Even his parents stiffened.
So... He's decided to humiliate me publicly.
Evadne tilted her head, lips curving in a sharp smile.
"What do you mean? I'm marrying you today, am I not? Or did the great Alpha forget his own ceremony?" Her tone dripped with venomous sweetness.
"You are not my mate." Garrick's words struck like steel. "I found my true mate. This marriage is..."
"...This marriage is not annulled," Evadne interrupted, her voice cracking like a whip. "We are bound, Garrick. You only want that wretch of yours for your own pleasure."
Gasps surged from the gathered pack.
"How dare you..." Garrick began, stepping forward.
Evadne leaned in, close enough for only him to hear. Her whisper was a dagger.
"You think I didn't know about your mistress? That while you paraded me as your bride, you warmed her bed?"
His jaw locked. His wolf eyes darkened.
She smiled, slow and merciless.
"Unfortunately for you, Garrick… you won't be seeing her again."
His face paled. "You...where is Helena?!"
"I fed her remains to my pet wolves."
The hall erupted.
"Guards... arrest this murderer!" Garrick barked, fingers stabbing the air like a commander calling for blood.
A dozen hands went to hilts. The hall surged toward her but before a single man could take a step, Evadne's voice fell over them like a blade.
"Lay one finger on me and you all die."
Silence snapped. Men who had been ready to move froze mid-stride, eyes flicking from her face to the dagger at her hip. Garrick's laugh cracked into a snarl; fury warped his features into something animal.
He stepped forward anyway, his stride dangerous and fast. "You will pay..."
Evadne didn't wait. Her hand slid to the ceremonial blade: the heirloom meant to bind lovers, and in a motion so clean it looked rehearsed, she brought it across his throat.
The sound was sudden and small against the roar of the crowd. Garrick's eyes widened, golden irises blooming with shock and disbelief; his knees buckled, and the great Alpha crumpled onto the polished floor. Blood soaked the black of her gown.
For one suspended breath, nothing moved. Then the hall erupted with shouts, cries, the frantic rush of those who loved him and those who now feared her. Evadne stood over him, dagger still warm in her hand, every muscle like that of a predator's.
"By the law of blood," she said, voice cold and steady as ice, "the crown is taken."
No one dared touch her. At least that's what she thought.
Garrick's parents looked at her as if the ground had just split beneath their feet. Around them, the hall filled with rising whispers.
Are there any objections?" Evadne's voice was calm, steady, not loud, but strong enough that no one could look away.
"How dare you kill my son?!" The words came from two mouths at once, then the sound shifted, deepening into a guttural snarl. Within seconds, their faces elongated, fur bristling along their backs. They blurred into great shapes: two enormous wolves, jaws bared, eyes white with fury.
They charged.
The hall exploded into motion. People dove aside; a swing of a hand sent goblets shattering. Garrick's father lunged for her with the force of a catapulted boulder. Garrick's mother came in from the flank, teeth flashing.
Evadne moved without wasting time. The first wolf lunged, and she turned his momentum back on him with a sharp twist, a crack of bone, and he hit the ground howling on three legs.
The second came fast and heavy; she dropped low, slammed her boot into her joint, and sent her stumbling. The two crashed together in a heap, snarling and furious, but still alive.
Silence snapped back into the room. Blood slicked her palm where the ceremonial blade had bitten, but she did not look at it. She looked at them, at the wolves she had reduced to crippled shapes.
"I only intended to end Garrick," she said, voice flat. "I will not kill you, but crippling you will remind anyone who thinks to rise against me how thin the line is between life and worth."
One of them pushed to stand but stumbled, his anger collapsing into shame. "Being crippled is worse than death," Evadne said.
A faint smile touched her lips... almost pity, almost not. "Remember that before you ever think of defying me again."
A tremor of fear ran through the pack. Some swallowed; others knelt as if the air itself had demanded it. A younger wolf, Garrick's cousin, dropped to his knees and bowed his head. More followed. The hall that had come to celebrate a wedding now pressed itself into the shape of a court.
Evadne picked up the ceremonial dagger, its edge flashing in the torchlight. She drove it into the wooden floor, gripped the hilt with both hands, and in one quick motion sliced through her hair. Copper strands slid down her shoulders, scattering like a red curtain at her feet.
She hacked at her hair until it was short and jagged, sticking up in uneven spikes. The sharp cut turned her face into something harder, almost boyish, as if she'd put on androgyny like armor.
Strands stuck to the blood on her hand and fell across the black of her gown. For a moment, the hall just stared, shocked by the figure she had made of herself.
She wiped her hands on her gown, eyes sweeping the room until they caught Garrick parents who still lay panting on the floor. "Let this be an example to anyone who crosses me," she said, voice ringing now with the authority of someone who had already taken what was hers.
She pulled the dagger free and forced a smile that did not warm her face. "Now...let us begin my coronation as Alpha."
Decades later...
Snow fell in thick, silent sheets, vanishing into the black of her boots. Evadne stood before the dungeon...its iron gates crusted with frost, its stones heavy with age.
Three great wolves waited at her feet. Their fur was black as midnight, their shoulders broad as warhorses. Steam curled from their jaws, and their golden eyes burned like coins in the dark.
She brushed her gloved thumb along the dagger at her hip and let the wind pull at the memory of the hall, the screams, the blood that had made her Alpha.
"Do you smell it too?" she asked, her voice low.
The wolves lifted their heads, tilting once, then again. They had never needed words to answer her.
Everyone she had locked in that dungeon for defiling her was dead. The thought carried no triumph, only the flat satisfaction of a ledger squared.
Still...who had killed them?
The question pressed against her ribs like a stone. Death had long been her business, her mark familiar on every corpse. But this...made her teeth itch.
Bastian stepped from the shadows, lantern smoke curling at his boots. Broad-shouldered and spare, his strength was the kind carved by work, not vanity.
His hair, the color of wet iron, was cropped close, and a thin scar cut across his cheek.
Amber eyes flicked sharp and quick, the gaze of a man who knew both how to obey...and how to command.
"There's been a lot of deaths lately, Alpha," he said, voice low, carrying in the dungeon's echo. "What do we tell the elders? What do we tell the pack?"
Evadne didn't answer right away. She watched the lantern smoke drift and thought of old loyalties, unpaid debts, and the small betrayals that had piled up over the years.
She was still deciding how to respond when something brushed at the edge of her awareness, so faint it could've been the wind.
An arrow cut through the snow, aimed for her chest. Evadne's hand shot up, catching it midair with ease. The shaft was black and strangely heavy in her grip. Smoke curled from the fletching, thin strands that moved like they were alive. The smell of death hit her, it was sharp enough to make her throat burn. She brought it closer, frowning.
Dark magic, she thought. Demons.
"Go after it," she ordered.
The wolves leapt as one, vanishing into the snow, their dark shapes swallowed by the forest.
Evadne held the arrow a moment longer. Heat spread from the shaft into her palm, sharp and biting, until her fingers twitched in protest. At last, she let it fall.
The arrow struck the snow and hissed. White melted into black, pooling outward like ink spilled on parchment. The sight made her stomach clench.
Her breath tore out of her. "No..."
She launched forward, boots cutting deep tracks through the snow.
"Alpha! Where are you going?!" Bastian shouted, hand already on his blade as he ran after her.
She didn't answer. The forest had already swallowed her wolves.
Damn it...I sent them to death.