The shallow, muddy clearing felt like a tomb. Alpha Damon stood amidst the wreckage of the chase, the dying echoes of the human girl's screams still vibrating in the cold air. His charcoal wolf had retreated, leaving behind his human form equally lethal, equally imposing, but now, dangerously frayed at the edges.
His breath came in heavy, ragged clouds. His side was a mess of fire and blood where the shadow-wolves had gilled him, but he barely felt the sting. There was a colder, more paralyzing pain settling in the pit of his stomach.
He knelt beside the girl. Lian. She was barely more than a child, a teenager snatched by the filth that prowled the Shadow Pack borders. Her eyes weren't full of the fierce, ancient defiance he had felt from the Lycan; they were wide with the glassy, hollow terror of a victim who had seen the bottom of the abyss.
"Where is she?" Damon's voice was a low, guttural vibration that made the very dirt beneath his knees tremble. "The female. The one with the white fur. Where did she go?"
Lian's head thrashed side to side, tears carving paths through the grime on her face. "White fur? I... I don't know! I only saw the shadows... men in black cloaks. They were hurting me. I just ran, please... don't let them take me back."
Damon froze. The Mate Bond, which had been a screaming, white-hot siren in his skull just moments ago, had gone stone-cold silent. He looked at the girl—really looked at her. There was no Lycan power here. No scent of rain and moonlight. No pull at his soul.
He had hunted the wrong prey.
A snarl of pure, bitter rage ripped from his throat, directed entirely at himself. He was the Alpha King, the shadow that the world feared, and he had been played like a novice. His true Mate—the woman whose scent had set his blood on fire—was out there, terrified and alone, while he had wasted precious minutes chasing a decoy.
Fool! His inner wolf roared, a sound of primitive agony. Your pride blinded us! She is out there, and they are coming for her. The ones who held this human know what she is. They will bleed her dry before we even find her!
The air in Damon's lungs shifted. The mission was no longer about capture; it was about survival. The possessive, protective wall of the Mate Bond slammed into place, turning his blood into liquid iron.
He reached down, his touch surprisingly gentle as he lifted Lian. "I am Damon Thorne," he said, the hardness in his voice softening just a fraction. "You are under my shadow now. You are safe. But listen well—not a word of the white wolf. To anyone. Ever."
In a blur of gray and charcoal, he shifted. Carrying the broken girl with a tenderness that contradicted his monstrous size, he tore through the woods toward the Obsidian borders.
Hours later, after ensuring the human was safe in a facility far from the reach of the Packs, Damon returned to the site of his failure. The sun was sinking, casting long, skeletal shadows across the Dead Woods.
He ignored his bleeding side, his focus narrowing until the world consisted only of scents and shadows. He wasn't looking for the Mate Bond anymore it was too loud, too distracting. He needed the trail of the ones who had taken Lian. The ones who knew the legend of the White Lycan.
He found it near the ridge: a faint, chemical tang artificial, cold and the musk of powerful, packless wolves.
"They aren't rogues, Fenris," Damon thought, addressing his wolf by name a rare act of unity. "They're a machine. They're hunting for her power."
"The Covenant," Fenris growled back, the name tasting like ash. "The collectors. They don't want a Mate; they want a weapon. They will drain her until there is nothing left but fur and bone."
Damon's gold eyes flared into lethal, glowing slits. A vow, ancient and unbreakable, settled in his chest. He hadn't seen her face, he hadn't touched her skin, but she was his. And the Covenant was about to learn why you never hunt what belongs to the King.
He shifted back to human form for a moment. Using the blood still seeping from his own wound, he traced a complex, jagged rune onto the bark of a massive, ancient oak. It was a Royal Mark a psychic anchor that would cloak the area and act as a beacon of protection for any Lycan blood nearby.
"I won't let them touch you," he whispered into the wind, the name Elara ghosting across his mind, though he didn't know why. "I will find you. And I will burn the world down to keep you."
He didn't turn back toward his palace. He turned toward the chemical scent of the hunters. The King was no longer tracking his Mate. He was hunting the men who dared to think she was prey.
Damon moved with the cold, mechanical efficiency of a machine designed for one thing: the kill. He followed the metallic, rotting stench of the Covenant, but every stride was a battle. His body was screaming, the wound on his flank pulsing like a second heart, hot and jagged. He was running on nothing but the raw, possessive instinct to shield a Mate he had never even looked upon.
"We are breaking, Alpha," his wolf's voice was a jagged rasp in his mind. "If we fall here, we leave her to the wolves. The Covenant is a shadow that never sleeps. We cannot fight them as a ghost."
Damon knew the beast was right. To face an organized machine like the Covenant at half-strength wasn't bravery; it was a death sentence for both him and the female. He needed more than just willpower. He needed a place of power.
He shifted his course, guided not by a map, but by a pulsing, ancient memory buried deep in the Obsidian bloodline a royal secret whispered from King to King.
For thirty minutes, he pushed through the suffocating rot of the Dead Woods until the air suddenly cracked open. The smell of decay vanished, replaced by a sharp, ethereal coolness that tasted like starlight. He pushed through a thick curtain of silver, ancient vines and stepped into a world that shouldn't exist.
The Lumina Spring.
The air here shimmered with a ghostly blue light, as if the moon had fallen and shattered into the water. It was a sacred wound in the earth, blessed by the first Lycans, where the world's energy gathered to breathe.
Damon collapsed into his human form, his skin slick with sweat and grime. His muscles were twitching with a fatigue that went down to the bone. He dragged himself toward the glowing water and plunged his hand in. It wasn't cold. It was a jolt of pure, electric fire.
He didn't hesitate. He rolled his body into the spring, letting the glowing water swallow his mangled side.
A scream died in his throat as a searing, ecstatic agony ripped through him. It felt like a thousand needles were stitching his soul back together. He watched, mesmerized, as his torn flesh and shattered muscle began to knit, the blood vessels weaving themselves back into place with impossible speed. Within minutes, the gash that should have ended him was gone, replaced by a thin, shimmering silver scar—a permanent mark of the moon's touch.
But the spring didn't just heal him. It woke something up.
Damon felt his Lycan blood catch fire. His senses didn't just return; they expanded until the world felt too small. The darkness turned to high-definition silver. He could hear the heartbeat of a bird miles away. And his nose... his tracking was no longer a sense; it was a supernatural weapon.
He stood up, feeling a predatory power vibrating in his marrow. He was no longer just an Alpha; he was something upgraded.
And then, he caught it. Underneath the scent of the water and the ozone, there was a sweet, haunting overlay. Mate.
She had been here. Elara had touched this water. He could smell her not just the Lycan, but the human beneath the fur. He could smell the coarse wool of a jacket that didn't belong to her, the scent of the Exiles clinging to the fabric.
He narrowed his eyes, his new vision cutting through the illusions of the forest. He could see where the Covenant had passed. They were clever using scent-masking boots and leaving subtle, ritualistic marks on the bark to guide their team.
He read their marks like a death warrant. They weren't hunting a wolf for territory or sport. They were hunting raw power.
He found their cold camp a few miles out discarded bindings, strange black vials that smelled of silver and suppressants, and a map. His heart turned to ice as he looked at the markings on the parchment. They were moving toward the Neutral Human Territories. The cities.
"They're trying to flush her out into the open," Damon growled, his voice a low, terrifying rumble of thunder. "They think she's weak. They think she's a stray."
Damon stepped out of the tree line and onto the hard, paved road that led to the world of men. His massive, charcoal silhouette stood tall against the bruised purple of the pre-dawn sky.
The King was no longer wounded. He was no longer reacting. He was a hunter who had found his edge. He would step into their world, find his White Lycan, and he would tear the Covenant apart before they even realized the shadows had come for them.