Chapter Eighteen – Run, Little Wolf
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Elara’s POV
Julian’s footsteps hadn’t faded when Alpha Darius’s hand closed around my elbow and turned me toward the side passage.
“We don’t wait for the hall to remember its manners,” he said, voice a lethal calm. “We move.”
The corridor beyond the chamber was narrow and dark, one of those service arteries that fed the great hall without ever being seen. Candle stubs guttered in iron cups. The stone smelled of old smoke and colder secrets.
Luna Lyanna slipped ahead of us, skirts whispering, already tugging a small leather kit from beneath her cloak. “Hold, child,” she murmured, catching my good arm. “Let me look.”
“I’m fine,” I lied, breath hitching as the slice in my shoulder flared hot. Aeron clung to my hip like a limpet, his small fingers sticky with cookie and fear. “We just-we have to go.”
“And we shall,” Lyanna said, the edge of command in her soft. “After this won’t kill you three corridors from now.”
Cassia pressed herself to the wall, peeking back toward the chamber door. “No pursuit yet. But I can hear the council oozing toward the center like slugs.” She flicked her gaze to Aeron and pulled out a lollipop. “Emergency morale.”
Aeron sniffled, hiccuped, then accepted with solemn gravity. “Dank you, Aunt Cass.”
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Caius jogged up from the far end, keys hooked on one finger, a feral grin tugging at his mouth. “Back gate, two SUVs. Engines warm. Third as decoy.”
Alpha Darius nodded once. “Good.” His sharp gray eyes dropped to my shoulder, then to Lyanna. “Two minutes.”
Luna Lyanna’s fingers were cool and sure. She cleaned the blood, pressed something that burned like sin, then bound the cut fast with a strip of
snow-white linen that stained pink in seconds. “It will hold,” she said, meeting my eyes, all warmth and iron. “You will hold.”
Behind us, footsteps flurried, stopping short as a pair of Omega girls nearly collided with Caius.
He flashed teeth. “Private corridor. No tours.”
They fled.
“Mommy?” Aeron whispered, thumb hovering near his mouth, lollipop paused.
“You owie?”
“I’m good, baby,” I said, kissing his curls. “Just a scratch.”
“Big scratch,” he corrected gravely, then lifted Mister Dwagon to my bandage. “Dwagon fix.”
Cassia’s laugh wobbled. “Ten out of ten medical care.”
We moved.
Alpha Darius set the pace, the rest of us slipping after him like water through a crack. The corridor kinked left, dropped a flight of servants’ stairs, spilled us into a storeroom that smelled of wine and polish. Beyond a plank door, night
breathed-cold, clean, merciless.
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Caius eased it open a finger’s width, scanned the snow-lashed yard, then opened wider. “Clear.”
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We darted. The back courtyard lay in winter’s iron fist-drifts piled against stone, the parked line of Ashthorne vehicles rimed with frost. Beyond the low wall, two black SUVS idled near a servants’ gate, exhaust ghosts curling up into the dark. Valemont, slick and ready.
“Unca Cays,” Aeron stage-whispered as we ran, “vroom?”
Caius winked. “Fast vroom, pup.”
Luna Lyanna climbed into the rear of the first SUV and reached for Aeron. “With me, little wolf.” She softened as he transferred, tucking him beneath her cloak. “Stay very small and very brave.”
“Small brave,” he agreed, sticking the lollipop back in his mouth. “Dwagon big
brave.”
Cassia threw herself into the middle row beside them, already rummaging in the tote. “Snacks, wipes, stuffed animal triage. We’re a mobile nursery.”
Alpha Darius opened the passenger door for me, then paused, eyes cutting to the far end of the yard. Shadows moved there-Ashthorne sentries turning, called by some sixth sense that prey was fleeing.
“Now,” Darius said.
We piled in. Caius vaulted behind the wheel of the lead car; Darius took the second, a heartbeat behind us. The third SUV idled at the far end, windows
dark.
“Decoy goes first,” Caius muttered, slamming the shifter. “Make them chase a ghost.”
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He hit the lights. The decoy peeled out, fishtailing deliberately toward the main drive, tires shrieking on ice. Shouts answered, boots pounded, horns blared.
“Hold on,” Caius said, mouth curving, and cut the wheel toward the servants’ gate.
The gate was chained, padlock gleaming like a dare.
Caius didn’t brake.
Metal screamed. The lock snapped. The gate flew wide, slamming the wall with a boom that sounded like a cannon. Then we were out, into the narrow lane that ran behind the kitchens, snow knifing across the windshield, the night swallowing us whole.
I twisted in my seat to look back. In the rear SUV, Alpha Darius’s profile was a cut of stone. Luna Lyanna lifted a hand from the back seat in the quick comfort of a signal. Aeron’s small face peeked over the seat edge-wide-eyed,
sugar-smeared, stubbornly brave.
“Mommy,” he called through glass and wind and snow, “fast!”
“Fast,” I mouthed, and my wolf pressed against my ribs like a second heartbeat, fierce and frantic. Go.
Caius threaded us through servants’ lanes and delivery alleys like he’d been born in them. Once, a pair of guards stumbled into our headlights, shocked faces turned to deer-in-lamp glow; Caius killed the beams, dropped a gear, and slid past them in darkness so tight I could feel the stone scrape the car’s paint.
“Alpha’s got the second route,” he said, breath fogging. “We reconverge at Old Mill Road.”
“Do it,” I said, voice steadier than my insides.
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“On it.”
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Behind us, the Ashthorne Pack territory main drive erupted-shouting, engines, a horn that could have been an alarm. The decoy howled away like a stolen comet, three Ashthorne trucks lunging after it.
“Good boy,” Caius murmured to the empty lane. “Fetch.”
We burst out onto a larger road carved between pines. Snow fell thicker here, the kind that eats distance and blurs the world to white and shadow. Caius flicked the lights back on, wipers thrumming.
“Seat belt,” Cassia said automatically, reaching to strap Aeron more snugly into the booster Darius had somehow magicked into existence. “And no trying to feed Dwagon the lollipop. He doesn’t have teeth.”
“Dwagon bite bad mens,” Aeron reminded, offended.
“Right,” Cassia amended quickly. “Except Dwagon. He’s an exception.”
Lyanna’s hand settled over my bandage again from the back, a steadying weight. “You’re pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”
“You’re lying,” she said gently, and pressed another linen square into my palm. “Here.”
We hit a patch of black ice and the SUV yawed; Caius corrected, jaw tight, forearms flexing. “Apologies for the turbulence,” he said, too casually. “Complaints can be mailed to the Ashthorne road commission.”
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Chapter Eighteen – Run, Little Wolf
The radio chirped once. Alpha Darius’s voice, clipped. “Left on the mill road. Two minutes.”
“Copy,” Caius answered.
“Aeron,” Lyanna whispered, “count the trees for me, little one.”
“Too many trees,” he declared after a glance. “Tree soup.”
“An excellent number,” she said gravely.
The world narrowed to engine hum, wiper metronome, the sting of disinfectant, the copper of blood under my tongue, and the high tight cord under my ribs that was equal parts panic and-Goddess help me-loss.
I’d left him. Again.
I pressed my forearm to my stomach until it hurt. “He’ll be furious.”
Cassia didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “He’ll be alive. You and pup will be alive.” A beat. “And he’ll find us.”
“I don’t want him to,” I said. The lie fell flat in the cab. I swallowed, stared at the snow. “I don’t want him to- here. Not on their ground. Not with knives flying
in halls.”
Caius’s eyes flicked to mine in the rearview; for once, he didn’t joke. “We’ll buy you the head start.”
“Darius will buy it,” Luna Lyanna corrected softly. “We will buy it together.”
We hit the junction where the mill road cut right, narrow and older, flanked by skeletal birches. Headlights speared through the snow from our left-Alpha Darius’s SUV knifing out of a stand of pines to fall in behind us. Relief loosened something tiny inside me I hadn’t known I’d clenched.
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Then another set of lights. Too many.
Caius swore under his breath. “Tail.”
“Go,” I said.
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He went. The engine climbed to a snarl, the road unspooling in a bright tunnel of white and witch-dark trees.
Aeron let out a soft, thrilled “Vroooom,” then yawned so wide his jaw popped. He sagged against Luna Lyanna’s side, lollipop forgotten, Mister Dwagon tucked
like a shield to his chest.
“Sleep, pup,” Luna Lyanna murmured, stroking his hair. “The moon watches.”
I stared out into the storm and thought of golden eyes in candlelight, a voice saying He’s ours, a hand hovering inches from my cheek that hadn’t touched me because I asked him not to-because I told him to stay on his side of the room.
A shape flickered between the trees on a ridge to our right-huge, dark, fast. For a breath my heart stuttered-Thorne?-but the gait was wrong, the scent foreign even through steel and snow. Ashthorne patrol. They paralleled us, then fell back when Alpha Darius’s SUV slid wide and blocked any shot.
“Keep them back,” Alpha Darius said over the radio, voice gone full Alpha, old and iron. “They breach the quarter mile, we break their teeth.”
The tail gained; Caius killed the lights and we plunged into ink. The road vanished into a smear of black and white; the only sound was the grind of tires and Aeron’s soft, hiccuping breaths.
“Caius,” I warned.
“I have it,” he said, and somehow he did-threading between drifts and ditch with a driver’s animal memory, flicking the lights back on only when we screamed
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past a wooden post and a drop I did not want to visualize.
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The tail’s beams wavered, then shrank. Alpha Darius’s SUV slid back into our lane, blocking, shepherding.
We made the old county line-a rusted cattle guard half-buried and a sign that said ROAD SEASONALLY MAINTAINED like a threat. Beyond it, the pines thickened, and the snow-blessedly-thinned to a steady fall.
Caius blew out a breath. “We’re close to the ridge pass. After that, they’d
have to be suicidal to follow.”
“Some are,” Cassia muttered.
“Then we’ll have company in the ditch,” he said.
The radio clicked. Alpha Darius again.
“From the hall. A howl.”
I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until my wolf surged to meet the sound I could not hear. The hair on my arms lifted. The air inside the SUV tightened like a
drum skin.
“Is it…?” Cassia began softly.
“King,” Alpha Darius said. “He knows.”
My throat burned. The bandage pulled when I turned my face to the window and let the cold glass press to my cheek. “Drive,” I whispered. “Please.”
Luna Lyanna’s hand found my shoulder again. “We are,” she said. “We will.”
Aeron stirred, heavy and warm against her. “Mommy?” he mumbled without waking. “Daddy come?”
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The answer clawed against my teeth. I smoothed his hair instead, kissed the crown of his head. “Sleep, little wolf.”
Caius crested the ridge. For a breath, the world opened-valley below, black ribbon of road, distant fringe of lights that meant the border of Ashthorne’s claims. Beyond that, the long night to Valemont.
Behind us, far and thin and breaking like a heart, a howl rolled over the trees -fierce and calling and furious, and something beneath all of it that my wolf recognized and flinched from: fear.
I faced forward. Snow ate the sound. The road unfurled.
“Home,” Alpha Darius said over the radio, the word not soft but absolute. “We go home.”
We didn’t stop until the night swallowed the Ashthorne Pack last glow and the only lights left were our own.
Thorne’s POV
The great hall still stank of fear and politics. The echoes of Aeron’s scream clung to the stone, sharper than the knife that had nearly cut him down. Even now, the scent of Elara’s rage and terror lingered like smoke — sharp, protective,
unyielding.
And then it was gone.
Too gone.
Julian slipped back into the chamber first, his expression carved from stone. He didn’t speak at first, but the hollowness in his eyes said everything.
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“They’re gone,” he said at last.
The words tore through me.
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My wolf slammed against my ribs, howling, snarling, demanding. Find them.
Now.
I surged forward, my fists curling so tight my claws punched through skin. “Gone?” My voice thundered, rattling the sconces. “Explain.”
Julian’s jaw ticked. “Alpha Darius planned it. Three SUVS waiting beyond the hall. One a decoy, the other two split different routes. Elara, Cassia, the boy-”
“My son,” I growled, the sound edged with fury.
Julian inclined his head slightly. “Your son. They’re already out of Ashthorne lands. By the time we realized the hall’s perimeter was compromised, they were gone.”
The world blurred. My wolf clawed at my skin, pacing, snapping. Elara. Aeron.
Mine.
I slammed my palm against the stone wall. It cracked, splintering outward, dust falling like ash. “They ran from me.”
Julian, cautious as if one wrong word might set me completely off the leash, said, “In her mind, she wasn’t running from you. She was shielding him. A mother protecting her pup.”
That distinction was meaningless to my wolf. Rage boiled hotter. It was the same thing.
I closed my eyes, dragging air into my lungs, but the tether of the bond pulled hard a hook buried deep, tugging at my chest with every beat of my heart. Elara. Aeron. Both of them slipping further away every second I stood still.
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When I opened my eyes, the hall seemed too small, too suffocating. My voice came low, lethal. “They can’t hide from me. Not her. Not my pup. I will tear apart every road, every border, burn down every den until I find them.”
Julian’s smirk flickered, half admiring, half resigned. “Then we’d better start tracking fast. Darius doesn’t play small. If he set this up, the decoy will be convincing enough to bleed pursuit.”
The echo of Julian’s words hadn’t faded before the red haze hit.
They were gone.
My mate.
My pup.
Gone because of the games of schemers who thought to use me, bind me,
humiliate me.
The chamber door groaned on its hinges as I shoved it open. The hall was still thick with nobles, whispers sparking like wildfire in the corners, but the moment I stepped into view, silence crashed down.
Every eye turned. Every wolf felt it – the weight of my fury.
Alpha Marcus rose from his place, shoulders squared, his daughter at his side, pale as frost and seething. He opened his mouth, but I didn’t give him the
chance.
“You dare.”
The words landed like a hammer, reverberating through the hall. My wolf surged, spilling dominance into the air until weaker wolves crumpled in their
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seats, some gasping for breath, others bowing their heads to the stone floor.
“You dare,” I repeated, louder now, voice splitting the silence. “You dare to lay schemes at my feet. You dare to hand out invitations with my name like a trinket. You dare to endanger what is mine.”
Marcus flinched, though he tried to mask it. His wolf bristled beneath his skin, but he didn’t step forward. Not against me.
“You’ve humiliated the Ashthorne name-”
“No!”
My roar cracked the air, scattering candle flames, making the very walls quake.
“You humiliated yourselves when you defied me. When you ignored my refusal. When you dressed your daughter like a bride and thought I would stand here chained while you bartered my throne.”
The crowd shifted, ripples of unease spreading.
My gaze pinned Marcus. “And when your man raised his hand against my son -“My teeth bared, wolf snapping forward. “That was no humiliation. That was
treason.”
The word hit like a thunderclap.
Marcus’s face blanched, but before he could gather words, I stepped down from the dais. Each stride echoed like a threat, power rolling off me in waves. Wolves shrank back, eyes lowering, throats bared in submission they couldn’t
suppress.
I stopped at the center of the hall, my voice dropping low, lethal. “Hear me, Ashthorne. Hear me, all who came to witness this farce. From this moment on-
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I let the silence stretch, pulling them taut on the line. “-there will be no alliance. There will be no binding of your house to mine. You have shown yourselves faithless, reckless, and beneath the honor of a crown.”
Gasps rippled. Sera staggered, her face contorted with humiliation and fury. Marcus’s jaw locked, but sweat glistened at his temple.
I let my wolf push further, just enough that Marcus himself bent under the weight, shoulders bowing despite every scrap of pride. “You thought me a pawn. But I am not your pawn.” My voice sharpened to a blade. “I am your king.”
Silence reigned, heavy and absolute. Not a wolf moved. Not one dared breathe too loud.
I stood there in the center of their great hall, golden eyes burning, the scent of my mate and pup still lingering in the air, vanishing farther with each
heartbeat.
“Pray to your goddess,” I said at last, voice like a vow. “Because the only reason your house still stands tonight is because I chase what is mine. And when I find them-” my teeth flashed, wolf snarling through me “-you will remember who you crossed.”
And with that, I turned, my wolf howling inside me, already pulling me toward the fading tether of ink, citrus, and pup-scent on the wind.
I bared my teeth, my wolf shoving forward, furious.
“Mine,” my wolf snarled, furious and wild.
And I swore to the Goddess – no SUV, no decoy, no Alpha would keep them from me.
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