“Take Ari to your wing.” He held up a claw before Ryxin could speak. “And you’re in charge of the guard tonight. Take your most trusted soldiers and secure the fortress. Every gate, every corridor, every access point. Patrols doubled. Anyone acting suspicious gets detained for questioning.” His lips curledback from his teeth. “There may be more rot in our walls. Find it.”
Ryxin’s eyes gleamed. “With pleasure.”
He crossed to Ari and gathered her against his side with a possessiveness that mirrored Sylas’s own. She went without protest—too exhausted to argue, or too smart to try. On the way past, Ryxin paused at the door and glanced back at Sylas. At Elsa, still sitting upright in the bed across the ward, watching everything with those pale blue eyes.
Something shifted in his brother’s expression. Not quite approval. Closer to recognition.
Then he was gone, Ari tucked against him, the door closing behind them with a quiet click.
The ward settled into silence. Just the soft lap of the Lux Tear energy humming through the walls, the faint sweetness of purified healing essence, and Mia’s steady breathing near the window.
And Elsa.
She sat up straighter when his gaze found hers. The bruise on her cheek had faded to pale yellow under Yarx’s care, her split lip sealed. Her golden hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, catching the low lamplight, and her eyes held something that made his chest ache.
Through the bond, her relief washed over him. Like warmth after a winter patrol. Like the first breath after drowning.
“You came back.”
“I promised.” He crossed to her bed, aware of the blood crusted in his fur, the death that clung to his claws. He should clean himself. Should make himself presentable before touching her.
He didn’t.
He gathered her against his chest, pressing his muzzle into her hair, breathing in her scent until it drowned out the copperand violence coating his tongue. She fit against him—small and warm and impossibly alive. Her heartbeat fluttered against his chest, quick and light compared to the heavy pound of his own.
The bond sang between them. No longer frayed or strained but whole. Steady. Something that had been broken by the chemical dampening now burned bright and clear, and through it he felt everything she felt—the lingering ache of her healed bruises, the exhaustion pulling at her limbs, and underneath it all, the fierce, stubborn warmth that refused to let him go.
“It’s done,” he said into her hair. “They’re gone. All of them.”
Her arms wrapped around him—fragile, human, stronger than they had any right to be. “Good.”
Not judgment. Not horror at what he’d done. Just acceptance. Understanding.
He held her tighter and let the bond settle between them—steady, warm, unbroken.
But the rage wasn’t gone. It coiled beneath his skin like a living thing, hungry and restless, demanding more. Fourteen dead, and still his claws itched to keep hunting. To find everyone who had ever looked at Elsa with calculation in their eyes. Everyone who had whispered about his weakness, his obsession, his unfitness to rule. Every citizen who had doubted his reign and thought themselves clever enough to exploit it.
The fortress wasn’t clean. Not yet. There would be more—sympathizers, opportunists, cowards who had known about Vask’s plot and said nothing. He could smell them in his walls like rot in old wood, and something feral in his chest demanded he tear the whole structure apart until nothing remained but loyalty and bone.
Elsa shifted against him, and the bond pulsed with her exhaustion, her pain, her stubborn refusal to let go of him even now.
“Elsa.” His voice came out wrecked. “There are things I need to tell you. Choices I’ve been keeping from you. Things you deserve to know before—” He stopped. Before what? Before this went further? Before he lost himself entirely in the scent of Frosted Tears and the impossible warmth of her body against his?
She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. Her hand rose to his muzzle, tracing the blood-matted fur without flinching.
“Then tell me.”
“The Blood Moon rises soon.” The words scraped out of him, rough and raw. “It’s… it calls to something in us. In me. The instincts that make us what we are—they sharpen under that light. Hunting. Claiming. The need to prove ourselves worthy of what we hold.” His claws flexed against her back, and he felt her shiver through the bond. “As king, I’m expected to run the Mating Hunt. It’s tradition. Sacred. And right now, with the court watching for weakness, with Vask’s blood still fresh—”
He broke off, jaw tight. The feral thing inside him snarled at the thought of appearing weak. Of giving his enemies any reason to challenge what he’d claimed tonight.
“You need to run it,” Elsa said. Not a question.
“It’s in my blood. My instincts. Everything I am demands it.” He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “But there’s more. Things I need to explain properly, when we’re not both covered in blood and barely standing. Tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow.”
Yarx cleared his throat from somewhere behind them—a careful, deferential sound that nonetheless cut through the moment like a blade.
“My king.” The healer’s voice was steady, but Sylas could smell his unease. “The female… she’s in no condition to be moved. Not without using the Tear Dome to—”