Most of the crowd had fled as soon as Sigrid had started feeding on the Prime’s soul. But Perry and Amelie, Gideon with them, remained near the trees, watching Sabine and Ithan.
Sabine stared down at the seven shards the Fendyr sword had broken into, then lifted her furious gaze to Ithan.
Ithan shifted back into his humanoid body with a near-instant flash. “It’s just a piece of steel,” he said, panting, the metallic tang of the blade lingering in his mouth. “All those years you obsessed over it, resented Danika for having it … It’s just a piece of metal.”
Sabine’s claws glinted. Her lips curled back from her fangs as she snarled.
But behind her, Sigrid was closing in on the Astronomer, who had fallen to the ground and was now crawling backward, hands up. The male pleaded, “Did I not treat you well, deliver you from the Under-King’s grasp—”
The Astronomer didn’t get the chance to plead his case. Sigrid, either from spite or lost to her hunger, left the old man no time to scream as she leapt upon him and fitted her mouth against his.
Even Sabine paused to watch as Sigrid plunged her clawed hand into his chest, ripping out his still-beating heart in the same moment that she inhaled deeply, and that glimmering light—the secondlight—of his soul rose up through his body, into their fused mouths—
Not Ithan’s problem. Not right now. He whipped his head back to Sabine, and let out a long, deep snarl of his own.
Sabine’s nose crinkled. “You are no Alpha, pup,” she growled, and lunged.
Ithan charged. A straight sprint into death’s awaiting claws.
Sabine leapt for him, and Ithan ducked low, sliding, grabbing the longest of the sword’s shards and lifting it high—
Blood rained down, and Sabine screamed as she hit the grass with a thud. Ithan sprang to his feet and whirled. Sabine crouched on the ground, a hand pressed to her gut. As if it’d keep the organs now spilling on the grass from tumbling out.
He had a dim awareness of Sigrid, behind him, swallowing down the Astronomer’s dying soul and dropping his limp corpse to the stones of the stairs.
But Ithan slowly approached Sabine, and there was no one else in the world, no task but this. Sabine lifted raging, pain-filled eyes to him.
“Everything I have done,” Sabine panted up at him, “has been for the wolves.”
“It’s been for yourself,” Ithan spat, stopping before her.
She sneered, revealing blood-coated teeth. “You will lead them to ruin.”
“We’ll see” was all Ithan said before shifting once more into his wolf’s body with that preternatural speed.
Sabine looked his wolf in the eyes—and beheld her death there. She opened her mouth to speak, but Ithan didn’t give her the chance. Enough of her vitriol had poisoned the world.
A leap, a crunch of his impossibly strong jaws, and it was done.
With that extra strength he’d gained, he’d broken through the steel of the sword. Breaking through flesh and bone was nothing by comparison.
But once her blood hit his tongue, red washed over his vision, blazing, burning. He was rage and snarls and fangs. He was blood and entrails and primal fury—
“Ithan.”
Perry’s quavering voice shook him from the daze. From what he’d done to Sabine’s body. Her blood coated his mouth, her flesh was stuck between his teeth—
“They’re watching,” Perry breathed, stepping up to him.
Still in his wolf form, Ithan started to turn toward the witnesses of his savagery, but Perry said, “Don’t look,” and dropped to her knees before him. Tilted back her head and exposed her neck. “I yield.” She added a heartbeat later, “I yield to the Prime.”
The words struck a chord in him, one of despair and suffocation. But he couldn’t stop it—the instinct to reach forward and lightly clamp his teeth around Perry’s slender throat. To take that cinnamon-and-strawberry taste into his mouth.
To accept her submission to him. Her recognition.
Footsteps thudded nearby. Then Amelie stood there, shock paling her face—
But she, too, dropped to her knees. Exposed her neck.
It was either submit to him, or die. As a potential rival, he’d have had no choice but to kill her. A glance behind him revealed the corpse of the Astronomer sprawled across the stairs, leaking blood that trickled down the steps. But Sigrid had vanished. As if she knew he would be coming for her.
Something relaxed in him as he gently closed his jaws around Amelie’s throat, too, accepting her surrender. A bitterer, staler taste than Perry’s sweetness. But he accepted it all the same.
“Hail Ithan,” Amelie said, loud enough for all to hear, “Prime of the Valbaran Wolves.”
In answer, a chorus of howls went up from around the Den. Then the city. Then the wilderness beyond the city walls. As if all of Midgard hailed him.
When it ceased, Ithan tipped his wolf’s head to the sky and loosed a howl of his own. Triumph and pain and mourning.
Make your brother proud.
And as his howl finished echoing, he could have sworn he heard a male wolf’s cry float up from the Bone Quarter itself.
