Chapter 163

The air here was different. It didn’t carry the ancient scent of the White Oaks or the damp, neutral musk of the neutral zone.

It was sharp and smelled of territory—of a thousand marked trees and a thousand predatory warnings.

Clara stood at the edge of the ravine, her white eyes darting through the gloom. She could hear Barnaby’s heavy paws thumping further into the brush, his yaps of excitement fading as he pursued the rabbit deeper into a forbidden zone.

"Barnaby, get back here this instant!" she hissed, taking a step forward, her boots crunching on a bed of dry pine needles.

She was mere inches from the invisible line—the border of the Blood-Moon pack. To any other creature, this line was a death sentence, but Clara wasn’t an unholy nor holy and she had lived in these woods long before the Alphas had claimed them.

She wasn’t afraid of any pack, but she was wary of the timing. Suddenly, the brush on the opposite side of the ravine exploded.

A massive wolf, the color of dark chocolate and soot, hurtled through the air. It cleared the gap of the ravine in a single leap, its paws hitting the soft earth only a few feet from where Clara stood.

The impact sent a spray of dirt over her boots, making her curse out the creature in her head but her instincts, honed by centuries of survival and the cold logic of her craft, took over.

Her hand went to her hip, searching for the familiar weight of her spellbook, only to find her fingers brushing against the rough fabric of her gown.

She let out a silent curse. She had left her book with Marcus. Her hands came up, palms out, her fingers curling as she began to draw the static from the humid evening air.

The wolf was a mess. Their sides were heaving, it was a male, his fur was matted with sweat and blood, and some shards of glass were still embedded in him shoulders.

But it was the eyes that stopped her from attacking—molten gold, wide with a terrifying, agonizing recognition.

He skidded to a halt, his claws digging deep furrows into the ground, and for a heartbeat, the only sound was his ragged breathing.

Clara’s white eyes narrowed. She didn’t know this shifter. She didn’t recognize the lineage of his coat or the specific cadence of his growl.

The wolf stood frozen, his head tilted as if he were trying to solve a puzzle he lacked the pieces for.

He looked at her as if she were a ghost, or perhaps a god—his molten eyes darting from her face to her hands, which were still glowing with the faint, violet hum of gathering kinetic energy.

Despite his bizarre, non-aggressive stance, Clara didn’t lower her hands. Shifters were volatile at the best of times, and an Alpha—especially one this battered and desperate—was a cornered animal with teeth.

The silence of their standoff was shattered by a sound that made the very ground vibrate. From the thicket behind Clara, a series of booming, earth-shaking barks erupted.

Barnaby was returning from his hunt, and he sounded ecstatic. The chocolate-fleshed wolf flinched violently at the sound, his hackles rising.

His ears flattened against his skull, and his lips curled back to reveal elongated fangs. Before Clara could utter a word of command, the wolf lunged, charging at Clara in a blur of dark fur and raw speed.

He wasn’t aiming for her throat—he was trying to get between her and the approaching "threat."

But Clara didn’t know that. She only saw a hundred-and-fifty-pound beast sprinting at her with lethal intent.

"Stay back!" she hissed while her magic flared. The static she had been drawing from the air condensed into a solid wall of force.

It hit the charging wolf mid-stride with the impact of a speeding carriage. The force of the spell flung Alaric backward, his body soaring through the air until he collided with a massive oak tree.

The trunk groaned, bark splintering under the impact, and the wolf slumped to the forest floor with a pained whine.

Without her spellbook, she had to rely on raw, unrefined power. In the heartbeat of silence, Barnaby burst from the ferns.

The sentinel hound was a terrifying sight—eyes like burning coals, skin like shifting smoke. He didn’t even glance at the fallen wolf.

Instead, he let out a joyful huff and bounded straight toward Clara. Alaric’s eyes flew open. Seeing the shadow-beast closing the distance to the girl, a surge of pure adrenaline overrode his pain.

He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the glass in his skin and the likely cracked ribs from the impact with the tree.

He let out a high-pitched bark—a warning, a plea—and began to run toward her again, his paws skidding on the pine needles as he tried to save her from the "monster."

"I said stay back, wolf!" Clara’s voice rang out, now laced with a genuine, lethal edge. She raised both hands this time, the air around her beginning to crackle with the smell of ozone.

"I will not warn you again. One more step and I will end you where you stand." Alaric skidded to a halt just a few feet away, his chest heaving, his golden eyes wide with a confused terror.

He was ready to throw himself into the jaws of the shadow-beast for her, but then he stopped.

Barnaby reached Clara and didn’t bite.

He didn’t tear. Instead, the massive, nightmare-ish hound slowed down, wagging a tail and began to nuzzle his head against Clara’s side, letting out a soft, whimpering sound.

Clara let out a small, weary sigh, her posture relaxing only slightly as she ran a hand over the hound’s ears.

"Easy, Barnaby" Alaric stood rooted to the spot, his tail tucked slightly, his head dropping in utter bewilderment.

He looked at the girl then at the monster cuddling with her like a lapdog, and then back at the witch.

He couldn’t speak, and that frustration made him snap, pressing down on his wolf until the beast retreated, unable to process the logic of a beast-demon playing the part of a loyal pet.

The air grew heavy with the sound of snapping bones. Clara watched with a detached gaze as the chocolate fur receded and the massive frame of the wolf collapsed inward, twisting and lengthening into human proportions.

Alaric stood up slowly, the transition leaving him trembling. He was entirely naked, his skin pale and marred by the angry red welts of the glass shards and the darkening bruise across his ribs where Clara’s spell had slammed him into the oak.

Most women—even most she-wolves—would have averted their eyes, but Clara didn’t even blink.

She stood her ground, her hand still resting casually on the head of her bent child, her gaze raking over him as if she were inspecting a piece of furniture that had been delivered to the wrong house.

He was tall—possessing a solid, athletic build that reminded her of Marcus. He didn’t have the towering dominance of Lucian, but he carried the heavy muscularity of a warrior who had been bred for the front lines.

Alaric didn’t seem to notice his own nudity. His golden eyes, still bleeding with the remnants of the wolf’s intensity, were locked onto hers. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

He was shivering, not from the cold, but from the sheer sensory overload of being so close to her.

"Mate." he finally rasped, his voice cracking as his human lungs fought for air. He took a stumbling step forward, his feet bare against the sharp pine needles.

"Mate?" Clara repeated, her voice flat and devoid of any romantic spark. She stared at him as if he had just started speaking a long-dead dialect of ancient Sumerian.

Are you lost, boy? Or did that hit to the tree scramble your brain more than I thought?" She didn’t move an inch, even as he took that staggering step toward her.

Her white eyes remained fixed on his face. "The scent..." Alaric panted, his hand clutching at the air between them as if he could physically grab the trail of honey and lilies that was currently drowning his senses.

"I followed it. From the pack house... for miles. It’s you. You’re the one the Moon promised. My mate."

Clara let out an incredulous huff that was almost a laugh. She looked at Barnaby, who was still leaning against her leg, and then back to the shivering Alpha.

"Listen to me very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once," she said, her tone dropping into that of a frustrated teacher dealing with a particularly slow student.

"I am not your mate, kid." She took a step toward him, and for the first time, Alaric flinched at the sheer coldness radiating from her.

She turned her back on him, clicking her tongue to signal Barnaby. "Come, Barnaby. We’re leaving before the stupidity becomes contagious."

"Wait!" Alaric shouted, his voice cracking with desperation. He didn’t care about his pride or the fact that he was standing there with nothing but his wounds. "Don’t leave! I don’t even know your name!"

Clara paused, looking back over her shoulder with a look of pure disdain. "And you never will. Go back to your borders, boy. Find a nice wolf girl who actually wants to be ’marked.’ Because if I see you on this side of the ravine again, I won’t use a wall of air. I’ll use fire. And I promise you, that won’t feel like destiny."

She began to walk away, her pace steady and unbothered, leaving Alaric standing in the deepening shadows of the ravine.