Chapter 53
DEREK
The moment the emergency response teams cleared the worst of the wreckage, the adrenaline began to fade—and reality set in.
The Alliance Summit had been attacked. Not just disrupted. Not just interrupted. Attacked.
Bombs, blood, death. Alphas injured. Lunas crying. Warriors dead.
I had bruises forming across my ribs, a deep cut across my side that had already scabbed over—but that was nothing compared to the blow this night had landed on all of us.
Logan approached with a grim look, carrying a bundle of clothes he’d scavenged from what looked like a destroyed hotel boutique—dark slacks and a pale blouse that looked two sizes too big for Elena. He handed them to her with a quiet grunt, and she took them with a nod.
“Thanks,” she muttered, then turned her back to us and started dressing, barely bothering to hide the fact that she was still shaking.
I was still naked, blood-spattered, covered in soot and smoke. I didn’t care. Not really. Not until Elena said—
“How do you think an attack like this is going to play in the press?”
Her voice was strained, but it cut through the chaos like a blade. Logan and I both turned toward her as she tugged the blouse over her head. It hung off one shoulder and cinched awkwardly at the waist. She looked wild. Powerful. Beautiful.
“Not well,” I said, brushing dust off my forearm.
“For once, I agree,” Logan added. His voice was lower now, more serious. Less sharp-edged than usual.
The thought of the press made me realize that any of them that had been hanging around the summit could, would and probably should arrive any minute to document the attack. And I was still standing here stark naked.
Still. There wasn’t exactly anything I could wear to hand other than what Logan had managed to scrounge from the broken storefront, and due to my size, I’d never really been able to shop off the rack.
Elena ignored my nakedness, looked between me and Logan, then straightened, drawing herself to her full height. The coppery ends of her hair were tangled and dirty, but her gaze was steady.
“Then we need to get ahead of it. Right now. We have to spin it before they do. Before Carlton gets hold of it. Before Cassandra leaks something else. The narrative needs to be unity. Strength. Not chaos.”
I was ever so slightly irritated that Elena had mentioned Cassandra—she may be brash and aggressive when she went after something that she wanted, but I didn’t think she’d do anything to hurt anyone on purpose.
Still, Elena was smarting from Cassandra’s last bold media move and so I let it go. Her instincts on this move were right.
She paused. “There are reporters here, right?”
I nodded slowly.
“Then grab one,” she said. “Right now.”
I blinked at her—then smirked. “You’re giving orders now?”
“Yes,” she replied without missing a beat. “Someone has to.”
I turned to go—then heard her call out behind me.
“Maybe put some clothes on first?”
I grinned over my shoulder. “You sure you want that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just go.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was buttoned into a clean white shirt—borrowed from one of the Alliance security staff—and standing behind a podium flanked by a fractured row of Alphas. Some had blood still smeared across their brows. One had his arm in a sling. Another had his Luna beside him, clutching his hand as if he might still fall apart.
Elena stood a few paces behind me, off to the side. She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t trying to look composed.
She just looked… ready.
I leaned into the mic.
“My name is Derek King, Alpha of Silverclaw,” I said. “And I am standing here with the leaders of the Alliance Summit because we will not be intimidated.”
Cameras flashed.
“What happened tonight,” I continued, “was not a rogue brawl. It was not chaos for chaos’ sake. This was a coordinated attack. Strategic. Calculated. And cruel.”
A few words, murmurs from the crowd. I let them settle.
“This was guerrilla warfare,” I said. “A tactic used for centuries by smaller, less-equipped enemies to strike fear into more powerful ones. They use the shadows. They bait and bleed. They think fear is our weakness.”
I looked at the Alphas beside me. I thought of the warriors who had fallen. The ones who were still being pulled from rubble. The healers working without rest.
“But tonight, we proved them wrong. We—Moonstone, Silverclaw, Ridgewood, Aspenrun, every pack that showed up—fought together. Side by side. Tooth to tooth. Not as separate entities. Not as strangers. But as wolves.”
I scanned the crowd. The flash of Elena’s hair. Logan’s tense jaw. The baby-faced Alpha from Drift Hollow who had taken down a rogue with a meat fork. He raised his chin as I caught his eye.
“We are not afraid,” I finished. “And we will not break.”
Rogue Outskirts
The train yard groaned like it remembered its past.
Twisted steel beams arched over skeletal tracks, their bolts long since rusted away. The old freight cars sat like tombstones—graffitied, scorched, their doors hanging open like yawning mouths.
Wind sliced through the hollow corridors with a sharp, metallic whistle, carrying with it the scent of oil, rust, and old blood.
A group of us huddled around a barrel fire in the belly of the yard’s long-abandoned maintenance depot. The roof was half-collapsed, stars visible through broken beams, but it was shelter enough.
The fire crackled, sputtering against the damp wood we’d scrounged. It threw long, flickering shadows against concrete walls and the outlines of weapons—machetes, blades, makeshift spears—leaning in piles nearby.
Smoke and heat curled into our cloaks, but it couldn’t chase away the cold.
One of the men closest to the flames scraped ash from the lip of the barrel with the toe of his boot. The glow lit his face in slices—cheekbones high, jaw tight with fury. “They toasted,” he muttered, voice thick with disgust. “Fucking celebrated like they’d won something.”
“Dressed up in their tailored coats and smug speeches,” another rasped from the shadows. His hand twitched toward the hunting knife at his belt, fingers twitching. “Saw ‘em on the news. All proud of themselves. Unity this. Alliance that.”
“They think it’s over,” a third voice sneered. Younger, sharper. “Like we just threw a tantrum and went home.”
“They didn’t win,” came the reply from the far edge of the circle. That voice was older—gravel dragged through smoke. Cold as ice, low as a snarl.
The speaker stepped forward slowly, and the firelight caught the edge of his coat—heavy, black leather. His boots crunched over shattered glass as he moved. “Last night wasn’t defeat,” he said. “It was an introduction.”
The others stilled.
“They think the Summit was their moment. That this treaty will stitch the packs back together. But all they did,” he continued, sweeping his hood back to reveal a mess of scars lining one side of his face, “was light the fuse.”
A silence followed.
The kind that settled deep in your spine.
Somewhere above us, a crow croaked from its perch on the scaffolding and took off into the night.
A figure sitting apart from the rest shifted slightly. Small, slight. A hood pulled tight over her head, concealing most of her face. She’d barely spoken since arriving—just listened.
But now she did speak.
“What’s the next target?” Her voice wasn’t loud. Wasn’t rushed. Just steady. Calm. Like she already knew the answer and was simply waiting for it to be said aloud.
The scarred man turned toward her, eyes glinting like coals beneath his brow.
For a moment, the fire snapped louder, as if it, too, was leaning in.
He didn’t blink.
“Moonstone.”
