Chapter 143

Damon

The pre-dawn fog was still thick when the first howl broke the sky. It was a challenge. The kind of sound that split bone from breath.

My heart raced, nostrils flaring to take in all the scents. The others behind me stiffened, their wolves bristling beneath human skins.

We were halfway down the southern ridge, close enough to smell pine smoke…and blood.

I drew my blade without ceremony. Steel hissed against leather. I didn’t need words to rally the warriors behind me, they were already falling into formation. We’d been here before. But this… this was different.

“Hold the ridge,” I ordered. “Protect the flank.”

Zane stirred inside me, pacing. You feel that? he growled. They know where we are.

And they did.

The first wave hit faster than expected. Rogues poured from the tree line like floodwater; not scattered like they should have been, but coordinated.

Two Packs emerged from the east and west ravines, flanking us.

“How the hell—” one of the warriors cursed behind me, but I was already moving.

Steel met flesh.

I carved my way through two rogues in as many breaths, my blade a seamless extension of the fury flooding my veins.

Behind me, I could hear my fighters tightening formation, trying to fall back to the higher ridge. It was our fallback zone. And they went straight for it.

I turned just in time to see five rogues split off and head for the very edge we’d fortified hours ago.

They shouldn’t have known. No one outside my commanders knew.

I shouted an order, redirecting the southern line, but my thoughts raced ahead of the fight. This wasn’t luck or a clever guess.

It was betrayal.

They moved too cleanly, knew too much. The enemy circled us like they’d written the damn map themselves.

Blood splattered across my shoulder as another rogue fell beneath my blade. My wolf surged in my chest, snarling for release, but I forced him back.

Not yet.

The ridge trembled with the force of clashing bodies and clawed paws. A Rogue was brought down to my right, his throat torn open. His attacker didn’t linger. Just kept moving, like they were trained to do.

Then I saw him.

Above the ridge, half-obscured by the smoke curling through the trees, stood a figure in a dark cloak and curved mask.

Watching.

Something in my spine went rigid.

He stood with his weight shifted slightly to one leg, arms loose at his sides like he had all the time in the world. There was a smugness to the stance. A quiet confidence that shouldn’t have belonged here, in the chaos.

And beneath the hood, something familiar sparked.

My grip on the sword tightened.

No.

The figure tilted his head slightly, as if he felt my gaze, and smiled beneath the mask.

Then he turned. And vanished into the smoke, daring me to follow.

I surged forward, but the battle rose like a wall between us: flashing teeth, roaring wolves, splintering shields. I pushed through, striking, shouting, commanding. But I never reached the ridge.

Not before Asher disappeared.

Because it was him. I knew it with a certainty that I couldn’t explain.

And if the Rogues had followed someone this far, this deep into my territory; if they’d known our positions, our fallback zones, our lines…

They hadn’t followed a rogue. They’d followed their King.

An hour later the southern ridge was retaken, but the ground was littered with bodies, some ours, most theirs. My warriors moved through the wreckage in silence, gathering the wounded, securing the remaining high ground.

There were no shouts of victory. Just the dull rhythm of survival, the scrape of metal against earth, and the distant cries of the dying.

And still, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind.

That stance. That mask. That grin, half-curled like a blade.

I’d wanted it to be someone else. Anyone else. But deep in my bones, I knew. The tilt of his head. The arrogant stillness in the middle of chaos. The way he disappeared just before I could reach him—just like always.

No one else moved like that. No one stood like that. No one smirked at me like that.

I wiped the blood from my hands with a torn scrap of cloth. I could still feel the heat of the sword, the ghost of his presence a noose around my throat.

You let him go, Zane growled in the back of my mind.

He escaped, I corrected, jaw tight.

You hesitated.

I mounted my horse and rode hard for the palace, the wind lashing at my cloak, the ache of battle settling deep into my shoulders.

My men rode behind me in grim silence. They knew the fight wasn’t over. This had been a warning, not the war.

By the time we reached the gates, the sun was beginning to dip low, casting long shadows across the courtyard. Guards opened the gates without a word. Their faces tensed when they saw my blood-soaked armor, but I rode on.

I dismounted and strode through the halls like a man possessed. I made for the war chamber.

Inside, maps sprawled across the table were still pinned from the last strategy meeting. Patrol lines. Reinforcement paths. Territory claims.

And he had known all of it.

I slammed my fists onto the table and tore the map from its pins. It crumpled in my hands, parchment folding like brittle skin. I threw it into the fire without looking. It burned fast.

Zane paced in the cage of my ribs, restless and furious.

I’d built a kingdom on control. On information and power. On knowing.

And somehow, Asher had slipped through all of it.

I turned to the armory ledger and scrawled a new list of patrol routes, a new guard rotation. Half of the palace watch would be reassigned. Trusted warriors only.

The others, too friendly, too soft, too new, would be rotated out. Indefinitely.

I sealed the orders with my own crest and didn’t bother calling for a courier. I would deliver them myself.

I needed to see every face. Every pair of eyes.

Because Asher wasn’t just a vague Court game threat anymore. The Rogue King wasn’t a whisper or a theory.

He was real. He was organized. And he would come back.

I looked down at my chest, blood still crusted into the leather, dried along the seams. My hands ached, not from injury, but from holding on too tightly to the illusion of security.

Something glinted at the edge of the table. A scrap of dark fabric, torn and half-burnt. I didn’t remember picking it up. It must have caught on my blade during the fight.

It was from one of the Rogue’s cloaks. I knew the weave. The stitching. I’d seen it a dozen times growing up. It was tailored in Royal colors.

I clenched it in my fist. It was a warning. I was fighting a self-made King with my name downfall his priority.

And the worst part? It was from family; my cousin wanted me out of the way.

Unless it wasn’t? If I wasn’t my father’s son, then what did that make me and Asher?

And where would he strike next?