SERAPHINA’S POV

The square erupted into chaos.

Screams tore through the crowd as black smoke clawed upward from the ruptured stones, thick with the stench of burned herbs, rotten blood, and dark magic.

Reporters stumbled from the barricades. Civilians surged away from the southern perimeter. Cameras swung wildly, catching distorted glimpses as hollow-eyed wolves took shape from the smoke and lunged for the tribunal platform.

It was a horror show.

But we had planned for this.

“Evacuate the civilians!” Kieran roared, his command cracking through the square like thunder.

The inner perimeter tightened instead of collapsing. Frostbane warriors at the outer line shifted into defensive formation, guiding the civilian observers behind reinforced barriers while Maya cut through the panic with sharp, precise orders.

“This way! Stay low! Do not run toward the exits until cleared!”

Her voice resonated, steady enough to calm people already on the verge of hysteria.

Nightfang warriors closed ranks near the southern access point, intercepting the first wave of altered wolves as they burst through the smoke.

Silver flashed. Claws struck stone. The air filled with snarls and the metallic clash of weapons.

The pressure of Corin’s psychic net rushed across my skin like a tide, pinning hostile minds, distinguishing panic from intent, enemy from innocent.

Several cloaked figures staggered as his power hit them. One collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, before Frostbane guards seized him.

Alois lifted one hand, and the wards beneath the stones ignited.

Pale lines spread outward across the square in intricate patterns, forming barriers that trapped the first wave within a contained killing ground rather than letting them reach the crowd.

Jack laughed from the platform before us, raw and delighted, as if the bloodshed had been arranged for his entertainment.

“Took them long enough!” he shouted.

Kieran whirled toward him with the execution blade still in hand.

Jack’s smile stretched wider, but beneath it, I felt the frantic pulse of his implanted darkness.

Hungry. Excited.

“Kieran,” I warned.

This wasn’t just a rescue attempt; it was activation.

Jack’s darkness was waking in response to Catherine and Marcus’ people, and every second he wasn’t contained made him more dangerous.

Two altered wolves broke through the southern line and hurled themselves toward the tribunal platform.

Ashar surged beneath Kieran’s skin, but Kieran didn’t shift.

He moved with brutal human precision, intercepting the first wolf with a slash that opened its chest from shoulder to ribs.

The creature didn’t bleed like a living wolf. Viscous black fluid spattered the stones instead.

I reached for the second.

Silver pressure unfurled from my mind, wrapping around the creature’s consciousness, and found almost nothing human left inside.

Only pain. Sorrow. Hunger.

Catherine’s command.

I crushed it.

The wolf collapsed mid-leap, skidding across the stones at my feet.

For one heartbeat, everyone nearby stared.

Even me. I stared at my hands, momentarily startled by how easily my power had obeyed.

Jack snarled as the darkness around him recoiled from me again, but this time it twisted, enraged by its own retreat.

The smoke thickened at the southern perimeter.

Another surge of cloaked figures advanced, moving with too much coordination to be desperate.

They were not trying to win the square. They were trying to reach Jack.

“Hold the platform!” Ethan shouted.

Helen shifted near the western section, her wolf pale and vicious as she tore into one of the altered attackers trying to flank the reporters.

Callister’s wolf drove another group back toward Alois’ wards.

Maxwell moved like a blade through the eastern barricade, dragging an injured civilian out of the crush before driving his elbow into a cloaked attacker’s throat.

Still, they kept coming.

Once. Twice. Three times, Marcus’ people slammed themselves against our formation, trying to carve a path to Jack.

Three times, the allied forces beat them back.

And with every failed attempt, the smoke at the southern rupture pulsed darker.

Then a different pressure entered the square.

Old. Dominant. Cold enough that even the panicked crowd seemed to falter under it.

Kieran and I turned towards it.

Through the smoke, Marcus Draven stepped onto the shattered stones.

For one suspended second, the entire square understood what had just happened.

The respectable Alpha, who had publicly claimed no involvement in rogue affairs, had appeared in the middle of an armed attack to retrieve the son he had abandoned on camera.

Every reporter still standing turned their lens toward him.

Marcus’ face tightened when he realized it.

Kieran’s smile was all teeth.

“Well,” he called, voice carrying across the square, “this is awkward.”

A ripple coursed through the crowd, curiosity cutting through fear.

Marcus’ gaze slid to the cameras.

Then to Jack.

Then to me.

Hatred flickered there first. Then something colder.

“Seraphina,” Marcus said, almost softly. “You should have stayed a myth.”

I stepped forward, power gathering quietly beneath my skin.

“And you should have stayed hidden.”

Kieran moved at the same time I did.

He took Marcus from the front, blade flashing in a brutal arc that forced Marcus backward.

I struck from the side, my power threading through the smoke, cutting through Catherine’s distorted sigils before they could thicken around him.

But Marcus was fast. Faster than he had any right to be.

His aura lashed outward, powerful enough to crack stone beneath his feet. He shifted halfway, claws lengthening, eyes burning gold and black as he met Kieran’s attack head-on.

The impact shook the platform.

Jack shouted something behind us, but I couldn’t spare him more than a sliver of attention.

Kieran drove Marcus back step by step, each blow controlled, merciless, exact.

I felt every thread of Marcus’ corruption now, every dark seam Catherine had stitched into his defenses.

He was not like Jack; he was not buried beneath darkness.

He wore it. Used it. Fed it willingly.

Revulsion twisted inside me.

“You built all this,” I said, silver light threading through my voice.

Marcus’ gaze snapped to mine.

“For power,” I continued. “For control. For fear. And now everyone can see you for what you really are.”

His composure cracked, his eyes darting at the cameras.

The half-second of distraction was enough.

Kieran struck.

Marcus hit the stone hard, silver blade pressed to his throat before he could rise. I locked his mind beneath mine at the same instant, psychic pressure pinning his thoughts.

For one breath, we had him.

The square seemed to freeze around us.

Jack stared from the platform, expression twisting between triumph and horror.

Marcus’ eyes flicked toward him.

Then he smiled.

My stomach dropped.

His fingers curled around something hidden in his palm.

“No!” I snapped.

Too late.

Marcus crushed the device.

A pulse of black-red light erupted from his hand and swallowed him whole.

Kieran seized me and threw us backward as the blast tore through the platform.

Heat slammed into my skin. Stone shattered. Wards screamed. The world became smoke, force, and the deafening roar of magic detonating from the inside out.

Kieran’s body shielded mine as we hit the ground, but the impact still knocked the wind out of me. For one terrible second, white noise filled my ears, and my vision blurred into a red haze.

Then sound rushed back.

Screams.

Shouts.

Jack.

Jack screaming.

Not in pain alone.

In transformation.

I pushed myself up just in time to see darkness pour from the place Marcus had vanished, racing across the stones like living tar and slamming straight into Jack.

His restraints exploded, and he arched violently, bones cracking beneath his skin as his body twisted, stretched, and reshaped.

“No,” I whispered.

His wolf tore out of him, massive and deformed.

Dark veins pulsed beneath matted grey fur, eyes black with fevered gold burning at the center.

The thing that had been Jack hit the platform with a roar that sent civilians screaming all over again.

Kieran struggled to rise beside me, blood streaking down one side of his face.

He stumbled back down with a groan. Whatever was in the device Marcus detonated had incapacitated the most powerful Alpha I knew.

“Encircle him!” Kieran shouted.

The allied forces surged.

Nightfang closed from the inner ring.

Frostbane from the southern line.

All the Alphas moved at once.

For a moment, it looked like we would contain him.

Then Jack’s wolf slammed into the weakest point in the eastern barricade with suicidal force.

Silver spears pierced his side. A ward flared against his chest. Corin’s psychic pressure drove him briefly to one knee.

But the darkness inside him devoured pain like fuel.

Jack howled, shattered the ward with raw force, and tore through two packed ranks before anyone could fully adjust.

I reached for his mind.

The darkness snapped back at me, wild and burning with Marcus’s final command.

Ravage.

Ethan shifted, and Logan lunged after Jack with a thunderous snarl.

But Jack had already broken through.

Bleeding black, half-mad, and barely holding himself together, he vanished into the smoke beyond the square.

The trap had worked.

Marcus was exposed.

But Jack Draven had escaped.

And whatever Catherine had made of him had finally been unleashed.