His Forsaken Luna-Chapter 152: Flames of Hatred

{SSTP - Suggested song to play: Voices of Fornburg by Sarah Schachner, Assassin’s Creed }

~Eryx ~

My life, my soul, my mate. I never pictured anything like this woman below me to be mine. My large knuckles stroke the side of her cheek. She looks so fragile. So weak. Tiny compared to me and the Southern Weres.

Yet this tiny she-wolf was the most powerful woman in this kingdom. Idalia collapsed in my arms after healing my broken back and pierced lungs. The scent of burning flesh was still fresh in my nose.

Alaric and his little circle, along with Kharis and Cohnal, all arrived in the snow-covered clearing. The stormy weather had cleared to a vivid navy night sky, the stars twinkling, winking at us as though they were keeping Idalia’s secret.

Alaric rushed over, shifting into his human form and skidding by us as the other wolves circled Deyanira’s burnt and soot-covered features.

"Idalia!" Alaric cried out, and my arm instantly shot out to stop him from smothering my mate.

"She is resting," I state calmly. I am anything but calm. My life just used powers beyond my knowledge to smite a witch to death and then proceed to heal my body.

My brow leans against hers as I inhale her scent and listen to the beat of her steady heart.

She is alive.

She is safe.

Alaric growled slightly in annoyance, but upon seeing her serene face and hearing her heartbeat, the Alpha King relaxed, sinking back onto his feet with a sigh.

’What happened?’ Cohnal asks in the pack mind link after circling the clearing for any other threats. I swore there was something unsettling and alive about the dark and twisted trees, ’Wildlings’, Idalia told me they were called. Did they witness what happened?

"Idalia’s powers awakened," I muttered quietly, stroking back her hair as I looked back at my Beta and the other Weres. "She used them on Deyanira."

Alaric glanced in the witch’s direction, but a mixture of pain and anger stormed behind those blue eyes before he looked away, unable to stare at the body of a woman who caused this family so much pain. I cradled my mate to my body more. The bond was alive and strong, the injuries minor, but her body was completely spent from the amount of power she must have used.

"So, she smoked the witch, eh?" Kharis whistled as he leaned over her.

"What power...?" Alaric whispered like he didn’t want to say it too loudly. The woods did listen, after all.

"She will tell you," I grunted.

’Get away from her. She is of dark magicks,’ Cohnal warned my warrior, his eyes glowing in the dark as he stopped at a distance from Kharis and Beta Hakon, checking over Deyanira’s body.

Ivar and Sigurd, also in their wolf forms, remained at a distance, growling as they sniffed the air. Kharis raised his hands and backed away. "You don’t have to tell me twice. Nasty thing," he spoke in Solfyran.

I lifted Idalia in my arms, cradling her face to my chest, smelling her scent again, the sun and wildflowers calming the trembles that shook through my body whenever my thoughts returned to those moments before I reached my mate. The pain that erupted through the bond, the utter panic that I wouldn’t make it in time.

’You’ve made my heart race more in the days we’ve spent together here in this damned wintery kingdom than the bloodied days of my childhood in Sun and Fury.’ My words spoke softly into our bond link. Even whilst asleep, her lips curled softly, like she could hear me still in the depths of her mind.

Slowly, my strides long, I drew closer to the witch that had caused my mate so much pain in her life. The woman who once was full of life and a vile beauty that never once piqued my interest had shrunk onto a skeletal face, skin sagged and grey, lips cracked like that darkness within her was the only source keeping her looking young. Now, she was close to a corpse. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

’Cut her into pieces,’ Cohnal growled from the side, his wolf’s eyes gleamed in the darkness as he glared at the witch’s body.

Beta Hakon sniffed at Deyanira’s hair and snarled, backing away with bared teeth.

"What is it?" My head snapped back to the body.

Thump thump.

"No... That’s not possible..." I muttered, clutching my mate closer to myself as my wolf growled to life, ready to finish what Idalia started.

Before any of us moved, Alaric stabbed a blade into Deyanira’s heart with such force we heard the blade break on the solid icy dirt beneath her. Alaric pulled it back with a jolt, his eyes lost to the burning vengeance in his heart. We waited on bated breath. Her heart stopped beating, but it had stopped before as well.

I agreed with Cohnal. "Cut her into parts. We’ll set them alight and spread the ashes," I commanded. Alaric drew back, turning away from the scene and dropping his dagger.

⋆⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺⋆

Deyanira was dismembered and set to flames in the palace. With her death came a lot of confused and disturbed Weres, like puppets under the witch’s powers awakening from a strange dream. News spread of what she was and what she’d done. Many attended the bonfire of her corpse.

There was no celebration, no words spoken that could lift the weight of her destruction among so many. I didn’t bother attending ’Fire Night’. I was where I was meant to be, by my mate’s side.

I watched as Kharis and Cohnal reported through a shared open mind link of what was happening while I kept my love close to my body in bed. Many claimed to have been under Deyanira’s spell. But we knew that wasn’t possible, especially after the distance suddenly spread between the palace and the witch.

No, the nobles took advantage of the power dynamic and took pleasure in knocking down a Princess because it fed their egos to someone of higher status brought to their level, no worse, to that of someone less than a peasant.

I wanted to kill them all for the years of torture they’d put Idalia through. Unfortunately, some rules couldn’t be broken. I couldn’t go on mass murder in the kingdom of Ice and Claws without bringing war upon my people.

If Idalia wanted it, however, it could certainly be arranged. I looked down at my beautiful mate, checking on her through our bond again to make sure she was okay. It had been a whole day, and she was yet to wake. To cause lightning to strike, she must have burned a lot of power, and power she hadn’t used before.

I licked at the mark on the back of her neck and calmed the beast inside me again as I watched her soft features. My brave, powerful mate. No, my darling would never let me kill all those people. If she desired their deaths, she would take matters into her own hands. My Barbaric Princess.