"I already anticipated you would come, Cassius." Beta Alphasus circled slowly, unhurried. "I have missed it, you know. You as former Beta, me as Gamma. And now look at where we both stand. Miraculously, your seat belongs to me."
"Do you think I give a crap on any of that ?" Cassius's voice was flat, almost bored. "I will not hesitate for even a breath to fight you."
"That is precisely what irritates me about you," Alphasus said, his smile sharpening. "You have always underestimated my capabilities ."
Before the words had fully left his mouth he moved. In one fluid motion he closed the distance to Roxanne, seized her by the throat and dragged her to the edge of the bridge. She hung suspended over the roaring water below, freezing and violent, churning against the stone walls of the fortress.
Then he let go.
Cassius watched her fall. His face did not change.Unfazed .
He reached into his coat and drew a small golden dagger.
Alphasus came for him fast, blade ready, closing in with the full weight of his speed and power behind him. Cassius waited. One breath. Two.
Then he stepped aside.
In the same movement, with no wasted motion, he drove the golden dagger straight into Alphasus's chest and reached in.
The heart came out clean.
Alphasus stilled. Then crumpled.
Cassius looked down at him without expression, the dagger loose in his hand.
"I never underestimated you," he said quietly. "You were simply never an opponent to begin with not even a close one. Your power is undeniable. I will give you that." He crouched slightly, bringing his words closer. "But that stupid ego of yours always makes you undeniably foolish . And it has always been your ruin." He straightened. "If you find your way back, remember what I said."
He turned and walked toward the bridge without looking back.
The water swallowed her whole.
Dark and merciless, it pulled her down with the patience of something that had never been in a hurry. The cold closed around her like a fist, pressing into her skin, her lungs, threading itself through every part of her that was already broken. She could see nothing. Feel nothing but the drag of the current and the dull, spreading numbness that was beginning to feel almost peaceful.
Why was I hoping for him to save me.
The thought floated up through the dark, quiet and honest. We are using each other. Nothing more. There are no alliances here. No loyalty. Only aims.
She let herself sink a little deeper.
Above the surface, on the edge of the bridge, Cassius stood completely still.
For one breath he looked down at the churning water below, at the place where she had disappeared. His expression did not shift. His eyes did not waver.
Then he stepped off the edge.
No hesitation. No sound. His body cut through the air in a clean and silent arc, the golden dagger still in his hand, his coat billowing briefly behind him before the water took him too. He went under like a stone with purpose, driving straight down into the freezing current with nothing but direction and will.
He found her arm in the dark.
His grip closed around it and he pulled, hard and certain, driving both of them upward until the surface broke above their heads and the cold air rushed back in. He hauled her onto the bank in one motion, water streaming from them both, and dropped to one knee beside her.
His face was unreadable as ever.
As though he had not just leapt from a fortress bridge without blinking.He looked at her for a long moment.
"Roxanne." His voice was low, with no softness in it, but no cruelty either. Just certainty. "Open your eyes. This is not the time for weakness."
She did not move.
"You do not get to stop breathing." He leaned closer, his words measured and deliberate. "We wolves live and die purely by will. That is simply what we are." A pause. "I am not saying you are one of us. But your resolve burns brighter than most wolves I have known. That is not nothing."
The cold water continued to run off them both.
"Before I bring you back, I want you to hold onto something." His voice dropped further, intended only for her. "Whatever plan you are carrying, it is worth waking up for. So wake up."
Roxanne's fingers twitched.
Small. Barely visible. But there.
Flashback
"Never let her touch cold water." The old woman's voice was firm, leaving no room for misinterpretation. "I mean that. Never. If it happens, the probability of her surviving is low." She paused, then her eyes moved between them with quiet scrutiny. "But just in case it does happen, I must ask. Are you two a couple?"
The moment Cassius pulled Roxanne from the water, he did not waste a breath.
He carried her to the centre of the fortress and set everything around them alight. Fire rose in every direction, consuming wall after wall, filling the air with a roar that shook the ground.
From a distance, people watched the smoke climb above the fortress in thick, churning columns, dark against the sky. The news moved faster than the flames. By the time the fire began to settle, word had already spread across Bloodmoon like a second blaze.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the colour began to return to Roxanne's skin.
She drifted. In and out, in and out, consciousness coming and going like a tide that could not decide whether to stay. Each time she surfaced there was only heat and the distant crackling of fire and then nothing again.
Then came a moment that held.
When Roxanne finally opened her eyes and they stayed open, she found herself lying on a mat of thick, impossibly soft wolf fur. Seven torches surrounded her in a wide circle, each one burning a different colour, the full arch of the rainbow rendered in flame. Above her, the stars burned gold.
She turned her head slowly.
The world around her was unlike anything she had ever seen. Every leaf on every tree had turned to gold, catching the light and throwing it back in long, trembling waves. The sky itself held a golden depth to it, rich and endless. And cascading down from every surface, every branch, every stone, were golden crystals, pouring silently like frozen waterfalls, filling the entire domain with a beauty that felt almost too sacred to breathe inside.
"Where am I?" she whispered.
"You are awake."
Cassius stepped into her line of sight. He looked at her the way he looked at most things, steadily and without performance. But there was something beneath it this time. Something that had not been there before.
"I cannot guarantee how long that will last," he said. "So I will say what I need to say now." He crouched beside her, bringing himself to her level, his voice quieter but no less certain. "I am asking you to give me your word. Give me permission to do whatever is necessary to protect your health and your life. Whatever it takes."
He waited.
The golden crystals cascaded around them in silence."Apart from myself," Roxanne said softly, her voice barely above a breath, "you are the person I trust most in this world. So I give you my permission."
Then she slipped away again, back into the quiet dark.
Cassius stayed still for a moment after her eyes closed. Then slowly, without urgency, his robe loosened and fell. He moved toward her with the kind of carefulness reserved for things that could still break, and lowered himself beside her. His lips pressed to her forehead. Gentle. Unhurried. As though the gesture was for him as much as it was for her.
Then he looked at her.
Really looked.
Something moved behind his eyes that had no clean name attached to it. It was not lust, though heat lived somewhere inside it. It was not love, though it ran deeper than anything casual. It was something that existed in the space between the two, something that language had not yet caught up to.
His fingers found her hair. Silver now, grey threading through what had once been darker, and he did not rush past it. He touched it the way someone touches something they are still learning to understand.
Then he pressed his lips to hers.
Her lips were purple and cold beneath his, but the moment they met, fire moved. Not around them. Through her. A current of warmth that spread from that single point of contact outward, branching through her entire body like light finding its way through cracks.
Roxanne's eyes opened.
She became aware of him all at once and instinctively her eyes closed again, a reflex born of something between shyness and overwhelm.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
A slow smile crossed his face, rare and quiet, before he shifted and hovered over her with a gentleness that contradicted everything sharp about him. Beneath him her heartbeat was loud, louder than the birds outside, louder than the crackling torches, louder than anything else in the golden world surrounding them.
His breath deepened as his lips found the curve of her neck and rested there.
"Do not close your eyes." His voice was low, unhurried, wrapping around her like the warmth he had been pouring into her all along. "I am going to set every desire you have ever buried completely on fire. And I will not rush a single moment of it. We will find out what this feeling is together."
The golden crystals cascaded around them in silence.
And for the first time in a long while, the cold inside Roxanne began to feel very far away.