Chapter 7 - THE BATTLE OF WHISPERING PASS
The Whispering Pass was a narrow gorge flanked by jagged cliffs of black stone and towering drifts of snow. It was a natural trap—a place where an army could easily be crushed from above if caught unawares.
Lord Vane thought he was being clever.
At the head of two hundred rough-looking mercenaries, Vane crouched behind a ridge of boulders, waiting for the royal vanguard to enter the narrowest part of the gorge. He gripped his heavy broadsword, a sadistic grin plastered across his face.
“When the royal vanguard enters the pass, let loose the boulders!” Vane hissed to his lieutenants. “We crush their front line, take the Queen hostage, and— AGH!”
Vane’s sentence was cut short by a deafening, blood-curdling roar that shook loose icicles from the cliffs above.
It wasn't the sound of an ordinary wolf. It was the synchronized, terrifying howl of fifty royal direwolves, echoing off the stone walls like thunder.
Vane whipped his head around in sheer disbelief. From the ridge above their position—a cliff face the mercenaries had deemed impossible to scale—a dark shadow descended like an avalanche.
Leading the charge, riding a massive black direwolf with absolute, lethal grace, was Queen Gwendolyn.
Her silver-and-black armor gleamed under the winter sun, her dark hair streaming wildly behind her, and her hands glowing with a faint, shimmering aura of raw, awakened power. Behind her, a torrent of elite royal guards and giant beasts poured down the slopes, completely surrounding the mercenaries before they could even draw their weapons.
“Ambush the ambushers!” Gwendolyn’s voice rang out across the gorge, clear and commanding.
Before Vane could even scream an order, his mercenaries panicked. The sheer terror of the royal direwolves broke their lines instantly. Men dropped their weapons and fled, only to be cut off by the royal guard.
Vane snarled, swinging his heavy broadsword as Gwendolyn’s direwolf leaped toward him. He lunged forward, aiming a vicious blow directly at her mount.
With a swift, fluid motion, Gwendolyn drew her own blade—a finely forged royal broadsword gifted to her by Bram. She parried Vane’s strike with a sharp clang of steel that sent sparks flying into the air.
Vane gritted his teeth, his face red with strain as he pushed against her blade. “You... you should have frozen in the snow, you bitch!”
“I told you,” Gwendolyn whispered, her amber eyes blazing with cold, lethal fury as she channeled the raw power of her awakened wolf, “you made a fatal mistake.”
With a sudden, explosive surge of strength, she deflected his sword upward, spun her mount in a tight circle, and brought the pommel of her blade down hard against the side of Vane’s helmet.
The heavy metal crashed into his skull with a sickening crunch. Vane’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed heavily into the snow, unconscious and defeated.
Within minutes, the battle of Whispering Pass was over. Not a single royal soldier was scratched, and the mercenary forces were completely disarmed, bound in heavy iron chains, and kneeling in the snow.
As Bram rode up through the gorge on his stallion, stopping beside Gwendolyn’s panting direwolf, he looked at his wife with a gaze filled with absolute, overwhelming adoration.
Gwendolyn wiped a stray speck of snow from her cheek, her chest rising and falling with adrenaline, a triumphant smile curving her lips.
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“Well fought, my Queen,” Bram murmured, his voice thick with pride.
“The pass is secured,” Gwendolyn replied calmly, looking down at the bound mercenaries. “Now... let’s go finish what we started at the Redmond estate.”
