Chapter 6 - The Enforcers Arrive
For the next thirty-six hours, the old barn became a hidden sanctuary amidst the storm.
While the blizzard continued to rage outside, Dorothy tended to the King’s wounds. Davian was a surprisingly quiet patient, though his raw physical presence filled every corner of the room. He ate the cold dried meat and broth she brought him from the tavern pantry, his body recovering at a supernatural speed that left Dorothy stunned.
By the second night, the deep gashes on his side had pulled together into dark, healthy scars. The wolfsbane poison that would have killed a normal wolf had been burned away by his legendary immune system.
They talked in the quiet hours by the brazier fire.
Dorothy learned that Davian had been betrayed by his own cousin, a noble lord who had aligned with Silas Blackwood to seize the northern border territories. He had been lured into the mountain pass under the guise of a peace summit, only to be ambushed by twenty heavy crossbowmen.
"I killed twelve of them before I took the third arrow," Davian said, his voice flat as he polished an iron hunting knife he had found in the barn. "The rest chased me into the storm. They thought the cold would finish what their iron started."
"And it almost did," Dorothy reminded him, sitting across from him as she mended her torn petticoat with needle and thread.
Davian looked up from his knife. His golden eyes lingered on her face in the flickering firelight. "It would have. If an unshifted omega hadn't decided to pull a mountain on a wooden sled."
A soft flush warmed Dorothy’s cheeks. She looked down at her sewing. "I didn't know you were a king. I just couldn't watch another living thing be treated like trash."
Davian fell silent for a long moment. Then he reached across the small space separating them. His heavy hand rested over her knee, his thumb lightly stroking the rough fabric of her skirt.
"When I return to the capitol," Davian said, his voice dropping to a serious, low vibration, "I am clearing your family's name. You will never set foot in a tavern again, Dorothy. You will come with me to the Silver City."
Dorothy looked into his eyes, a pang of fear mingling with a strange, intoxicating hope. "As what? A maid? A servant?"
Davian’s golden eyes flared with sudden, dangerous heat. "As my protected. As the woman who saved the King. And if any lord in my court dares look at you with disrespect, I will take his head before his feet hit the marble."
Before Dorothy could answer, a loud, violent bang echoed from the front of the barn.
The heavy wooden doors were smashed open with a terrifying crack. A blast of freezing wind and blinding snow rushed into the barn, instantly blowing out the small fire in the brazier.
"Dorothy Thorne!" a harsh, grating voice shouted through the roar of the wind.
Collector Voss stepped into the barn, wrapped in a heavy bear-fur cloak. But he was not alone. Behind him stood four tall, heavily armed enforcers wearing the black-and-silver tabards of Silas Blackwood’s estate. Each man held a drawn broadsword, their eyes gleaming with the yellow light of shifted wolves.
Behind them stood Roland Thorne, cowering in the snow, pointing a shaking hand into the barn. "She's in there! I told you! She's been hiding in here!"
Dorothy stood up instantly, dropping her sewing. "Father!"
Voss sneered, stepping over the threshold. "Your father was wise enough to inform us that you were lingering here instead of preparing for the transport wagon, girl. Lord Silas’s carriage has arrived at the tavern early. We take you now."
One of the heavy enforcers stepped forward, pulling a pair of heavy iron manacles from his belt. "Move it, omega. We don't have all day to wait in the cold."
Dorothy took a step back, her back hitting the cold stone wall.
Then, from the dark shadow behind the hay bales, a quiet, deep sound echoed through the barn.
It was not a scream, nor a shout. It was a low, vibrating chuckle—a sound so full of absolute arrogance and lethal malice that all four enforcers instantly stopped in their tracks, their wolf ears flattening against their skulls in sudden, instinctive terror.
Davian Silver stepped out from the shadows into the faint morning light.
He wore only an old pair of Roland’s dark wool trousers, his massive, scarred chest fully bare, his grey-streaked hair falling over his forehead. But the authority radiating from his posture was so immense that the air in the barn felt suddenly suffocating.
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His golden eyes locked onto Collector Voss.
"Who gave you permission to enter my presence?" Davian asked softly.
