Chapter 7 - The Alpha’s Wrath
Collector Voss froze.
He was a man of books, contracts, and legal technicalities, but he had lived in the Northern Alliance long enough to recognize true power when it stood before him. His eyes went wide as saucers as he took in the broad chest, the battle scars, and—above all—the terrifying, glowing gold of the man’s eyes.
"K... King Davian?" Voss stammered, his pen dropping from his pocket into the dirty snow.
The four Blackwood enforcers took an immediate step back, their blades shaking in their hands. The leader, a scarred wolf named Brutus, swallowed hard, his voice trembling. "Your Majesty... we... we did not know you were in Thorn Ridge. Lord Silas told us—"
"Lord Silas told you I was dead," Davian interrupted.
He walked slowly forward, his bare feet moving silently over the ice. He didn't carry a weapon. He didn't need one. His raw alpha aura expanded outward like a crushing tidal wave, filling the entire barn.
The pressure in the room jumped dramatically. The four enforcers gasped, their knees buckling under the sheer, suffocating weight of an Alpha King’s command aura. Brutus hit his knees first, his sword clattering to the floorboards as he clutched his chest, gasping for air.
"Your Majesty! Please!" Voss fell to his knees in the dirt, clutching his ledger to his chest like a shield. "We are only executing a legal contract! A crown-approved debt settlement!"
Davian stopped in front of Voss. He reached down with one hand, grabbed the collar of Voss’s expensive coat, and lifted the hundred-and-eighty-pound man effortlessly into the air with one arm.
Voss kicked his legs uselessly, his face turning purple as Davian held him suspended above the ground.
"Read the contract to me, Collector," Davian whispered, his voice smooth and terrifyingly calm.
"I... it... three thousand marks!" Voss choked out, struggling for breath. "Roland Thorne's debt! Transferred to Dorothy Thorne for five years of service to Lord Silas!"
Davian glanced back at Dorothy, who was standing by the stone wall, watching with wide, stunned eyes. Then he looked back at Voss.
"Under Crown Statute Article Four," Davian said, his voice ringing through the barn like a heavy bronze bell, "any citizen who saves the life of the reigning Sovereign is granted total immunity from all debts, claims, and indentures. Furthermore, their family’s debts are absorbed directly by the Royal Treasury."
Davian’s golden eyes flared with blinding light.
"Dorothy Thorne is under Royal Protection," he snarled. "Her contract is void. Her body belongs to no lord. And anyone who lays a hand upon her commits an act of treason against the throne."
With a flick of his wrist, Davian tossed Voss across the barn.
The collector smashed into a stack of old wooden barrels, splintering the timber and collapsing in a groaning, weeping heap of ruined velvet and bruised ribs.
Brutus, the enforcer leader, looked up from the floor, his eyes flashing with desperate, foolish panic. Silas Blackwood was a brutal master; returning empty-handed meant death. He grabbed his sword from the ground and lunged forward from his knees, driving the steel blade straight toward Davian’s exposed chest!
"Davian!" Dorothy screamed.
Davian didn't even flinch.
He didn't draw a weapon. As the blade sped toward his heart, Davian’s hand moved like lightning. He caught the flat of the heavy steel blade between his bare palms, stopping the thrust cold inches from his chest.
With a sharp twist of his wrists, the heavy iron sword snapped in half with a deafening CRACK.
Before Brutus could even scream, Davian stepped inside his guard. He grabbed the enforcer by the throat, lifted him high off the floor, and slammed him down into the dirt with catastrophic force. The wooden floorboards cracked beneath the impact. Brutus went instantly limp, unconscious.
The remaining three enforcers dropped their weapons instantly, pressing their foreheads flat against the cold barn floor in absolute submission.
"Get up," Davian ordered, his deep voice cold as glacier ice.
The three men scrambled to their feet, trembling violently.
"Take your broken leader," Davian said, pointing toward the door. "Return to Silas Blackwood. Tell him that King Davian Silver lives. Tell him that I am coming to his estate. And tell him to prepare his neck for the axe."
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"Y... yes, Your Majesty!" the men cried in unison. They hoisted the unconscious Brutus and the weeping Collector Voss onto their shoulders and fled out into the snowstorm like whipped dogs.
Silence returned to the barn.
