Chapter 5 - The King Returns
The world narrowed to a pinprick of pure, blinding panic.
"Under the floorboards, Finn—now!" Isolda grabbed her son by the shoulders, shoving him toward the corner of the small cottage where a loose oak plank covered the shallow root cellar.
"Ma, what's happening? Why are you—"
"Do not make a sound!" Isolda hissed, her voice cracking with desperation as she pried the board up. "Even if you hear me scream, even if the house burns down, you stay under there. Promise me!"
Finn, seeing the absolute terror in her eyes, nodded mutely and scrambled down into the dark, damp earth beneath the floor. Isolda slammed the plank back into place, dragged a heavy wooden storage chest over it, and threw a pile of old animal pelts on top just as the heavy oak front door shuddered under a massive, concussive blow.
Bang! Bang!
"Open the door in the name of the Alpha King!" a harsh, metallic voice roared from the lane.
Isolda took two deep breaths, forced her shaking hands to flatten against her apron, and pulled the wooden latch.
The door swung inward with a crash.
Three armored soldiers of the Northern Reach poured into the cottage, their heavy steel plates clanking, their hands resting on the hilts of broadswords stamped with the wolf crest. They didn't look like human mercenaries; they were pureblood lykan warriors, their senses preternaturally sharp, their eyes scanning the room for threats.
Behind them, pushing past their massive shoulders, came a man who made Isolda’s heart stop entirely.
Alistair Montgomery.
He had changed. Seven years of ruling a fractured, starving kingdom had stripped away any lingering softness of youth. His face was leaner, harder, carved from gray stone and weathered by bitter northern winters. A jagged white scar ran down from his left temple across his jawline, giving him the look of a battle-scarred wolf that had survived a hundred pack wars. He wore no crown, only a heavy dark cloak lined with silver-gray wolf fur, but the aura of absolute, crushing dominance that radiated from him filled the small cottage until the air felt too thick to breathe.
His dead, hollow eyes swept across the room—and then they stopped on Isolda.
For three seconds, the world stopped turning.
Alistair froze on the threshold. His broad chest hitched, a sudden, violent intake of air as his supernatural senses caught the faint, lingering scent of rosemary, damp earth, and something else—something ancient, buried deep beneath seven years of dust and pain.
His mating bond.
The dead eyes flared with a sudden, terrifying flash of raw, uncomprehending shock. He took one step forward, his hand lifting instinctively toward her as if to touch a ghost.
"Isolda," he breathed, the name slipping past his lips like a forbidden prayer.
Before Isolda could speak, before she could pull a knife from her apron pocket, the chaos outside erupted into violence.
A piercing shriek echoed from the village square.
"Get your hands off me, you brute!"
It was Margaret’s voice. One of the search parties had dragged the old woman out of her herb shed, and a massive, armored soldier had shoved her hard against the cobblestones of the lane, sending her sprawling into the mud with a cry of pain. Blood trickled from the old woman’s forehead where she struck a jagged stone.
In the cottage doorway, Isolda let out an involuntary gasp of rage.
That single sound—the cry of the woman who had saved her and her son—broke every rule of survival Isolda had drilled into Finn for seven years.
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Beneath the floorboards, hidden under the heavy chest and the animal pelts, a seven-year-old boy heard an old woman cry out in pain.
He didn't think. He didn't remember the warnings. He only felt the savage, protective instinct of an Alpha’s blood roaring in his veins.
