Chapter 6 - The Strike in the Square
The heavy wooden storage chest didn't just slide aside; it flew across the room with a splintering crash, smashing against the stone hearth. The floorboards splintered as a small, dark blur rocketed up from the root cellar like a shot from a crossbow.
"Don't you touch her!"
Finn hit the open doorway like a falling meteor. He wasn't using human techniques; he moved with the explosive, blurred speed of a fully shifted lykan, his small body coiled with terrifying kinetic energy.
The target was the massive armored soldier who had shoved Margaret—a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound warrior clad in full iron plate armor.
The impact sounded like a battering ram hitting a castle gate.
With the concussive force of a runaway cart, Finn slammed headfirst into the soldier’s midsection. The heavy man let out a sudden, whooshing grunt of air as his feet left the cobblestones entirely. The armored warrior flew ten feet backward through the air, crashing hard into a wooden cart piled with firewood and splintering it into kindling before sliding motionlessly into the mud.
Dead silence fell over the village square.
The dozens of armored soldiers standing around the square froze, their hands dropping to their sword hilts. The villagers hiding behind their shutters held their breath. Even the howling wind seemed to die down, leaving only the patter of light rain on the mud.
Isolda stood frozen in the doorway of the cottage, her hands pressed to her mouth, her soul turning to ice. It’s over, she thought, a numb wave of horror washing over her. They saw him. They saw his strength.
In the center of the square, Alistair Montgomery slowly lowered his gaze from Isolda’s horrified face down to the small boy standing over Margaret’s unconscious body.
Finn was panting slightly, his small chest heaving, his fists clenched at his sides. He stood in a defensive crouch, his muscles corded under his patched tunic, glaring at the king with an expression of pure, unyielding defiance that was a mirror image of the woman who had stood in the iron chains seven years ago.
Alistair didn't look at his fallen soldier. He looked at the boy’s stance. He looked at the dense, impossible muscle packed into a seven-year-old frame.
"You hit like a lykan, boy," Alistair rumbled, his voice dropping into that deep, resonant register that commanded absolute obedience.
He didn't wait for an answer. With terrifying speed—too fast for human eyes to track—Alistair crossed the distance between them, reached down, and hoisted the thrashing, kicking child into the air by his collar, lifting him effortlessly off the ground.
"Let me down!" Finn roared, his voice cracking with rage. He thrashed like a trapped wildcat, his small fists hammering against Alistair’s armored forearm with blows that made the heavy steel dent slightly. "Let me go, you bastard!"
"Quiet," Alistair commanded, his grip tightening.
As Finn twisted violently to sink his teeth into the king’s wrist, his thick, dark brown curls swept back from his face.
At that exact moment, a sudden break in the storm clouds overhead allowed a shaft of harsh, gray afternoon light to slice through the gloom, illuminating the boy’s face fully for the first time.
Alistair’s jaw tightened. His breath hitched in his throat.
He looked down at the boy’s right eye—ordinary stormy gray.
Then, slowly, his gaze shifted to the left eye.
The world seemed to fracture around the Alpha King. The noise of the village, the falling rain, the murmurs of the surrounding guards—everything vanished into absolute, suffocating nothingness.
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Staring back at him from the face of the angry, defiant child was an eye of luminescent amber, fiercely flecked with brilliant, electric emerald green.
An exact, flawless mirror of his own.
