Chapter 5 - Unshackled“Kill him!” Merrick roared.
Bran lunged forward, swinging his massive, two-handed broadsword in a lethal horizontal arc aimed directly at Fenris’s neck.
Fenris didn’t even look back. He simply raised his left hand and caught the razor-sharp steel blade between his bare index finger and thumb.
SNAP.
The heavy steel sword shattered like cheap glass.
Before Bran could scream, Fenris tapped the enforcer’s chest with an open palm. A shockwave of pure force erupted, blasting Bran sixty feet backward through the heavy wooden gates of the keep, splintering the timber into toothpicks.
The courtyard went deathly quiet.
The remaining seven enforcers froze, their weapons trembling in their hands.
“What... what are you?” Merrick stammered, stepping back, his knuckles turning white on the handle of his axe.
Fenris took a single step forward. With every step, the air around him began to warp and bend. The temperature in the courtyard plummeted as a blinding, golden-silver aura burst from his body, soaring thirty feet into the sky in the shape of a colossal, roaring dragon-wolf.
The raw spiritual pressure hit the crowd like a physical wall.
Hundreds of veteran wolf warriors collapsed to their knees simultaneously, unable to bear the weight of the ancient aura. Their inner wolves whimpered inside their minds, clawing at their souls to surrender.
Merrick fell to his hands and knees, his armor creaking under the invisible pressure. Blood began to drip from his nose as he struggled just to keep his head up.
“The First Blood...” Elder Sira’s voice echoed from the back of the crowd as she bowed low. “The Lycan Sovereign has returned!”
Fenris walked over to the iron post where Vana was bound. With a flick of his wrist, the heavy iron chains snapped and turned to dust.
Vana stared at her husband, her eyes wide with shock and awe. “Fenris... you...”
Fenris knelt down, gently wiping the trace of blood from her lip with his thumb. His pale grey eyes were filled with the same gentle warmth he had always shown her.
“I’m sorry I kept this from you,” he whispered softly. “I just wanted to be your husband.”
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Vana threw her arms around his neck, sobbing against his shoulder. “I don’t care who you were thousand years ago. Just don’t leave me.”
“Never,” Fenris murmured. He turned back toward Merrick, who was crawling backward in the dirt like a terrified worm. “Get up, Merrick. We are going to Valoria. It’s time to fix the rest of this kingdom.”
