Chapter 49 – Confirming His Luna by Eyes Novel

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Viktor approaches me, his eyes blazing with fury. I know that he is a seasoned fighter. He didn’t just control the banes with schemes and lies. He’s massive and muscled and utterly merciless.

Once, during a pack meeting, one of the older men questioned Viktor on whatever they were discussing at the time. I don’t know what it was. I was never privy to anything of consequence, but I knew the man must have crossed him publicly because, after the meeting, Viktor called him back into the pack house. I had to stand to the side and watch in silence as Viktor broke his leg with such brutality I knew even the magic of werewolf healing would never be enough to repair the damage. I’d been forced to clean up the bloody stain on the floor where the man’s bones had torn through his skin.

So… fighting him may not have been my finest idea.

But it’s too late now. He was going to kill me either way, whether he ordered his soldiers to do it or ripped me apart himself. If I’m going to die, then I’m going to make him work for it.

Let the Banes see their Alpha get his hands dirty for a change.

I circle him warily, my eyes never leaving his. He snarls, baring his teeth in a show of dominance, but I refuse to back down. He’ll expect me to watch him, to wait and defend myself once he attacks first. But the memory of my mate’s words echoes in my head:

I am petals and poison, and a flower cannot fail.

I lunge.

Viktor dodges me, but he’s too slow. He wasn’t prepared for me to make the first move, and my claws tear at the flesh on his shoulder.

My training kicks in as muscles go taut and my mind races. But Amara showed me how to fight in human form. I hadn’t manifested my wolf when she taught me to defend herself. All the moves and strategies flash behind my eyes, trying to convert them into a different body, but I don’t have the time to think before I act.

Viktor retaliates, his jaws snapping shut just inches from my throat. I leap to the side, narrowly avoiding his attack, but he is quick to recover this time. The initial shock has worn off, and his eyes narrow on me with deadly precision.

Amara’s lessons weren’t just about technique. It’s instinct. I have to use my momentum with intention. When I can’t use my fists, use my head. Be smarter and faster.

Viktor spins around and comes at me again, his teeth flashing in the daylight. It’s too bright out. It feels like it should be dark. There should be smoke or thunder or some sign that the world as I know it is coming to an end.

But today is not about me.

I remember Amara’s agonized howl on the other side of the gate. Mark’s bloody features and the pain behind his hardened gaze when I saw him in the keep. Nico’s shaky voice, breathless and ragged with fear and exhaustion. The way Lucy smiled in spite of her fear and regret before the battle began. Helena abandoning her healing robes for battle armor. Vicious gashes across my father’s chest, just over his heart, bleeding before he vanished from the bridge. My mother, hanging dirty, bruised, and unconscious in his arms. The carnage I flew over on my way here, nightwalkers, Banes, and Rovers alike, their bodies wracked with pain as their wounds bleed out onto the battlefield. The look on Triststan’s face before I flew off, and the certainty that even now he is fighting his way toward me.

I was the daughter of moonlight and monsters, born of bane and betrayal. I am a child of starlight and shadow, covered in the scars of a survivor. I will be the avenger of the innocent.

This is no time to pace myself.

I leap toward Viktor again, and I tackle him, but my teeth clamp on empty air, the force of it rattling in my skull. He dodges my bite as I grapple him. Viktor knocks me to the ground, pinning me down with his massive paw. I writhe against him. We’re locked in a fierce struggle, dodging and striking, biting and bleeding. He has me trapped, and I can feel the weight of his body pressing down on me.

I am a feather fighting a brick. I do not bend or break.

With a burst of strength, I shove him back, my claws slicing across his underside, shredding through fur and skin and the warmth underneath. I roll over him, pinning him down just as he had done to me.

I can kill him. I should kill him after everything he’s done. I should make him pay. I should bite out his heart. I’m going to-

My murderous thoughts are silenced by a familiar scent, and it shakes me out of the violent trance. I let my senses unfocus, yanking my tunnel vision away from Viktor long enough to detect a commotion to my left, beyond the wolves surrounding us. When I turn to look, the sight sucks the air out of my lungs.

Tristan is covered in blood. He struggles against four warriors at once, limping through the fight. He battled his way through the bridge, almost all the way across.

But there’s no more fight left in him.

Tristan

‘Stop!’ the girl snaps at Viktor and anyone else who can hear her, screaming the word through the mindlink. She looks like a wrathful spirit, her silky white fur covered in the blood of her enemies, her violet eyes almost glowing with intensity.

‘Let him go. Let Tristan pass, or I swear by the goddess I’ll kill your Alpha,’ she threatens, her claws digging into Viktor, who lay helpless and wounded beneath her.

She looks down at her uncle, and while everything inside of me screams to keep going and reach her, I hesitate. There is such emotion in her gaze, such strength in her words. She has to make this choice for herself. She needs to be the one to finish this.

‘Yield,’ she hisses at Viktor, her voice dangerously low with a sort of threatening command that I did not know she possessed.

Viktor bares his teeth up at her but does not move, not with his insides bleeding under the weight of her as she’s poised to tear out his throat.

‘Get it over with, bitch.’

But something shifts in her eyes, and I see the change happening within her. It’s not an obvious transformation, like when she first manifested that stunning wolf or when she burst into a cloud of moonlight-colored bats. It’s subtle and silent, but I sense the strength it takes for her to finally let go.

She will not kill a man while he’s down and bleeding. She won’t end Viktor, no matter how much he deserves it. She is a kinder soul than I am.

This man robbed my mate of her childhood. He denied her a name, denied her family, and any sort of decency. He broke things that will never be whole again.

But she is more than what he took away. Because underneath the violence and injustice, there is a part of her soul that is entirely hers. I see it now in the way she reins in her fury. Men like Viktor could never understand it, and despite his best efforts, he could never touch it. He could never corrupt it.

The white wolf growls, and Viktor shuts his eyes to wait for the final blow, but it doesn’t come. She snarls at him, biting the air right above his neck in warning, and then pushes off him.

The second she releases him and turns toward me slowly, I stagger forward. I can’t remember which wolf was the one to cripple me as I fought my way to reach her across the bridge. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care how many parts of myself I had to break to be standing here in front of her right now.

As the wolves around me part, opening a path toward my mate, she runs toward me and shifts back into my human form, not caring who sees her.

I sag with relief when she collides with me, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my fur. At last, I can breathe again, the aching need to find her and keep her safe settling inside me.

She seems so small compared to her wolf form, and I’m reminded of just how young she is. But she defeated Viktor. She sliced through his chest and left him bleeding on the ground.

“No more…” she whispers against me, and her voice is so soft it ripples inside me, soothing the jagged edges of my rattled soul. “I’m so tired, Tristan… I don’t want to be his monster… No more killing… please.”

She has endured enough.

‘Shhh, it’s over, my little flower.’

Her fingers dig into my pelt as I step forward, letting her curl up against me in a moment of vulnerability that feels far too intimate for all these prying eyes.

I turn to face the gathered wolves with as much authority as I can muster up.

‘This ends now. Your Alphas are dead, and your leader was defeated in single combat by his own kin. No one else has to die because of him. Viktor Massen brought you here under the false pretense of destroying your common threat, but he lied. The nightwalkers are not your enemy. We are not your enemy!’

A silence falls over the crowd as I feel his words resonate across the battlefield. The tension in the air is palpable, but no one else attacks. Soon, the sun will begin to set, and we will have to gather our wounded and bury our dead. It’s strange how a single day can feel like an eternity.

But it’s over.

At least, that’s what it seemed like. But then Viktor rises, his injuries oozing blood that stained the stone at his feet. Everything inside me goes rigid as his eyes fall on me.

I am the one who just announced the end of this war. The girl is exhausted from fighting him, and now she’s in her human form. So, Viktor perceives me as the threat worth crushing with his dying breath.

That was his last mistake.

Viktor lunges toward me just as my mate whirls around to face him. We collide against each other, the girl trapped between us, and the world flashes past as the three of us topple over from the impact. As we roll, I use the momentum to shove Viktor down against the stone with a vicious crack, and we come to a sudden stop.

Everything is quiet.

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