Banished to freeze, she woke up trapped under a pile of massive wolves. They weren’t eating her; they were warming her
She caught Beth’s charging wolf form by the throat with one hand, her feet not even slipping in the snow. The sound of the massive wolf hitting the immovable object of Amanda’s arm was a sickening thud. Beth gurgled, her paws scrabbling, choking.
Amanda held her, her arm not even trembling, and leaned in, her silver eyes boring into Beth’s panicked yellow ones.
«You took nothing from me,» Amanda whispered.
And then a wave of pure, cold white energy, the color of moonlight on snow, erupted from Amanda’s hand. It was not a physical push. It was a push of will. Of power.
Beth was thrown backward twenty feet, her body slamming into a tree, and she did not get up. She shifted back into her human form, unconscious and broken.
The valley was silent. The twenty-two Stone River wolves stared, their growls dying in their throats. Marcus looked from Beth’s broken form to the woman standing in the snow, her hand still glowing faintly.
«This is your last chance, Marcus,» Amanda said, her voice ringing with the power of the Matriarch. «Take your warriors. Go home. And never, ever threaten my family again.»
«Family?» Marcus choked out, pointing at the ten men. «They are rogues. You are one; I am twenty. We will…»
«He doesn’t learn,» Ronan muttered, drawing a blade.
«No,» Caleb said, putting a hand on his shoulder. «He doesn’t. And he has threatened our Queen.»
Caleb turned to Marcus. «You brought twenty wolves. You should have brought a hundred.»
He looked back at his nine brothers. «Guard. Unchain.»
And in a single, unified, terrifying moment, the ten men shifted. But they did not become the massive wolves Marcus had seen. They became more.
Bones snapped and reformed, but they kept growing. Their bodies expanded, fur sprouting thick and shaggy. Fangs descended, not as long as a wolf’s, but thicker, designed to crush bone.
Their forms were heavier, more powerful, their shoulders impossibly broad. They were not wolves. They were Dire Wolves.
Ten of them. The mythical guardians of the first packs, not seen in a thousand years. Each one was a full third larger than Marcus’s Alpha form.
The twenty-two Stone River warriors whimpered. They backed away, their tails tucking between their legs. This was not a battle. This was a massacre waiting to happen.
Marcus, in his human form, fell to his knees in the snow. He looked at the ten monsters. He looked at the broken Beta’s daughter. And he looked at the glowing, terrible, beautiful woman he had thrown away.
His pride was gone. His arrogance was shattered. All that was left was the ice-cold realization of his mistake.
He bowed his head, his forehead touching the snow.
«Alpha Queen,» he whispered, the words torn from his soul. «Mercy.»
The silence in the valley was a heavy, suffocating blanket, broken only by the whimpering of the Stone River warriors and the ragged, terrified breathing of the man kneeling in the snow. Amanda stood before Marcus, the silver light in her eyes a burning, cold fire. The power that had erupted from her, the power that had effortlessly broken Beth, was still singing in her veins.
It was a potent, addictive song. It told her to finish this. It told her to strike him down, to take his title, to make him pay for every moment of cold, every pang of hunger, every whisper, every second of her twenty years of misery.
She felt the ten Dire Wolves behind her, a living wall of shadow and death, waiting for her command. One word. One simple word, and the Stone River Pack would have a new and very permanent Alpha.
Caleb’s Dire Wolf form, the massive black Alpha of her new guard, took a single ominous step forward. A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound like a distant avalanche. He was watching her.
They were all watching her, waiting to see what kind of Queen they had found. Would she be a healer, as the prophecy said? Or would she be a destroyer forged in the fires of her own rejection?
He has broken, her wolf-self, her Matriarch-self, whispered in her mind. The voice was no longer angry, but calm and ancient. They are all broken, and we are the healer of the broken. Vengeance is a stone; justice is a seed. Choose.
Amanda let a long breath out. The white-hot, vengeful light in her eyes softened, not disappearing, but banking like embers under a watchful eye. She took a step forward. Caleb’s shadow moved with her.
She stopped in front of the kneeling Alpha. «Get up, Marcus.»
Her voice was not a shout. It was quiet, but it held an authority that was absolute, and it cut through the valley air. Marcus rose, but only from his knees to a deep crouch. He was trembling, his gaze fixed on the snow at her feet.
He had seen it all. The Dire Wolves. The casual, terrifying dispatching of his chosen mate. The impossible glowing power in the woman he had deemed nothing.
His entire world, his entire understanding of strength and power, had been shattered in less than five minutes.
«You have a choice,» Amanda said, her voice carrying to every warrior, to every watching, terrified eye. «The old ways. The pride that fractures a pack. The cruelty that masquerades as strength. The casting out of the weak to make the strong feel superior. It all ends. Tonight.»
She looked past him at the twenty warriors who had come to kill her. «I am Amanda, of the Lunar Matriarch line. This is my Shadow Guard, and this, all of it, is my territory.»
Her words were a claim, and the wind itself seemed to pause as if the Goddess was listening.
«We are not here to rule you,» she said, her gaze returning to Marcus. «We are here to lead.»
She walked a slow circle around him, the ten Dire Wolves fanning out behind her, a silver and shadow wave that herded the Stone River Pack into a tighter, more submissive cluster.
«Your actions,» she said, stopping behind him, forcing him to twist uncomfortably to keep her in view, «were not just cruel; they were a betrayal of the Alpha’s first, only true law: protect the pack. You did not protect me. You used your strength to break the weakest. You banished a pack member to die for pride.»
Marcus flinched as if she had struck him. «It was… I thought…»
«You thought nothing,» she said, her voice dropping, and for a moment, the cold fire returned. «You felt your power, and you used it, and you did not care about the consequences. By all rights, I should strip you of your title, your pack, and your life. It is what you would do.»
This was it. The moment.
«But,» Amanda continued, «I will not begin my new path by walking yours. I will not build my house with the stones of your broken pride.»
She came to stand before him again. «You will remain Alpha of Stone River, for now.»
Marcus looked up, his eyes wide with disbelief, a seed of hope.
«Do not mistake this for forgiveness,» Amanda said, her voice hardening. «This is a leash. Your Alpha title is now a duty, not a crown. You will answer not to your own whims, but to the laws of true protection. You will answer to me. You will care for your pack, all of your pack, from the strongest warrior to the newest pup. You will learn mercy, and you will begin to atone for what you did.»
«How? How do I atone?» he whispered.
«You will start,» Amanda said, pointing a finger at the broken barn, «by rebuilding what you helped destroy. You and your twenty warriors will rebuild this barn, not as a ruin, but as a second Great Hall, a hall of allied packs. You will work with your own hands, and you will be the one to serve the first meal in it.»
It was a brilliant judgment. Not death, but service. Not humiliation, but humility.
«And her?» Liam the Guard asked, his voice rough. He pointed at Beth’s unconscious form, now being tended by Gabriel who had shifted back to his human form.
Amanda looked at the woman. «She will not be killed. She will not be left for dead. When she wakes, she is banished. She will go to the human lands. She has shown she does not have the heart for a pack, so she will learn to live without one. That is my judgment.»
A collective sigh of relief went through the Stone River Pack. The judgment was just. It was final.
Marcus, truly broken and truly seeing a path forward for the first time, bowed his head until his forehead touched the snow.
«Alpha Queen,» he said, his voice thick with a new, raw emotion. «I accept. I will serve. I will atone.»
One by one, the twenty-one warriors shifted back to their human forms, and one by one they knelt in the snow, bowing not just to her power, but to her mercy.
From the back of the kneeling crowd, two figures stumbled forward, their faces etched with a desperate, agonizing hope. Thomas and Sarah, Amanda’s parents. They fell at her feet, their hands grasping for the hem of her cloak.
«Amanda, my daughter,» Sarah wept, her words a broken torrent. «We saw, oh Goddess, we saw. We… we did it to protect you. Please, you must believe us.»
«Protect me?» Amanda’s voice was a blade of ice. The mercy she had shown Marcus evaporated. This was not pack. This was blood.
«You left me to be spat on. You left me to be starved. You left me to be banished. How was that protection?»
«The prophecy,» Thomas choked out, his face pale. «The old Alpha… Marcus’s father. He… he was a tyrant. When you were born, and you didn’t cry, but your eyes… your eyes glowed silver. We knew. We knew what you were. We heard the whispers. The Matriarch will be born. We knew he would see you as a threat. He would have… he would have killed you. A stillborn pup lost in the night.»
«So we found the Hedgewitch,» Sarah confessed, the words tearing from her. «She bound you. She… she built the cage. She said it would hide you. It would make you less. It would make you invisible, safe.»
She clawed at Amanda’s cloak. «We thought… we thought it was better to have a living, weak daughter than a dead, powerful one. We chose to have you alive.»
Amanda stared down at them, the architects of her entire life’s misery. They hadn’t done it from malice. They had done it from cowardice.
«You didn’t keep me safe,» she said, her voice shaking with twenty years of suppressed rage. «You kept me small. You made me a target for the very cruelty you say you feared. You took away my claws, my voice, my wolf, and you left me defenseless in a den of predators. You didn’t save my life. You stole it.»
She ripped her cloak from their hands and stepped back. Her parents flinched as if she had struck them.
But then the Matriarch self, the healer, surfaced again. She saw two people terrified and broken who had made an impossible choice and had been living in their own prison ever since.
«The hurt you caused, it is a mountain,» Amanda said, her voice softening just a fraction. «I cannot cross it. Not today. And maybe not ever.»
«We… we will do anything,» Thomas whispered.
«Then you will start with the truth,» Amanda commanded. «You will stand before the entire pack, and you will tell them what you just told me. You will tell them what you did. What Marcus’s father was. You will unbury the secrets that have poisoned this pack for a generation. Atonement is a long road. Yours begins now. Go.»
They scrambled to their feet, their faces a mixture of shame and a terrible, dawning relief. They had been seen. And they had been spared.
They bowed and retreated, rejoining the kneeling pack. Amanda turned to the valley, to her old pack, now her new subjects.
«The night is over. A new dawn is coming. Go home. Rest. Heal. But know this.»
Caleb shifted back to his human form, coming to stand at her side. He looked at the sky.
«The blood moon is coming,» he said, his voice resonant with the weight of the prophecy. «The time when the veil thins and old, forgotten evils return. The prophecy said the Matriarch would rise to face it.»
Amanda nodded, accepting the new burden. «We will be ready,» she declared. «Go.»
The Stone River Pack rose not as a defeated army, but as a humbled people. Marcus, with one last lingering look of awe, led them into the trees, his parents following, their heads bowed.
Silence, true and peaceful, finally settled. Amanda turned, her legs suddenly feeling weak. The ten men, her guard, were still there. They had shifted back, their faces filled with pride.
Before she could speak, Caleb, his black hair wild and his scarred eye blazing, closed the distance. He didn’t bow. He didn’t speak. He simply pulled her into his arms and buried his face in her hair, his entire body trembling with the release of a tension he’d held for a lifetime.
«You… you’re real,» he murmured against her skin, his voice thick. «We… we found you.»
Amanda melted against him, her own arms wrapping around his strong back. She was home. This… this was home.
He pulled back, his hands framing her face. «Alpha Queen,» he said, a roguish grin finally breaking through his stoic facade.
