Mango pressed a damp cloth to Kieran’s forehead, her fingers brushing the scorching skin.
Mango knelt down closer beside the bed, her palm hovering just above Kieran’s chest, then shifting to Autumn’s. Her fingers trembled slightly, though she willed them to stay steady. The faint golden glow pulsed between her hands, then dimd."Still in sync," she whispered, voice tight with worry.
Dax stood at the threshold, arms folded, brows drawn in a deep line. His gaze flicked from Kieran’s pale face to the dark circles beneath Mango’s eyes. "Is that good or bad?"
"Their fevers aren’t breaking," Mango muttered, more to herself than to Dax, who now hovered near the doorway, unsure whether to enter or just stand there. "Their bodies are fighting it, but the demonic poison isn’t just physical, I guess. It’s in his blood. In her now, too.Its healing, then again relapsing.I am not quite sure what’s going on! "
Dax’s jaw tightened. "And the Council will sll it the second they step foot back here.Enough to play their wicked gas...thing is...they don’t play fair. "
Mango did not answer. Instead, she reached into the folds of her robe and pulled out a small vial filled with a liquid so dark it seed to swallow the light around it. She pressed it into Dax’s palm.
"Burn it all," she said, her voice low. "The battlefield. Every drop of blood, every scorched blade of grass. If there’s even a whisper of dark magic left when they return, they will use it as proof to execute him.The remnants might affect Kieran’s healing process as well...the negative energy left by the demon blade might react with the dark energy brought in by those Bloodfangs..."
Dax’s fingers closed around the vial. "What is this?"
"A cleanser. Old witch recipe. It will incinerate any residual energy...demonic or otherwise." She turned towards the door, her staff already glowing faintly in her grip.
"Where the hell are you going?" Dax blocked her path, his broad fra filling the doorway clearly worried. "You can’t just leave him like this!"
Mango’s eyes flashed. "I am not leaving him. I am trying to save him. But I can’t do it alone."
A beat of silence. Then...
"Who are you thinking about?" Dax’s voice dropped to a growl. "Who could possibly help that you would risk leaving him unprotected?"
Mango did not flinch. "I will be quick. I know where I am going. But I can’t tell you."
Dax’s voice imdiately sharpened. "No. We don’t need her."
"You think I like it?" Mango shot back. "You think I want to go crawling to soone who dabbles in deeper shadows than even the Council dares to na? But if we wait for three days hoping for a miracle...Kieran might be gone. Or worse, soone else will wear the Alpha crest."
Dax’s jaw clenched. "You will be seen. The Council will sense you crossing the wards."
"Then let them," Mango said fiercely. "Let them sense sothing for once instead of chasing ghosts. I don’t care what it costs , as long as it wakes him up."
Dax recoiled as if she had struck him. "She who knows more about demons than her own kind...than anyone alive..."
Mango finished sharply. "Yes. That’s her."
"She is forbidden from stepping foot in Blackmoon territory! Alpha himself swore to kill her on sight after what she did!"
"And yet," Mango said, stepping around him, "She is the only one who might know how to pull Kieran back from the edge before the Council returns."
Dax’s breath ca out in a sharp exhale. "Damn it, Mango. If anyone in the pack finds out..."
"Then make sure they don’t." She paused at the threshold, glancing back at Autumn’s still form. "Keep her safe as well. If the bond snaps while Kieran is like this, it could kill them both."
Then she was gone, as Dax watched from the threshold!
The battlefield looked like a graveyard of ghosts.
The Blackmoons had been moved and given a proper burial. But the gri and gore still clung in the air.
Dax stood at the edge, the vial in his hand. Around him, Kael and a few of their n waited, their faces grim. None of them spoke.
"Do it,Gamma! " Dax ordered as Kael nodded, taking the vial from him and flinging it like a slingshot.
The liquid hit the earth like liquid fire.
Flas erupted in a wave, not orange, but an eerie, ghostly blue...similar but not the sa shade as the Blue Flas. It started devouring the bloodstained soil, the ash, the mories of the night’s horrors. The air itself seed to scream as dark magic burned away, tendrils of smoke twisting like dying serpents.
One of the younger warriors staggered back, gagging. "By the moon, it reeks like rotting mammals..."
"Stand still," Dax snarled. "Let it burn. All of it."
He did not look away, even as the heat flared and seared his skin. Even as the whispers started...
"Beta... do you see that?"
At the heart of the flas, sothing moved.
A shadow, writhing. A shape too long, too wrong to be there. For a single, heart stopping second, Dax thought he saw eyes in the fire.
Then the wind howled and the flas snuffed out, leaving only scorched earth behind.
Silence.
"It’s done,"Dax said, though the words tasted like a lie. "Now get back to your posts.Keep your eyes open."
But as the warriors started to disperse, he stared at the blackened ground.His ears pricked.
"What the hell did we just burn?"
The warriors stopped on their tracks, coming to a stand still, eyes wide. Even Dax felt the hair on his arms rise.
"It is screaming,Beta, " whispered one.
Dax did not look away.
The warriors around him shifted uneasily, their breaths shallow, their eyes darting to the scorched ground as if expecting sothing to claw its way back up.
"Beta..." Kael’s voice was a strained whisper. "The screaming...it’s not stopping."
Dax stayed mum.
A high, keening wail...not from the earth, but beneath it. As if the fire had not just burned the remnants of battle, but sothing alive. Sothing that had not finished dying yet.
And then...
CRACK.
A fissure split the blackened soil.
Every warrior stumbled back, hands flying to their weapons. Dax’s claws unsheathed on instinct, his wolf snarling in his chest. But nothing erged.
Only silence.
And then...
"HELP!SOBODY HELP! "
The shout ca from the infirmary.
Dax was already running.
***
(GOING BACK IN TI:A FEW MONTS AGO - when they were busy burning... )
The window shutter in the infirmary swung loose.
A gust of cold air sliced through the room.
Autumn’s eyes snapped open.
Not awake...not fully.
But her body moved.
The figure looming over Kieran’s bed froze. Hooded. Cloaked. A dagger glinted in their grip,clearly poised above Kieran’s heart.
Autumn did not think.
She lunged.
Her body collided with the assassin’s ribs like a battering ram. The dagger skittered across the floor. The hood fell back...
He looked familiar.
One of their own.He was a Blackmoon. A low ranking sentry. His eyes were widened in shock, but he recovered fast, twisting beneath her, his elbow slamming into her temple.
Stars burst behind her eyes. She tasted blood.
He scrambled for the dagger. Autumn’s fingers hooked into his collar, yanking him back. Her other hand...no claws, no weapons...just her nails raking down his face.
He snarled, bucking beneath her. "You bitch..."She kneed him in the gut. Hard.
His breath left him in a wheeze. She used the mont to roll, her thighs clamping around his torso, her weight driving him into the floor.
His fist ca up... She caught his wrist. Twisted.
A sickening pop.
He howled.Autumn’s palm slamd over his mouth, her other hand fisting in his hair. She wrenched his head back, exposing his throat.
"HELP!" she scread, her voice trembling with all that sudden rush of adrenaline!
***
( BACK TO THE PRESENT)
Dax skidded to a halt, Kael and the others piling in behind him. The scene before them was chaos -
Autumn, straddling a guy, her nightgown torn at the shoulder, her breath heaving.
The guy, one arm limp, his face a ss of blood and fury.
Kieran on the bed, still unconscious, but the sheets were tangled...as if he had thrashed.
For a heartbeat, no one moved.
Then the guy spat at Autumn’s face,before turning to face Dax." You are protecting a monster. He slaughtered our own! He is tainted!"
Dax crossed the room in two strides, hauling him up by the throat. "You dare raise a blade to your Alpha?"
His laugh was wet, broken. "He is not my Alpha anymore. The Council was right. He is infected. And you are all too blind to see it."
Kael stepped forward, his voice quiet. Deadly. "Who sent you?"
His grin was bloody. "Does it matter? The rot’s already here. And when the Council returns..."
Dax’s fist silenced him.
He crumpled, unconscious.The room pulsed with tension.
Dax turned to Autumn."You woke up," he breathed.
"I had to," Autumn said, her gaze snapping back to Kieran. "Sothing was wrong. I felt it."
She walked back to the bed, knees buckling slightly as she dropped beside Kieran again, brushing her fingers against his fevered face.
"He is burning up! Sad how his own people don’t trust..."
"We will protect him," Dax said hoarsely, eyes still locked on the traitor’s unconscious form. "I swear on my ancestors!"
Autumn did not look back. She just whispered, "You better. Because if that, whatever Council or traitor situation,does not kill him... I will. For scaring like this.Gosh! Can you pass so water...I am drying up! " She gasped, one hand over her heart.
Kael chuckled grimly, passing her the jug.
"She is definitely back."
Dax did not smile. He glanced back out the door, towards the smoldering field, then to the poison dagger and the betrayed face of the guy lying on the floor.
His voice was ice.
"Lock him up."
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