DARIUS POV
I slamd my fist into the Shadow Lord’s chest, pulling out its dark heart before it could hurt another pack mber.
"Alpha Darius!" one of the smaller wolves gasped. "Your eyes—they’re not green anymore!"
I looked down at the dying shadow thing in my hands, then at my pack mbers cowering behind overturned cars. My people. My family. The wolves I’d been faking to hunt for the past three days.
"No," I said quietly. "They’re not green anymore."
The truth was, they hadn’t been green for a while now. I’d just been very good at faking.
"But how?" another wolf asked. "We saw you get possessed. We saw the Shadow Lords take control of you."
"They tried to take control," I corrected. "But they didn’t know about the ntal protection my father taught when I was young. Old Alpha thods that most people have forgotten."
It was a lie, but a useful one. The real truth was much more complex.
The Shadow Lords had possessed completely. For about ten minutes. But then sothing unexpected happened—I started fighting back from the inside. Not with strength or magic, but with sothing they couldn’t understand.
Love for my kids.
Even while the shadow creature was controlling my body, making say terrible things and hunt my own pack, part of was still there. Still fighting. Still rembering why I needed to protect the people I cared about.
And slowly, bit by bit, I’d taken control back.
"You’ve been pretending this whole ti?" asked Sarah, one of the pack mothers. "We thought you were trying to kill us!" "I was feeding them false information," I explained. "Telling them the wrong places for our safe houses. Giving them outdated patrol plans. Every ti they sent to hunt you, I made sure to be just a little too slow, just a little too loud, so you could escape."
It had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. Watching my pack mbers run from in fear. Seeing the fear in their eyes when they looked at their Alpha. Knowing that so of them might never trust again.
But it had worked. Most of the pack was still living because the Shadow Lords had been getting bad information from their spy.
"Where are they now?" I asked. "The Shadow Lords who were with ?"
"Dead," said Marcus, one of my soldiers. "We killed them while you were fighting that big one."
Good. That ant I could drop the act totally now.
"Listen to carefully," I said, my voice carrying the Alpha order that made everyone stop talking. "The Shadow Lords aren’t just trying to take over our pack. They’re planning sothing much bigger. Sothing that could destroy everything we know."
"What do you an?" Sarah asked.
"They’ve been talking about rging realms," I stated. "Taking our world and mixing it together with the vampire realm, the fae realm, and others. They want to make one giant prison dinsion with themselves as the rulers."
Several pack mbers gasped. The thought was too horrible to imagine.
"But that’s not the worst part," I continued. "They’ve woken sothing in the mountains. Sothing called the Prisoner. It’s the first Shadow Lord ever made, and it’s been sleeping under our territory for hundreds of years."
"Sleeping under our territory?" Marcus repeated. "You an—"
"Yes," I said sadly. "Our pack lands were built on top of an old prison. The original Earth Guardians sealed the first Shadow Lord here after beating it in the First War. And now it’s awake."
I’d learned all of this while claiming to be possessed. The Shadow Lords had talked freely in front of , thinking I was just another dumb servant. They had no idea I was listening to every word and planning how to stop them.
"What does it want?" Sarah asked.
"To consu Aria," I said. "If it can absorb the power of the last Earth Guardian, it will be strong enough to break free fully. And once it’s free, it will help the other Shadow Lords rge all the worlds."
The pack was quiet for a mont, processing this information.
"Where is Aria now?" Marcus asked.
"That’s what worries ," I said. "The last I heard, she was going toward the mountains. But I think it’s a trap. I think the Shadow Lords wanted her to go there."
"We have to warn her," Sarah said.
"We have to do more than warn her," I answered. "We have to help her. Because if she falls, everyone we care about dies."
I looked around at my pack mates. So of them still looked scared of . Others seed unsure about whether they could trust . But all of them were ready to fight for their families.
"I know I’ve lost your trust," I said honestly. "I know that seeing with those green eyes, hearing say awful things—I know that hurt you. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t find a better way to protect you."
"You were protecting us?" a younger wolf asked.
"Every day," I said. "Every single day, I was fighting to keep you safe. Even when it looked like I was hunting you, I was trying to save you."
So of the fear in their eyes started to fade, replaced by understanding.
"What do we do now?" Marcus asked.
"Now we go help my sons and their mates," I said. "Because they’re about to face the most dangerous enemy our kind has ever encountered."
But as I turned to lead my pack toward the mountains, I heard a sound that made my blood freeze.
Laughter. Cold, terrible laughing echoing across the forest.
And then a voice that spoke straight into my mind.
"Hello, old friend," the voice said. "Did you really think we didn’t know you were fighting us from the inside?"
My heart stopped. It was the Devourer. The leader of the Shadow Lords.
"You’ve been very useful, Darius," the voice continued. "Feeding us fake information, yes. But also getting all your pack mbers in one place for us. Making our job so much easier."
I looked around anxiously, but I didn’t see any Shadow Lords. Where was the voice coming from?
"Oh, we’re not there yet," the Devourer said with amusent. "But we will be soon. You see, while you were playing your little double agent ga, we were planning a surprise of our own."
The ground beneath our feet started to shake.
"What’s happening?" Sarah cried.
But I already knew. The Shadow Lords hadn’t been fooled by my act at all. They’d been using just as much as I’d been using them.
"Portal magic," I whispered in horror.
The earth cracked open around us, and dark energy poured out like smoke.
"Yes," the Devourer said happily. "Portal magic. We’re bringing the fight to you, dear Darius. And this ti, there will be no escape."
Shadow monsters began climbing out of the cracks in the ground. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds.
And standing among them, with eyes blazing like green fire, was soone I recognized.
Soone who was thought to be dead.
"Hello, brother," Elder Malin said with a smile that was no longer his own. "Surprise."
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