"Exactly." A chilling voice bood just after Tamara’s voice landed. "You haven’t seen a villain yet."
Tamara’s boot froze mid-step. A slow, almost amused smile curled her lips as she tilted her head toward the entrance.
The half opened doors slamd open, the sound like a war drum cracking through the tension. A gust of wind followed. Icy, howling, and there she was.
Reana.
Her black cloak billowed behind her, snowflakes perching on it as if to crown her wrath with winter’s blessing. She stepped into the hall like a storm given form. Elegant, lethal, and far colder than any ice outside those walls.
Her eyes on Tamara burned like frostbite. Every step towards that woman felt too short.
She dared. She had the effrontery to lead a raid on her pack in her absence.
On normal tis, Reana would have been scared to engage the Dark Snow Pack mbers in a fight, knowing she would be humiliated, but this woman marching into the hall wasn’t the peace-seeking Reana – if she ever was.
This woman who’d lost her lover was insane.
"Luna!" Marian’s broken voice cracked through the air. Raw and desperate, like a starving cat that had finally seen its master return.
Reana’s gaze shifted and her strides broke.
Kira, Marian, Thane, Tara – more of her warriors, her people – bound with their hands behind their backs, kneeling, blood streaking their faces, so of them barely conscious. Tara’s lip was split open, swollen like a bruise that hadn’t stopped bleeding.
Thane was slumped over, his left arm bent at an angle that scread broken. Kira’s one eye was swollen and hardly open, but the other eye locked with hers – glassy, but still burning with loyalty.
Mirian was weeping. She wasn’t hard. She was spotless, but Detroit wasn’t. He was kneeling in front of her, shielding her with his battered body.
He must have taken her beating.
The hall was filled with intimidating, angry-looking mbers of the Dark Snow Pack that everyone else looked small — air thick with suffocation. Wrath. Malice.
Reana’s chest rose slowly, not in fear, but in the kind of rage that makes the air taste like iron.
Tamara accessed Reana with her sharp, intense gaze. Her steps were purposeful. Bold. Courageous. Proud — an Alpha through and through.
And her looks... she was beautiful, with silky black hair cascading like a midnight waterfall and sharp green eyes that seed to pierce straight through the darkness of the hall. There was a fire in those eyes, a fierce determination that could not be broken, even when faced with overwhelming odds.
As one who respected power, Tamara felt Reana deserved so bit of respect.
Before, when she heard that Alpha Snow had been entrailed by a woman in the Mainlands, she was extrely angry and disappointed, believing no she-wolf from the Mainlands deserved to stand beside him. She still strongly believed it, but for so reason, as Reana stood there now, taking in her pack mbers’ state, cloaked in vengeance, backlit by a snowstorm she seed to command, Tamara felt sothing foreign curl in her chest.
Not admiration. No, never that.
But recognition.
Reana was not the simpering mainland Luna she had envisioned. She was not soft, not tad, not the peace-begging diplomat Tamara had mocked on her way here.
She was fury.
She was defiance given form.
And worse, she knew she couldn’t win against any one of them—not in strength, not in numbers. Yet Reana stood tall, a lone spark in a storm, looking like she wouldn’t back down without drawing blood.
As if on cue, an angry, guttural howl tore from her throat. Raw and feral.
It echoed off the walls like a battle cry, shaking the tension into a sharp edge. Her head turned, malice-filled eyes snapped towards Tamara.
"YOU WANT WAR?! I’LL GIVE YOU WAR!"
Her wolf surged to the surface, rippling beneath her skin. Her eyes flared a vivid, unnatural green, the color of forest fire and madness.
The air around her crackled.
For a second, just one unbearable second, no one moved.
Then her transformation began, not fully, not the shifting of bones and fur, but the unmistakable partial shift of a Luna teetering on the edge of control. Her claws unsheathed, black and curved. Her canines lengthened. Power shimred off her skin like heat from a forge.
And then she moved.
Fast. So fast she was a blur.
The ground cracked under the force of her step. Her cloak split in the wind, her figure cutting through the air like a blade of winter vengeance.
"Luna!"
"No!"
"Reana!"
Cries of shock and panic flared as Markkus, Kira, Mirian, everyone scread simultaneously.
She was being too reckless! She couldn’t defeat Tamara! Even Markkus, a gamma of the Dark Snow Pack couldn’t! Only the Betas could!
Tamara was trained by Alpha Snow himself! Damn it!
Tamara’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, just enough ti to realize the threat.
Then, her lips curled into a sneer.
The effrontery!
And then, she too, shifted.
Her bones cracked violently as her muscles bulked and twisted, her skin rippling into fur the color of ash and midnight. Her snarl erupted as her wolf form slamd into the marble with predatory grace, claws gouging into the floor.
The two collided with a force that knocked the air out of the room.
Claw t claw. Fury t fury.
Reana didn’t fight like a trained soldier. She fought like a storm. Wild. Unforgiving. Unrelenting. Every blow was driven by grief sharpened into rage. Every strike ant to maim, to destroy, to burn away the agony inside her.
Tamara was stronger, taller, more seasoned. But Reana was faster. Unpredictable. She ducked under a slash ant to sever her head and drove her claws into Tamara’s ribs, twisting until blood sprayed between them.
Tamara roared and slamd her into a pillar, cracking it down the center. Reana’s back arched, pain flaring white, but her grip didn’t loosen. She snarled, spitting blood, and tore downward.
Tamara howled, shaking the very foundation of the hall as she disengaged, throwing Reana across the hall.
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