When the Beast Screams
The Ironfang den was silent when the bodies arrived.
Smoke curled from the blackened remnants of Garrin's unit—ash-covered bones and shredded armor. The scouts from Kellen's pack fared no better. Their return was marked not by honor, but by whispers of horror: drowned, hunted, humiliated.
It was not just defeat.
It was exposure.
And for a predator like Warrick Bloodfang, exposure was death.
---
Ironfang Den – Hall of War
The silence shattered beneath a roar that cracked stone.
Warrick hurled Kellen's insignia into the fire, eyes wild, body trembling with volcanic fury. His warriors stood frozen, as if in the presence of a god unraveling.
Sarl knelt at the base of the dais, bleeding from a fresh claw wound across his cheek. "Moonborn tactics are evolving. They fight like wolves—but think like humans. If we don't—"
"If we don't what?" Warrick interrupted, stepping down from his throne.
His voice no longer carried the booming echo of an Alpha. It was low. Cold. Personal.
"If we don't what, Sarl? Bow? Surrender? Roll over and let them take the bloodline from our fangs?"
He grabbed a soldier near the edge of the room by the throat and lifted him off the ground. "Garrin failed. Kellen failed. You all sit here and wait for my rage to pass—like sheep waiting for a butcher who's already in the room."
He crushed the warrior's windpipe. Let the body fall.
Then he spoke.
"I am the war. And now, the war bleeds back."
---
The Reaping Order
Warrick's retaliation wasn't strategic.
It was personal.
He decreed what he called The Reaping Order: For every Ironfang soldier lost in ambush, three human villages in the borderlands would burn. Noncombatants. Trade outposts. Even neutral tribes.
Sarl protested. "This will bring the Border Clans into it. You'll unite the world against us."
"Then let them come," Warrick said.
He turned toward his war priests. "Begin the transformation rites. Pull from the river crypts. Bind the dead."
"You said we would wait," one seer said weakly.
Warrick's voice dropped to a whisper filled with venom.
"I said bind them."
That night, the Shadebound walked.
Wolves whose hearts had stopped but whose bodies still moved—tethered by blood sigils, memories twisted, eyes glowing the color of frostbite. They were no longer warriors. They were warnings.
---
Scene: A Village in Fire
Days later, a Moonborn scout rode hard into Alaric's camp.
He fell from his saddle, blood-spattered and shaking. "Three villages… burning. All of them. Civilians. Elders. Children. No one spared."
Alaric's fist clenched until blood dripped from his palm. "Warrick's answer."
Kael stood beside him, teeth gritted. "We made him bleed. Now he wants to make the world drown."
Alaric looked toward the horizon, where smoke painted streaks of crimson and ash into the sky.
"No," he said softly. "He's not making the world drown."
His eyes hardened.
"He's dragging it into the grave with him."
---
Final Scene – Ironfang Sanctum
Alone in his sanctum, Warrick stood before the Weeping Flame, an artifact forged from the bones of the first werewolf king. The flame flickered unnaturally, showing flashes of things yet to come.
Alaric's face.
His eyes.
His bloodline.
Warrick stared into it and whispered.
"You think you've won something, boy. But I've killed kings, shattered gods, and outlived every brother I ever had."
He placed a clawed hand on the flame. "Come, Alaric. Come with your banners and your clever little traps. Bring your wolves."
He smiled, dark and wide.
"I'll show you how an Alpha dies."