Chapter 299: Chapter 299 The Devil’s Bargain
Timothy’s POV
"Hold the line!"
My voice was a ragged bark, tearing through my raw throat. I leaned heavily against the heavy oak frame of the antechamber doors, my side screaming in protest. The wound from the ambush was fresh, seeping hot blood into my tunic, but pain was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
Behind me lay the heavy iron door leading down to the Ice Crystal Chamber. Down to the King and his sleeping Queen.
In front of me was a sea of traitors.
"They’re pushing again!" Wade shouted from my left. His shield arm was trembling, but his eyes burned with a warrior’s fury. "Their numbers are too great, Timothy! We can’t hold them forever!"
He was right. The hallway was choked with bodies—men wearing the crest of the old regime, loyalists to a dead tyrant, bolstered by foreign mercenaries. The smell of copper and unwashed bodies was suffocating.
"We hold until we die," I snarled, pushing off the doorframe.
A flash of Jude’s face—her worried eyes when I left the small town she now called home—burned in my mind. Harlow’s laughter from our last visit. I was fighting for them.
For the quiet, simple life we were building far from this carnage. My duty as Gamma was to the King, but my vow as a man was to them. The two duties had become one and the same. I swung my heavy broadsword, and it connected with a sickening crunch against a mercenary’s shield, shattering the wood and the arm beneath it.
"For the King!" a traitor screamed, lunging at me.
I caught him by the throat, my fingers digging into his windpipe until I felt the cartilage snap. I tossed his body into the oncoming wave like a ragdoll.
"You are not fighting a King," I spat at the crowd, my eyes flashing gold. "You are fighting his executioners."
But the wave didn’t stop. It surged. The sheer weight of numbers began to drive us back, inch by bloody inch, toward the sanctuary we had sworn to protect.
——
Perry’s POV
I heard the fighting above. It sounded like distant thunder.
I stood in the center of the Great Hall. I had left the Ice Crystal Chamber minutes ago. I couldn’t let the blood spill near her. If they were going to come for me, they would meet me here, on the throne room floor, where I could paint the stones with their insides.
The massive double doors at the end of the hall groaned. Then, with a deafening crack, the wood splintered.
The doors burst open.
Soldiers poured in like a flood of black oil. Dozens. Hundreds. They fanned out, surrounding me, their weapons drawn.
Then, the sea of soldiers parted.
Princess Justina walked through the gap. She looked radiant in her crimson gown, a stark contrast to the grime and blood of her men. Her brothers walked beside her, hands resting casually on their hilts, looking at me like I was already a trophy mounted on a wall.
"Perry," Justina purred, her voice echoing in the vast, silent hall. "Look at you. Standing alone in an empty castle."
I didn’t move. I stood at the base of the dais, my hands loose at my sides. My silence was the calm before a hurricane.
"It’s tragic, really," she continued, stepping closer, her heels clicking on the stone. "You are destroying the Five Kingdoms. You are starving your people. And for what? For a woman who is already dead?"
She gestured to the floor beneath us.
"The rumors say she is frozen in a block of ice," Justina mocked, a cruel smile twisting her painted lips. "Accept it. She is a corpse. You are guarding a grave."
Something inside me snapped.
It wasn’t a loud snap. It was the sound of the last chain holding back the monster finally breaking.
I looked up.
My eyes were no longer blue. They were glowing, neon orbs of pure, electric mana. The "Beast Mode"—the state of total, uncontrolled predatory instinct—flooded my veins. The world slowed down. I could hear their heartbeats. I could smell their fear masked by arrogance.
"She is not dead," I whispered. The sound carried to the back of the room.
I took a step forward. Shadows began to bleed from my skin, swirling around me like living smoke.
"But you," I said, my voice dropping to a demonic growl, "you are walking corpses."
Violence. It was the only language left.
I didn’t draw a sword. I didn’t need one. I moved faster than their eyes could follow. I was a phantom, a blur of darkness and death. I reached the first line of Davorian elites before they could even raise their shields. My hand punched through the chest plate of the captain, my fingers wrapping around his beating heart. I ripped it out and crushed it before his body hit the floor.
Panic erupted.
"Kill him!" one of Justina’s brothers screamed, drawing his blade. "He’s just one man!"
They were wrong. I wasn’t a man. Not anymore.
I spun, ducking under a swinging broadsword, and swept the attacker’s legs. As he fell, I stomped on his skull. The sound was wet and final. I tore through them. I was a whirlwind of claws and shadow. I grabbed a spear mid-thrust, snapped the shaft, and drove the jagged wood into the attacker’s eye. Blood sprayed across my face, hot and metallic. It tasted like fuel.
But there were too many. For every life I ended, two more took its place. They were organized. They were using silver-tipped nets and heavy chains, trying to bind me, trying to drag the monster down.
A heavy mace clipped my shoulder. I stumbled, roaring in pain. A spear tip grazed my thigh.
I fell to one knee, panting, my vision swimming in red.
The circle tightened. Justina stood safely behind a wall of shields, her face pale but triumphant.
"Finish it!" she shrieked. "Cut off his head!"
I snarled, preparing to take as many as I could with me into hell. I gathered the last of my strength, ready to explode into my full wolf form, even if it meant destroying the palace supports and burying us all.
Then, the ground shook.
It wasn’t an earthquake. It was a vibration that rattled the teeth in my skull. It came from deep below.
From the Ice Crystal Chamber.
A sound ripped through the air.
AROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It wasn’t a normal howl. It was a sonic boom. It was the sound of a god declaring war. The glass windows of the Great Hall shattered inward, raining shards down on the army. The soldiers covered their ears, screaming as the pressure wave hit them.
It was a holy sound. A cleansing sound.
The stone floor behind the dais didn’t just crack; it exploded.
Debris flew into the air as if a volcano had erupted beneath the palace. A massive cloud of dust and pulverized rock filled the hall.
Silence fell over the battlefield. Even Justina stopped breathing.
From the settling dust, two glowing eyes appeared. They were not blue like Perry’s. They were silver—bright, burning, molten silver.
A paw the size of a shield stepped out of the rubble. Then another.
The creature that emerged was magnificent and terrifying.
It was a White Wolf. But it was colossal. It stood nearly twice the height of a normal Alpha wolf. Its fur was not just white; it was luminous, shimmering with an ethereal light that made it hard to look at directly. Waves of pure, raw power radiated from it, so intense that the torches on the walls flared and turned blue.
Phoebe had awakened.
She didn’t run. She stalked. She walked through the wreckage of the floor, her movements fluid and regal. The Davorian soldiers dropped their weapons, paralyzed by an instinctual, primal terror. This was an Apex predator. This was a myth come to life.
She walked straight to Perry.
The King was still on one knee, covered in blood and gore, looking up at her with an expression of stunned worship.
The giant White Wolf lowered her massive head. She nudged him gently, a soft whine escaping her throat. Then, with infinite tenderness, she extended her rough tongue and licked the blood from his cheek.
It was a moment of absolute intimacy in the center of a slaughterhouse.
"Impossible..." Justina whispered, her voice trembling. "She... she’s a monster."
Panic overtook the Princess. She realized in that second that her army, her brothers, her plans—none of it mattered. They were all going to die.
Desperation clawed at her throat. She fumbled at her belt, her fingers shaking uncontrollably. She pulled out a round, glass sphere filled with a swirling, glittering grey powder.
Concentrated nitrate silver. Enough to burn through steel. Enough to rot a womb from the inside out.
"Die, you bitch!" Justina screamed.
She hurled the bomb.
It didn’t fly toward Perry. It flew in a perfect arc, aiming directly for the exposed, soft white fur of the Wolf’s underbelly.
