Chapter 80: New Weapon
Rex
The loud booming sounds echoed through the forest one after another, violent enough to shake the ground beneath my feet. Then came the smell of blood.
Heavy.
Sharp.
Every instinct inside me reacted instantly.
Watching Thor hunt the humans down was expected. Once he started killing, there was never mercy left in him. But the moment the scent of blood thickened in the air, my attention snapped toward Axel.
I was already running before I consciously realized it.
The metallic smell clawed at my senses as I dashed through the trees, maddening in its intensity. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. My heart pounded harder the closer I got, until I finally broke through the clearing and saw Axel’s wolf collapse to the ground.
His white fur was soaked red with blood.
For a moment, I froze.
Axel was wounded badly enough to fall defenseless onto the forest floor.
That alone was enough to unsettle me.
Human weapons had never truly been a threat to us before. We healed too quickly. Bones knitted together. Flesh sealed shut within moments. Even deep wounds rarely slowed us down for long. Yet Axel lay motionless, blood pouring from him as though his body had forgotten how to survive.
I rushed toward him as fast as my legs could carry me.
Trying to kill him for the position of leadership was one thing. We were wolves. Dominance was part of our nature. But allowing a human to take his life?
That was different.
Completely different.
I dropped beside him, my breathing harsh as I stared down at his body. Thor was still behind me, tearing through the remaining humans without mercy. Their screams echoed briefly before silence swallowed them whole.
Axel didn’t move.
His breathing came out uneven and strained, shallow enough to terrify me.
Then I noticed the worst part.
His wounds weren’t healing.
I stared at the torn flesh in disbelief. Blood continued to spill freely from his neck, chest, and thigh. Our greatest gift had always been our healing. No matter how badly we were injured, our skin and flesh meshed back together at unnatural speed.
But Axel continued bleeding.
Nothing closed.
Nothing repaired itself.
I didn’t know what to do.
Footsteps thundered behind me and I turned sharply just as Thor rushed into the clearing. He carried two strange metal rods in his hands, likely the weapons the humans had used.
The moment his eyes landed on Axel, his expression darkened.
"We need to hurry back," he said immediately. "At this point, he might bleed to death."
The words struck harder than they should have.
Bleed to death.
A werewolf.
I bent down instantly and lifted Axel into my arms. Blood coated my hands immediately, warm and endless. Tearing my shirt off, I wrapped the cloth around the worst of the wounds, pressing tightly against them.
It did nothing.
The blood soaked through almost immediately.
Fear twisted violently in my chest.
As quickly as possible, Thor and I shifted into our wolf forms. Thor carried the metal weapons carefully in his mouth while I carried Axel across my back as securely as I could.
Then we ran.
The forest blurred around us as we raced toward the pack lands. We didn’t slow down once. Branches snapped beneath our paws while blood continued dripping from Axel onto my fur.
None of us cared.
Not about the blood.
Not about the risk of being seen.
Not about anything except reaching the Alpha Hall before it was too late.
By the time we crossed into the heart of the pack grounds, several guards and scouts had already caught sight of us. Their eyes widened at the blood covering our bodies, but none of them spoke.
They knew better.
Especially when Axel was involved.
I burst through the massive doors of the Alpha building and shifted back into my human form instantly, Axel still in my arms.
"Gessia!"
My voice thundered through the entire building.
I already knew the guards would have rushed ahead to summon her the moment they saw us, but I didn’t care. Every second mattered.
Axel looked pale.
Too pale.
His skin had lost nearly all color, and his breathing came in terrifying gaps, as though each breath required effort he no longer had.
Thor shifted beside me, blood smeared across his chest and arms as he spoke in a grim tone.
"He’s dying."
There was no emotion in his voice. Just fact.
And that made it worse.
Because Axel truly was dying.
I clenched my jaw helplessly.
There was nothing either of us could do. We were werewolves. We fought. We healed. That was all we had ever needed to survive.
There had never been anything we couldn’t heal from.
Until now.
The sound of hurried footsteps echoed from above before Gessia finally appeared at the staircase. The moment she saw us, shock spread across her face.
Then her eyes landed on Axel.
Panic replaced everything else.
She rushed down the stairs and dropped to her knees beside him without hesitation.
"What kind of..." Her voice faltered as she unwrapped the blood-soaked cloth around his neck. "What kind of weapon is this?"
Her expression turned horrified.
There was a deep hole in his neck, and from the look on her face, something remained lodged inside. But unlike a knife wound, pulling it out recklessly could kill him instantly.
Still, Gessia forced herself to move quickly.
She uncorked a potion and poured it carefully into Axel’s mouth. Almost immediately, some color returned faintly to his face.
Beside me, Thor stared intensely at the metal weapons in his hands.
Too intensely.
Like he was memorizing every detail.
"It’s man-made," Thor said finally, his voice low. "And it can only be used a couple of times. After that, the man discarded it."
He turned one of the weapons slowly, peering through the hollow opening with a deep frown.
I understood immediately why that unsettled him.
Weapons capable of stopping a werewolf’s healing changed everything.
Gessia continued chanting under her breath while yelling toward one of the servants nearby.
"Warm water! And bring me a blade!"
The servant ran instantly.
"You’re going to remove it?" I asked.
She nodded quickly without stopping her movements.
"It’s what’s preventing him from healing properly," she replied. "We need to remove every piece of metal inside him."
Her voice remained steady, but I saw it.
Her hands were shaking.
Carefully, she worked on the wounds in his chest and thighs first, removing small metal fragments buried beneath the flesh. Each piece clinked against the floor beside her.
But she kept staring at the wound in his neck.
Almost fearfully.
Like she had encountered something she didn’t know how to defeat.
"Hurry," I urged, unable to keep the tension from my voice. "Is something wrong?"
Before she could answer, the main doors of the Alpha building opened again.
Arkan entered.
The old healer moved slower than the rest of us, but there was still strength in the way he carried himself. His beard had gone mostly grey long ago, yet his back remained straight and his steps steady.
Most preferred leaving healing duties to Urni now since she was younger and quicker.
Still, everyone respected Arkan.
Even feared him a little.
"I already sent for Urni," I told him the moment I saw him.
His brown eyes lifted toward me briefly, eerily calm, before shifting down to Axel’s blood-covered body lying against the wooden floor.
The hall had gone almost silent.
Even Gessia moved aside slightly, though her hesitation around the neck wound remained obvious.
"Move over," Arkan ordered.
Gessia obeyed immediately.
I almost stared.
It was the most respectful I had ever seen her behave toward anyone who wasn’t an Alpha.
Arkan knelt beside Axel slowly.
Then, without another word, he began digging into the wound in Axel’s neck.
Hard.
My stomach tightened instantly.
The old healer pushed deeper with frightening precision, his fingers working carefully but without hesitation. Blood spilled faster around his hands.
I swallowed hard.
For a moment, it genuinely looked like Arkan was trying to kill him.
"Dig too deep and he won’t be able to swallow the potion to heal," Gessia warned sharply.
Her voice had turned cold with tension.
But Arkan ignored the fear surrounding everyone else.
The hall felt suffocating.
No one moved.
No one breathed properly.
Thor stood rigid beside me while servants lingered silently near the walls, too terrified to speak. Blood stained the polished wooden floor beneath Axel, spreading wider with every passing second.
Still Arkan continued.
Carefully.
Relentlessly.
Then finally, his fingers closed around something.
With one brutal motion, he pulled the metal piece free from Axel’s neck.
Blood burst out immediately afterward.
Gessia reacted instantly, pouring another potion between Axel’s lips before the bleeding could worsen further.
For one terrifying second, nothing happened.
Then slowly...
Very slowly...
The wound began to close.
Not fully.
Not even close to normal.
But enough.
Enough for hope to return.
Axel’s color improved little by little as the flesh around his wounds finally started knitting together again. The healing remained sluggish compared to what it should have been, likely because of the amount of blood he had already lost, but it was happening.
He was healing.
I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Thor lowered the strange weapon slowly, his expression darker than before.
The room remained silent as everyone stared at Axel.
At the blood.
At the metal fragments lying scattered across the floor.
And though no one said it aloud, every single one of us understood the same terrifying truth.
Humans had created something capable of killing werewolves.
