Chapter 507: What have I done?

Vincent.

The iron bowstring hummed under the tension of my draw, vibrating against my leather gauntlet with a sweet, promised violence.

I looked down the shaft of the black arrow, my eye locked directly on the center of Noah’s chest. The local Alpha was leaning against the stone wall, his breath coming in shallow, ragged wheezes, his face pale from the remnant traces of the wolfsbane I had personally fed him over the past month. Beside him, Adrein stood like a feral dog, covered in the blood of my strike team, his broadsword trembling in his grip from pure physical exhaustion.

A dark, intoxicating wave of excitement rushed through my veins.

I had waited a long, agonizing month for this exact moment. Noah had been an annoying, persistent thorn in my side ever since he decided to grant asylum to the quadruplets and open his gates to Maria. He thought his territorial borders and his grand estate made him untouchable. He thought he could sit back in his valley, playing the righteous protector while my plans crumbled.

Now, he was standing in a narrow, blood-soaked hallway, entirely out of guards, trapped like a rat.

Once Noah was dead, the last major hurdle in this backwater valley would be cleared. His pack house would collapse into total disarray without its lord, leaving the quadruplets isolated, outnumbered, and completely broken. And then Maria would be mine. Truly mine.

I smiled to myself, the cold thrill of absolute control settling deep in my chest. If she cried for Noah, if she screamed and mourned him, it wouldn’t matter. If she proved stubborn or refused to accept her place at my side once I brought her back to the mountain stronghold, I would simply use the darker alchemy. I would tamper with her mind, rewrite her thoughts, and strip away every single trace of Noah and those four arrogant brothers until her memory held nothing but my name and my face.

"Drop your blades," I repeated, my voice smooth, calm, and laced with quiet authority. "Or I put an arrow through your precious friend’s heart before he can take another breath."

Noah didn’t lower his sword. He shoved himself off the stone wall, his boots sliding slightly on the slick, bloody floorboards as he brought his heavy blade back into a guard position. His dark eyes burned with an unyielding, bitter hatred as he glared at me down the shaft of my arrow.

"You’re a pathetic coward, Vincent," Noah spat, his raspy voice cutting through the heavy silence of the corridor. "You hide behind thirty archers and strike from the dark because you know you couldn’t take either of us in a real fight."

Adrein let out a harsh, bloody laugh, wiping a streak of red off his cheek with the back of his hand as he stepped closer to Noah’s side. "He’s right, so called Lycan prince," Adrein sneered, his golden eyes glowing with a fierce, mocking heat. "If you actually had an ounce of Alpha blood in your veins, you’d step up here alone. Drop the bow, draw your steel, and fight us one-on-one. Or are you too terrified to bleed?"

I listened to their defiance, letting out a low, amused chuckle that echoed off the stone archway. I didn’t feel a shred of insult. Pride was a luxury for fools who died early, and I was far too smart to play by their barbaric rules.

"One-on-one?" I murmured, my lips curving into an arrogant, pitying smirk as I tightened my grip on the bowstring. "Do you truly think I care about honor in a hallway? I don’t have time for your childish games. The world doesn’t reward the man who fights fair; it rewards the man who survives."

I glanced past them at the heavy oak doors of the infirmary, knowing Maria was resting just a few yards away behind that thin barrier.

"Your time is up," I said flatly.

Seeing that neither of them had any intention of dropping their weapons, I raised my left hand slightly, giving the absolute signal to the thirty armored archers lined up in tight formation behind me.

Instantly, the crisp, synchronized sound of thirty bowstrings being pulled back to full tension echoed down the corridor. Iron arrowheads gleamed ominously under the flickering lantern light, all thirty of them locked straight onto Noah and Adrein’s chests.

"Draw!" I commanded coldly, my eye fixing on the exact spot over Noah’s heart where his leather tunic was torn.

Noah squared his shoulders, stepping forward to cover Adrein, his jaw set as he prepared to meet the volley head-on. Adrein raised his broadsword, preparing to swing at the incoming steel with a desperate, hopeless ferocity.

"Loose!" I ordered.

My fingers relaxed against the leather tab, letting the black bowstring snap forward with a lethal, deafening twang. At the exact same microsecond, thirty arrows whistled through the narrow air of the hallway, a flying wall of death surging down the stone passage toward the two Alphas.

In that very fraction of a second—just as my arrow left the iron riser and cut through the space between us—a sudden, blinding commotion erupted from the infirmary doorway.

The heavy oak doors were thrown wide open.

A small, fragile figure burst out from the threshold, her golden hair flying wildly behind her shoulders, her pale face flushed with pure, hysterical desperation.

"NO!"

The scream ripped through her lungs with such sheer force that it echoed off the high stone ceiling like a crack of thunder.

Before Noah or Adrein could even react, before either of them could reach out to grab her, Maria threw her small body straight across the space between them. She didn’t look at the incoming storm of steel. She didn’t hesitate for a single heart-beat. She threw her arms wide, wrapping her fragile frame securely over Noah’s chest, shielding his body completely with her own.

My heart violently seized in my chest.

The world slammed into a horrifying, excruciating slow motion. My pupils dilated into tiny, pinprick dots of pure horror as I watched my black arrow—and the thirty iron shafts right behind it—slice cleanly through the air, heading directly toward her exposed, unguarded back.

The cold, arrogant satisfaction in my chest disintegrated instantly into a sickening, paralyzing dread that chilled me to the absolute bone.

"What..." My voice choked out, dying in my throat as my hands trembled uncontrollably around the empty bow frame. "What have I done?"