Chapter 102: Shift Back. Right Now, Young Man.

"Stay here."

Every guard stopped.

The High Luna walked through the main doors alone.

The keep’s interior was chaos. Emergency rune-lights pulsed amber along every corridor. Smoke was visible in the upper stairwells, thin grey fingers reaching down through the levels.

She climbed the first stairwell.

That’s when she heard it. Boots on stone. Heavy breathing. The unmistakable sound of a large man running.

Tavian Voltcrest rounded the corner at full Beta speed, curtain still trailing from his ankle, chest bare, calling after someone.

"MARIA, I WILL PHYSICALLY REMOVE YOU FROM THIS BUILDING. DO YOU HEAR ME? THIS IS MY JOB. LET ME DO MY JOB."

"Tavian."

He skidded to a stop.

The High Luna stood in the center of the corridor with her hands clasped in front of her, crown on, robe pristine, looking at her pack’s Beta the way a headmistress looks at a student who has arrived to an exam in the wrong uniform.

"High Luna." His chest was heaving. "You should be outside."

"So should you, Tavian. You get your mate. I get my grandsons."

That sentence was delivered with the finality of a woman dividing responsibilities and the division was complete and appeals were closed.

She turned the corner and stopped.

Landon Thunderfang’s wolf filled the corridor from wall to wall. Full-shifted. Indoors. Gold fur catching the amber rune-light, massive head low, eyes burning molten, every muscle locked in a posture that said he had been heading somewhere with extreme prejudice and had been interrupted by a woman in a crown who was half his size and ten times his authority.

"For fuck’s sake," the High Luna said.

The gold wolf stopped to look at her, tilting his head.

Behind her, Tavian skidded to a halt, also tilting his head.

The High Luna of Thunderfang had just dropped an F-bomb. In the recorded history of this pack, across every war, every council meeting, every crisis, every family dinner that went sideways, across the full and complete chronicle of this woman’s life, that word had never once crossed her lips in the presence of another living soul.

"Landon. Shift back. Right now." The High Luna clapped her hands twice.

The gold wolf’s ears flattened. A growl vibrated through the corridor, low and involuntary, the sound of a beast whose grandmother was giving him orders and the beast had opinions about taking them.

"I said. Shift. Back."

Tavian watched the standoff unfold with the expression of a man watching hell freeze over for the second time and not knowing what to make of it.

✦✦✦

ONE FLOOR ABOVE

On the stairwell between the third and fourth floors, a blue wolf the size of a horse was wedged in a doorframe.

The doorframe was still attached to the wall. Partially. The wolf had committed to the opening with the full-speed confidence of a beast who did not believe in architectural limitations and the architecture had disagreed.

His shoulders had gotten ambitious and the doorframe had gotten structural and neither party was willing to compromise.

He howled. Long and loud and deeply undignified. The kind of howl that started as a war cry and ended as a customer complaint.

Inside his skull, two tenants were arguing.

Shift back. Right now. We are stuck in a wall, Derek thought to his wolf.

The wolf did not shift back. The wolf wanted to find his mate and the wall was a temporary inconvenience and temporary inconveniences did not outrank mate-finding on the wolf’s priority list.

She is not IN the wall. She is on the other side of this building. We need HANDS to open DOORS. Shift back, Derek tried again. 𝘧𝓇ℯℴ𝓂

The wolf disagreed. The wolf lunged forward. The doorframe groaned. Plaster cracked. One hinge popped free and clanged against the stone floor. Progress.

That is not progress. That is property damage. I live here. Gran is going to kill me. She’s going to kill both of us. Shift back before she sees this.

The wolf lunged again. The second hinge surrendered. The doorframe came with him, hanging around his neck like a wooden collar that he wore with zero shame and full commitment.

He was free. He was also wearing a doorframe. These facts coexisted and the wolf considered neither of them a problem.

He bolted down the corridor, the frame bouncing against his shoulders with every stride, and the sound of a horse-sized wolf galloping through a stone hallway wearing stolen architecture echoed through Thunderfang Keep with the specific acoustics of a pack that was having the worst midnight in its history.

The wolf howled again. Louder. He could smell her. Three floors down, through smoke and stone and the lingering scent of forty white roses that a man had bought for a girl whose name he whispered in his sleep, the wolf could smell his mate and every door between them was about to become a suggestion.

Maria Emberclaw hit the stairwell like a woman who had been shot out of a cannon and the cannon was still apologizing for the delay.

She burst through the door and froze.

A flash of blue electricity crackled across the landing above her, bright enough to leave an afterimage on her retinas. Then the smell hit. The one from Nova’s quarters. The one that had made her wolf recoil earlier like she’d walked face-first into something rotten. It was here. Stronger. Moving.

"Maria." Miniature Maverick’s voice came from her wrist, six inches tall and radiating the specific energy of an older brother whose patience had left the building before the evacuation started. "Go back. Or at the very least, wait for Tavian."

She ignored him. Her chin lifted. She sniffed again, deeper, following the trail the way her wolf followed everything, with the singular focus of a creature who had identified a threat near someone she loved and was done negotiating with the concept of caution.

"I keep smelling it," she said, more to herself than to him. "It was in Nova’s quarters and now it’s here. Stronger."

"Maria. I am asking you as your brother and your Alpha to stop moving deeper into a burning building by yourself."

"Noted."

She kept moving.

Maverick’s tiny hologram pinched the bridge of his tiny nose with his tiny fingers.

Footsteps sounded behind her.