"I discovered a filthy human-born whoring herself out to your Shadowfang guards. This is the bastard she was carrying!"
"I humbly beg the Supreme Alpha to find the wretch who fathered this thing and grind his bones to ash, so the dignity of the Shadowfang Pack remains unsullied!"
——
Three full years I had carried the child. The moon itself had turned strange colors, and wolves across every territory had howled without knowing why.
The movements in my womb had grown fiercer by the day, the unborn stirring with signs that its arrival was imminent. Some nights I could feel the pup's wolf already pushing against my skin, restless, eager.
I was lying in the den, preparing for the birth, when a commotion broke out beyond the doors.
"The Supreme Alpha keeps coming here every other day. Today, I'm going to see for myself what precious little secret he's hiding!"
"But, my lady, I've heard that the Abyssal Den is part of the Sacred Den grounds. No one is permitted to enter without leave!"
"That's right, Seraphina. They say that when Cadmus Wilder merely wandered past the blood-ward by accident, the Supreme Alpha executed him on the spot and it sparked the Pack War. Barging in like this... isn't it a bit reckless?"
"Reckless? I am the only she-wolf in all the Six Great Packs worthy of the Supreme Alpha's attention. He would never blame me."
Listening to the noise outside, I frowned. A cold sense of dread settled in my chest.
Fenris guarded me and the child with obsessive devotion.
After the incident where someone had accidentally touched my belly, he had dismissed every last soul from the Sacred Den.
Proud and untamable as he was, he came here himself each day to care for me. He would press his forehead to my swollen stomach and stay there, silent, breathing slow, as though listening for the pup's heartbeat with his own ears. The scent of ancient cedar heartwood and smoldering iron would linger on the furs long after he left.
Cadmus Wilder had once been an honored guest, on friendly terms with the Supreme Alpha.
Yet a single drunken misstep past the blood-ward was enough for Fenris to kill him without hesitation, igniting the war between the Silvercrest and Shadowfang Packs.
Mountains of corpses. Seas of blood.
If those she-wolves outside made it in here, another massacre was all but certain.