My wolf, buried deep where I kept her still and silent, stirred at the sound. Not with fear. With something older than fear. Something that had no name except the taste of ash on the back of my tongue.
He was right about one thing. I was the Primordial She-Wolf he claimed to have destroyed.
I was also the only other true Primordial Alpha who had escaped the Abyssal Wilds alongside him, the only one who had survived the cataclysm.
The year the Wilds were annihilated, the two of us had nowhere left to go. We set aside our enmity out of necessity, clinging to each other to survive.
For thousands of years after that, Fenris treated me well.
Primordial wolves are born cold-blooded. He was the one who taught me how to cry and how to laugh.
Under his guidance, I slowly learned to live in the world beyond the Wilds.
So when he told me he wanted to take me to the Sovereign Grounds, that he would look after me for the rest of my life, I agreed without a second thought.
Three thousand years as mates. Every one of them devoted. Every one of them tender.
Until Fenris met a mortal woman, and everything veered off course.
That woman was Elara, the one he now called his mate.
Elara was flesh and bone, purely human. She could not set foot in the Sovereign Grounds. The only way was to replace the mortal essence inside her body with a Wolf Core and Abyssal power, or with the strength of a Primordial bloodline.
Fenris searched every corner of the Sovereign Grounds and found no justification to take what he needed from anyone else.
So he turned his attention to me.
He deliberately led the other packs to discover my true nature as a Primordial Wolf, then rallied all Three Territories under the banner of righteousness to bind me with silver chains soaked in wolfsbane.
I was already carrying his pup by then. My powers had waned, and I had no strength left to fight back.
I begged him to spare me. Begged until my voice broke. But all he left me with was a single, weightless phrase: The Abyssal bloodline cannot be allowed to exist. Then he ripped the Abyssal essence from my body and shattered my soul into nothing.
Even Soulreaper was ground to dust beneath his heel.
It was the pup in my womb who saved me.
He sacrificed his own life to lock my three ethereal souls and seven corporeal spirits together before they could scatter.