Gareth stopped holding back.
Aura surged out from his chest, racing through every meridian, and the pressure of a true Tier-3 fighter rolled off him in a visible wave. Loose gravel skittered away from him across the ground.
Nicole's jaw actually dropped.
He didn't look back at her. Sword in hand, he closed the distance to the wolf pack.
Luna dragged herself upright in the brush, staff gripped in one hand, a thin thread of wind already gathering at its tip. Her ankle throbbed from the fall, and her Mana reserves were nearly spent after the running fight.
She glanced down the road. Collins was long gone.
The man who'd sworn a dozen times that he'd die for her had run the second things turned dangerous. She wasn't angry about it, not really. People did what survival asked of them.
Just regret, mostly. So many spells still unlearned. So many places she'd never see now.
A Tier-2 wolf lunged from her flank. She threw a Wind Blade on instinct, but with her Mana this depleted, it barely had teeth behind it. The wolf twisted past it and raked her shoulder, tearing fabric and skin both.
She stumbled back into a dead tree; the pack closed the ring around her, a dozen pairs of eyes catching the dim light.
She raised her staff, ready to burn her last scrap of Mana on one final spell rather than be torn apart alive.
A pale gold arc cut in from the side.
The lead wolf dropped in two pieces before it even finished its lunge.
Luna's head snapped toward the source. A young man, maybe her own age, plain leather armor, a silver-white blade wreathed in faint gold light, moving like something launched rather than running. By the time the first wolf hit the ground, he was already on the second, his sword taking its head clean off.
Blood sprayed across him. He didn't slow down.
Aura projection. A real Tier-3.
How is he that young?
Three more wolves broke for him at once while she was still processing what she'd seen. He sidestepped the first, drove a fist wrapped in Aura into the second's skull, and swept the third's front legs out from under it with a single downward cut. Nothing elegant about it, just brute efficiency, the gap in raw power doing all the work.
Three wolves down in as many seconds.
The lead Tier-2 finally seemed to understand what it was looking at. It barked a warning and the pack pulled back a step.
They didn't run, though. Whatever was driving them, hunger, or something stranger behind those red-tinged eyes, they came again, all at once this time, from every angle.
"You really don't understand what Tier-3 means," Gareth said, almost amused, and let Aura flood his limbs as he spun through them, blade flashing.
Three more wolves fell in halves. The rest didn't fare much better, missing limbs, guts opened.
That broke them.
The two lead wolves gave up first, yelping and bolting back toward the tree line. The rest scattered after them like the signal had been given, and within a few breaths, the clearing held nothing but corpses and the smell of blood.
Gareth sheathed his sword and turned to her, offering a hand.
"You alright?"
"You..." Her throat felt like sandpaper. "You already helped enough."
Her hand found his. It was cold, trembling faintly, like the last leaf holding onto a branch in autumn wind. He could feel the calluses on her palm, faint under soft skin, the kind that came from years gripping a staff.
"Easy," he said, low, steady. He bent down, his free hand bracing her elbow as he helped her to her feet.
Her leg gave out the moment she put weight on it, a spike of pain driving her forward, her forehead landing against his shoulder.
She caught the scent of him then. Not perfume, not smoke. Just the wild outdoors, sweat, grass, something that was simply his.
"You good?" he asked, close to her ear, real concern in it.
Her face went hot. She pushed back a step, eyes down. "I'm fine. My leg's just."
Before she finished the sentence, he swept her up, one arm under her legs, carrying her toward the nearest solid tree.
She stiffened at the contact. Not used to this kind of closeness with a stranger, but she had no ground left to argue from.
"Thank you," she managed, glancing up at him from under her lashes.
His face wasn't delicate, not the kind of pretty some men had. It was carved clean, sharp brow, straight nose, a jawline like the edge of a blade. Still and quiet, he reminded her of a sword that hadn't been drawn yet.
He looked about her own age. She hadn't expected that kind of strength from someone so young.
She thought back to the last few minutes: Collins riding off without a second glance, and this man, a total stranger, cutting through a wolf pack to reach her instead.
The image lodged itself somewhere she doubted she'd be able to shake it loose from anytime soon.