Logan Blackwood Pov
The heat wasn't just a temperature; it was a physical weight, pressing against my lungs until every breath felt like inhaling ground glass.
I wiped the soot from my brow, my hand coming away black and slick with sweat. Ahead of me, the Cinder-Waste stretched out like a flayed skin red, raw, and bleeding molten rock. This was the edge of the world, a place where even the Silver Moon's elite scouts feared to linger.
But I wasn't an elite scout anymore. I was a man on a leash.
« Keep moving, Logan. »
Aria's voice brushed against the inside of my skull, cool and sharp as a diamond. The silver wire tied to my soul gave a cruel tug, forcing my leaden feet forward. She wasn't here, hundreds of miles away in her black fortress, and yet I could feel her presence as if she were walking a ghost-step behind me.
"I can't... I need water," I rasped, my voice sounding like a dying animal's.
« You need a purpose, » she whispered back. « And right now, your purpose is to find the ember. If you stop, I'll let the bond freeze. And you know what happens to a wolf who loses his mate-spark in the cold, don't you? »
I choked back a sob. I knew. The "Mate-Grief" would turn into "Mate-Frost." My heart would literally crystallize in my chest, shattering into a thousand pieces of ice. She wasn't just my executioner; she was my life support.
The Descent into the Core
My father, Alpha Silas, had sent me here on a "mission of redemption." He called it a quest to find a weapon against the Primal White Wolf. But I knew better. He was throwing me away. He saw the silver light in my eyes and knew I was tainted a broken tool that belonged to his enemy.
I reached the mouth of the Obsidian Maw, a cave that breathed sulfur and ancient fire. According to the forbidden scrolls Thorne had stolen from the archive, this was the resting place of the Red Phoenix the second Primal bloodline.
If Aria was the Moon, this was the Sun.
I stepped into the gloom. The walls were weeping liquid fire, the orange glow illuminating the jagged stalactites that hung like the teeth of a starving god. My wolf was howling in the back of my mind, a frantic, high-pitched sound I'd never heard from him before. He wasn't just afraid; he was submitting.
"Is someone there?" I called out, my voice echoing into the depths.
No answer. Only the roar of a subterranean lava river somewhere far below.
I walked deeper, the silver wire in my chest vibrating with a strange, harmonic frequency. Aria felt it too. I could sense her curiosity, her predatory focus sharpening through our link.
« There, » she commanded. « To the left. Behind the curtain of flame. »
I pushed through a wall of heat that singed the hair on my arms. Beyond it lay a chamber that shouldn't have existed. It was a garden of glass and ash. Flowers made of glowing embers bloomed in the cracks of the floor, and in the center, resting on a pedestal of bone, was a girl.
She looked no older than Aria. Her skin was the color of a sunset, and her hair was a cascading waterfall of living flame. She wasn't sleeping; she was waiting.
The Awakening of the Flame
As I approached, the girl's eyes snapped open. They weren't silver. They were a blinding, molten gold, with pupils shaped like flickering flames.
"A Blackwood," she whispered, her voice sounding like the crackle of a forest fire. "The smell of the Silver Moon is faint on you.
Replaced by the scent of... moonlight and shadow."
She stood up, the very air around her shimmering with a heat haze. She looked at me, not with the cold calculation of Aria, but with a wild, uncontrollable hunger.
"You brought a guest," the Phoenix girl said, looking directly at the spot where the silver wire entered my chest. "I can taste her. The White Wolf has finally woken up."
« Logan, back away, » Aria's voice suddenly turned sharp, urgent. « She's not stable. The Red line was always the most volatile. »
But I couldn't move. The heat was paralyzing.
"She calls you her leash," the girl laughed, walking toward me. Each footstep left a charred, glowing print on the stone. "How pathetic. A Golden Alpha turned into a silver dog. Do you want to be free, Logan?"
"I... I want..."
"I can burn the wire," she said, reaching out a hand. Her fingers weren't flesh; they were glowing filaments of plasma. "I can melt the silver. But fire doesn't just free you. It consumes you."
« LOGAN, RUN! » Aria roared in my head, the mental pressure so great I fell to my knees.
The Phoenix girl ignored her. She pressed her hand against my chest, right over my heart.
The agony was unlike anything I had ever felt. It wasn't the freezing bite of Aria's rejection; it was the total annihilation of my nervous system. I felt the silver wire begin to glow, turning from cold moonlight to white-hot iron.
The Three-Way Collision
Suddenly, the shadows in the room expanded.
A rift of pure darkness tore open beside the pedestal. Gabriel the Black Alpha stepped out, his abyssal aura clashing with the Phoenix's heat in a spray of violet sparks. Behind him, emerging from the dark, was Aria.
She wasn't a girl in a dress anymore. She was wearing armor of black leather and silver mail, her hair a shining banner of defiance. Her eyes were twin suns of silver fire.
"Get away from him, Ignis," Aria said, her voice a double-toned roar.
The Phoenix girl Ignis grinned, her teeth looking like white-hot coals. "The White Wolf and her Black Lion. You've come a long way from your mountain, Aria. Are you here to claim your toy, or are you here to die?"
"I'm here to take what's mine," Aria said.
She stepped forward, her silver aura meeting the Phoenix's gold in a blinding explosion of power. The chamber shook, the very ceiling beginning to crumble under the weight of the two Primals clashing.
I lay on the floor, caught in the middle. My chest was a battlefield. On one side, the silver wire was pulling me toward Aria; on the other, the Phoenix's fire was trying to melt my soul.
I looked up at Aria. She wasn't looking at me with love. She was looking at me as a tactical asset, a bridge she needed to cross to reach the next level of power. And Gabriel... he was looking at Ignis with a lethal hunger, the Black Lion in his soul pacing the cage of his skin.
"The world is burning, Logan," Ignis whispered, leaning over me even as she fought Aria's pressure. "And you're just the wood for the fire."
As the two powers collided, a shockwave of silver and gold sent me spiraling into the dark. My last thought before the heat claimed me wasn't about the throne or the pack.
It was about the third wire. A red one.
I wasn't just on a leash anymore. I was a tether for three gods. And I knew, as the fire consumed the last of my pride, that none of them were going to let me go until there was nothing left but ash.