Page 172 of In Violent Waves

Igneous stepped closer. “How about I make her scream as I did you, Prince?”

An exhale slipped through Wilder’s parted lips. Another step from Igneous and Wilder would charge the beast and slit him from neck to navel.

“How about you let the lady speak for herself?” Igneous’ words halted Wilder’s swelling fury.

The creak of the carriage door had his chest seizing up. Without turning around, he knew she was there.

The scent of her wrapped around him in a gentle embrace, but where he expected the tang of fear, he found the sharpness of fury.

“Lyra—get back inside.Now.”

“They’ve come for me. I will speak to them,” she retorted as haughtily as she had spoken to him that first day.

“It’s as it should be,” Otto whispered, settling Wilder’s nerves.

“Speak,” she ordered the clan leader of the largest wulver clan.

She asserted as much dominance in her voice as one would use to a wayward pup.

If he hadn’t been so unnerved by her presence, he would have cracked a smile at her tone.

“You are to return to the sea and I am to escort you,” Igneous replied.

His patience was slipping, and Wilder could tell by the way Igneous cracked his jaw.

Lyra’s shoulders stiffened. They were offering her a way home—would she take it?

She had made a bargain with his father, but that wouldn’t keep her here—would it?

“And who requests my return? The same male who bargained for my kidnapping?” Her voice did not waver, and the scent of her fury swelled.

Igneous shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know any information outside of my bargain.”

“The name,” she spat.

The wulvers on either side of Igneous bristled at her tone.

Lyra gripped the handle of the dagger and stepped beside Wilder. She hadn’t completed enough training to think she could fight her way out of this. Protecting her would be a liability, and now, with her standing this close to him, she was a distraction.

“I will not stand here and be questioned by a girl or by acowardwho had to be rescued by his father. You will come?—”

Igneous didn’t get to finish his demand.

The pommel of Lyra’s dagger quivered from between his eyes. He hadn’t seen her move, hadn’t felt her arm raise before she had launched the dagger between them.

The clearing froze.

No one dared to move or breathe; even the wind ceased. It was as if time had stopped altogether.

Igneous dropped to his knees and then fell to his stomach. The blade on the dagger was pure silver and had belonged to Maelys.

Wilder prepared for retaliation, for the rest of the clan to charge them now that their leader was killed. But the wulver on the right, the beta, looked at the corpse of the alpha and stepped back.

Lyra’s chest heaved, and she stepped in front of Wilder, raising her hands in challenge.

She looked like a goddess summoning her power.

The wind swirled through the clearing, bringing Wilder the scent of death. The remaining wulvers peeled off and out of the clearing, disappearing into the thick of the forest.