Chapter 3: Wrath That Do Not Satisfy

Valdman;

I stood atop the ridge overlooking the once-proud Wakefield stronghold, the acrid smoke curling into the night sky like the souls of the damned I had sent screaming into the void.

Flames devoured timber and stone alike, roaring with a hunger that mirrored my own. The cries of the dying and the broken rose on the wind; men cut down like wheat, women defiled in the dirt, children torn from their mothers’ arms.

My warriors moved among the ruins with the deadliness I had forged in blood and suffering. This was victory. This was vengeance long denied.

Yet it was not enough.

The satisfaction I had craved for thirteen years refused to bloom in my chest. The sight of Alpha Wakefield’s head rolling across the earth should have filled me with triumph. Rather, it left a hollow ache.

I had ended him too swiftly. One swing of my blade, and the man who had slaughtered my father, gutted my pregnant mother, and sold me to the Rogues like a baseborn, took his last breath. There was no slow torment. No chance for him to beg as I once begged. For him to kneel and scrape his flesh against the earth as I did.

The rage that had sustained me through endless nights of violation and starvation demanded more. Far more.

My people, my true Iron Bloodline, had felt the full weight of Wakefield’s cruelty. They had been butchered, their lands looted, their futures stolen. They had suffer more than any people who walked the soil.

I would make every surviving soul in this wretched pack taste that same despair. They would walk barefoot over the shards of their former lives. They would learn what it meant to be broken as I had been broken.

A heavy footfall approached from behind. I did not turn. I knew the scent, the steady heartbeat.

“King Valdman,” Cade’s voice came, respectful yet unafraid. My Beta, young by the measure of our kind but trained in the fires of my own rise. Handsome in the way that drew foolish women, yet loyal as the scars that marked us both. “The fires burn well. When do we return to Iron Bloodline lands?”

“Now,” I answered, my voice carrying the weight of years spent in darkness. “We linger no longer in this cursed place.” My fists clenched by my side. “Prepare the survivors. They will journey with us—on foot. Every man, woman, and whelp who still draws breath will feel the road beneath their soles until their strength fails them. Let them know the mercy their Alpha once denied my kin.”

Cade hesitated only a moment. Wise of him. “And the princess, my King?”

The princess. Azalea Wakefield. What about her?

A groan built in my throat. I had seen her there in the hall; petite, golden-haired, those amber eyes wide with terror and defiance. Fragile. Too fragile. The thought twisted something dark inside me. Pthoo… I spat, despising the thought of her. “What about the Lass?”

“She is badly injured?”

“Then, let her be.” My nose vibrated in disgust.

“Silver chains still burn her flesh. She may not survive the journey. The men doubt she will last a single day.”

I clenched my jaw until it ached. Foolish, delicate creature. I hated how easily she might slip away into death before I could extract the full measure of payment.

She was meant to endure. To break slowly, piece by piece, until every scream echoed the ones I had swallowed in the Rogues’ dungeons. Her father’s blood ran in her veins. She would pay for the scars that covered my body, for the innocence ripped from me, for the sister I might have had if my mother had not died screaming my name.

“She must live,” I said, the command edged with ancient authority that brooked no argument. “Unchain her. Feed her what she can stomach. Tend her wounds enough that she does not perish before sunset. By then, we march. She will walk with the rest, or I will drag her myself.”

Cade bowed his head. “As you command.”

I turned my gaze back to the inferno below. The flames reflected in my eyes, but they could not warm the ice that had settled in my soul long ago. Women. I had taken many since rising to power, bodies to sate fleeting needs, but none stirred true desire.

The Rogues had seen to that, their repeated violations carving out any softness I once possessed. Yet this girl… this daughter of my enemy awakened something colder. A need to possess. To ruin. To make her mine in ways that would echo through eternity.

She would be my bride soon, as I had declared. Not out of affection, but as the ultimate desecration of Wakefield’s legacy. I would bind her soul to mine through pain and dominance until she understood the true meaning of ownership.

“See it done, Cade,” I said, my voice deepening with the weight of kings long dead. “And tell the men—no further sport with the women tonight. Save their strength for the march. There will be time enough for pleasure when we reach our kingdom.”

Cade departed without further word.

I remained a moment longer, spitting onto the bloodied earth at my feet. The taste of flame coated my tongue. This conquest was only the beginning. The girl with the golden eyes would learn that the monster her father created still walked this world, and he wore a crown of his own making.