The gunshot split the air like a blade, and everything after it felt unreal — a slow-motion collapse of sound and bodies. Garrick staggered back, clutching his bleeding hand, and the hall erupted into screams and chaos. For a beat, I couldn't breathe.
Then a voice cut through the panic, cold and absolute: "Don't touch her with your filthy hands."
Heads turned toward the grand entrance as the oak doors creaked open. A shadow filled the frame first — tall, broad, a presence that swallowed the room. When the chandelier light finally revealed his face, my skin prickled. Scars scored his skin, a jagged line from temple to mouth, another along his cheek. They made him look like someone who'd been rebuilt out of violence and kept standing. His eyes were sharp, hard as flint, and they moved across the crowd with a kind of measured menace that made people shrink away.
Whispers rose around me: It's him… Alpha Kael… The Scourge of the North… The names meant little in those first seconds, only the swell of fear they carried.
Garrick, pale and furious, barked at him. "How dare you interrupt my wedding!" His tone tried for thunder but came out shaking.
Kael didn't even blink. He smirked — the scar at the corner of his mouth pulling into something almost cruel. His voice was low and steady, and the rest of the hall suddenly felt very small. "This is no wedding," he said, eyes locking onto Garrick. "It's a farce. And she," he paused, and my name felt different in his mouth, "doesn't belong to you."
Heat rushed to my face and my stomach dropped. Garrick spat, "She's mine! This is an alliance—"
Kael cut him off like a blade. "She's mine."
It was a sentence that settled into me and refused to move. My heart hammered; my eyes darted between Garrick and Kael, trying to understand which nightmare had just shifted into place.
Garrick tried to bluster, to reclaim command of the room. "You think you can come into my territory and make demands?" he snarled, though he edged back.
Kael's hand tightened around the gun still in it. "I don't think you understand who I am," he said quietly. "Alpha Kael of the Blackridge Pack. I take what's mine, and I kill anyone who gets in my way."
The hall fell into an air you could cut. Faces went white. Few had seen Kael in person; most had only heard the stories. Those stories breathed terror now.
My father stepped forward, face flushing with a mixture of fury and something like fear. "This is none of your business, Kael. She is my daughter, and this marriage secures our pack's future."
Kael's eyes found him and did not soften. "Your pack's future," he said, quiet and scornful, "is built on the suffering of your own blood. You're not an alpha. You're a parasite."
My father's color drained. The word hung there — more devastating than any blow.
Kael took a single step forward and filled the space between men with his size. "Let me make this clear," he said, voice echoing off the high ceiling. "Evelyn is mine. If anyone here so much as looks at her the wrong way, I'll rip their throat out."
Garrick lunged, more bravado than force, and Kael moved like lightning. In one brutal, effortless motion he had Garrick by the collar and lifted him clear off his feet. The smaller man thrashed and sputtered, red-faced and terrified.
"Promised?" Kael hissed close to Garrick's ear. "You think you can claim her like a piece of property?" He shoved him hard enough that Garrick fell in a heap to the floor.
My knees felt like water as the scene unfolded. I watched Kael's face shift fractionally when he turned to me — the menace in his eyes softened, just a fraction, into something that might have been protection. Fear and something like strange relief twisted together in my chest.
"Come with me," he said, voice lower now, gentler in a way that made my throat tight. He extended a hand.
I glanced at my father — humiliation and fury contorted his features — then at Garrick nursing his bleeding hand on the floor. My mind roared with questions I couldn't voice. Who was this man who barged into my life and claimed me? Was he savior or another danger?
He repeated, softer: "You're safe now. I promise."
There was an ease to the words I hadn't felt in years, a steadiness I could cling to. Slowly, trembling, I reached out and placed my hand in his.
The hall buzzed behind us as Kael closed the space between us and led me toward the doors. Garrick's shout — "You'll pay for this!" — trailed after, small and brittle. Kael paused at the threshold and looked back once, voice flat and final. "If anyone dares to come after her, I'll destroy them. That includes you, Garrick."
Outside, the air was cool and sharp against my face. For the first time since my father had pronounced my fate, something flickered inside me that felt like hope. It was fragile and tangled with fear, but it was there. Maybe this scarred, dangerous man meant what he said. Maybe the storm had brought shelter.
Or maybe this was only the beginning of a different kind of nightmare. I couldn't tell which.