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Mikhail didn't move.
Nor did he blink, or twitch just that tall, immovable figure, half-turned, his gaze fixed somewhere between my face and the floor as if pinning me there without actually touching me. The silence pressed in, thick and cold, until the pulse in my ears became deafening.
"Did you hear me?" I asked, as I took a step toward him, heat crawling up my throat.
He gave my question no answer; instead, he simply turned fully to me.
That had to count for something, didn't it? I thought to myself. Everything about this situation, me walking tentatively toward him, the palpable charge in the tense air, the way my eyes darted over his features, looking for some warmth or openness and finding none was like standing at the edge of a cliff.
I had been on the edge far too long; it was time I jumped.
He remained as cold and steady as the marble beneath our feet.
I swallowed, but the lump in my throat stayed lodged, a stone I couldn't move. "For three years, this has been the only thing in my life that mattered. Every choice I made, every hour I worked, every coin I saved, it all bent toward this."
I took a breath, the words tasting like iron. "School, my hustling... it was never about the future. It was a war chest. If the police couldn't find him in twenty years, I knew I'd have to be ready for the long haul."
I stepped closer without meaning to, the air between us shrinking, pressing. His expression didn't shift but I kept going.
"I prepared myself for years... decades, if I had to. I made peace with the idea that I wouldn't have a life outside this. That every birthday, every sunrise, every scrap of breath I took... would belong to this one mission. If I don't avenge the woman who loved me despite what I represented..." My voice faltered, the weight on my ribs crushing me. "Then why did I find out? Why did I let her die in my stead? What was it all for?" I asked, like he would understand.
The words scraped painfully out of me, raw and jagged.
I closed more of the gap, hoping to reach the humanity I prayed existed in him. I stopped short, cold rolling off him in waves that sank into my marrow.
I looked away when his eyes, those probing, unblinking eyes morphed into another anvil on my chest.
"I see him in my mirror. I see him in my mother's pain, in the disdain of my family. I see him in every insult I ever swallowed, in every door that was slammed in my face. He is the shadow that follows me into every room; he is written into the fiber of my very being. He will always be there, while the woman he destroyed remains ashes in a ceramic bowl. If the consequence of his heinous deed is that his daughter is not meant to be the one to put him down like the dog he is, then what was the point in me surviving? What is the use of my miserable existence?"
He remained unmoved, his mouth set in the same hard line, his face carved from something older and less forgiving than stone. If my words had struck him, they had left no mark in the fortress the Alpha had built around himself.
The silence quickly became oppressive.
"Alpha Kustav Volkov of Nightbane Pack," he finally spoke, his words quiet but still managing to echo. "That is the man you wish to eviscerate."
I blinked. "That is his name," I whispered.
"Yes." He paused, and something shifted in his expression, something I could not decipher. "You've been sold. Auctioned. Transported across realms. You shifted for the first time. And you confronted the man who destroyed your mother. All in the span of hours."
His gaze held mine, unflinching. "And now you want to kill an Alpha of the Onyx Concord."
The way he said it made my stomach drop.
"I understand what you want," he continued. "But wanting and achieving are not the same thing. Not here. Not in Nocturna."
"Then tell me how," I said, voice barely steady. "Tell me what I need to do."
"It's not that simple."
"Then make it simple," I snapped, desperation bleeding through.
His jaw tightened, the first crack in his composure. "Kustav does not die," he said flatly. "He is dismantled. Piece by bloody piece. No flesh left to decay, no bones left to burn, nothing left for the wolves to gnaw at."
His gaze flickered for a fraction of a second. I could not read it.
"Kustav is an infection. An affliction that cannot simply be cured or washed away. He ravages, he desecrates. And even when he is done, the body must be burnt to ashes, because if a splinterāif a speckāof him survives, he regrows, he rebuilds, and spreads. And so the vicious cycle begins again."
His voice remained level, not a note heightened, controlled as if he spoke of the weather and somehow, it only hit harder.
"Kustav is not new to atrocities. Your mother is one in a multitude of victims."
"Then how is he still breathing?" I asked, my jaw ticking.
"Because the laws of Nocturna were not written by men." His voice was steady, but each word landed like a drop of ice water against skin. "They were written by Lycaon himself. Carved into the Lykaion Codex in a language only seers can read. And those laws do not bend for vengeance. They do not break for justice."
Something in my chest twisted. "So you're saying the law protects him?"
"I'm saying the law *is* him," Mikhail replied, the faintest shadow of something unreadable passing over his expression. "Kustav has spent centuries weaving himself into the fabric of the Concord. His bloodlines hold territories. His allies hold seats. His enemies are buried or silenced."
He took a step closer, voice dropping. "Remove him without sanction, and you don't end the nightmareāyou create a power vacuum. His Gammas tear the borderlands apart fighting for his throne. The Concord fractures. Packs go to war. Thousands die before the first month is done."
My breath caught. "So what, we just let him keepā"
"No." The word was sharp, final. "But you don't kill a fortress by charging the gates. You dismantle it. Brick by brick. Loyalty by loyalty. Until there's nothing left to rally behind."
The step he took toward me left me breathless, his eyes hardening now, piercing frostbitten blue that cut through the heat of my voice. "You can't do anything. Not yet."
My breath caught.
"Do you think I have not imagined my claws ripping out his entrails? Crushing his skull beneath my jaws?" His gaze bored into me, unrelenting in its intensity. The ice in his eyes melted to something molten, something that burned. "But some wars you can't win with a single kill. Kustav is not a man you slay in an alley. He's a kingdom. And you dismantle a kingdom the way it was built: piece by piece, until there's nothing left."
Underneath the anger he could no longer hide beneath his mask of ice was something familiar. In between every line that twisted his face was something I recognized.
It was grief.
It was the old kindānot the raw, bleeding one that brought a man to his knees, begging for reprieve. No, this had carved deep, calcified over time, lined his entire person and sharpened him.
But as if he realized I was trying to unravel the enigma that he was, he slammed his walls back up.
Whatever glimpse I had caught was gone, shuttered by a man with the kind of discipline that could turn him into a statue at will. The shift had been so instant I could have imagined it.
He stepped back, expression smoothing into something cold and impenetrable once more.
"Get some rest, Selene," he said, voice returning to that glacial calm. "Tomorrow, when you're thinking clearly, we'll discuss what you want. And what's actually possible."
He turned effortlessly, faster than I could blink. "Good night." His voice could have frozen hell over.
He walked away without turning around.
The knot in my stomach tightened as it all hit me like a wrecking ball.
I wanted to destroy a man, only to find out I needed to bring down an entire kingdom.