Isolde’s Betrayal

The rogue's camp was a battle-scarred mess as dawn commenced, the sky slashed with gold and crimson, a tenuous light that barely lightened the load of the night's butchery. The Blackfangs had slunk away at midnight, their golden-eyed warriors bruised but not beaten, and left a wake of shattered barricades and dead wolves. The air hung heavy with the stench of blood and pine and the residual crackle of Isolde's dark magic, purple runes that still smoldered in the earth. My crescent mark was silver and bright, the stronger magic a steady, humming pulse in my veins, but the bruised, purple scar of my blood oath burned hotter, a warning I couldn't ignore. Kael was standing next to me, his gray eyes shadowed by fatigue, his scarred face gone sallow from the curse's steady drain. The mate bond vibrated between us, a string that sang of love and mutual purpose, but the tension of Isolde's vowed truce at dawn hung between us like a knife.