POV: Alaric
The scent was a drug, and I was an addict. It was the smell of amethyst, ozone, and a specific, infuriatingly pure "royal" musk that had haunted my family’s nightmares for three centuries. Every time I inhaled as I tore through the underbrush, it felt like a hot needle to my brain. She was close. The White Wolf, the glitch in my matrix, the living proof that my throne was stolen property.
"Faster!" I snarled through the mind-link, my voice a jagged blade that cut through the thoughts of the two warriors behind me. I didn't care if their lungs burst. I didn't care if they tripped and broke their necks in the rocky ravines of the borderlands. All that mattered was the kill.
My paws hammered against the earth, each strike vibrating with the weight of my dark brown form. I was a
