SWNOVELXO Chapter 9: The Tyrant’s Blood Oath
Dahlia refused to blink as Valemont Manor's oldest corridor stretched ahead of her like a throat carved into the mountain; sconces of ghost‑flame made the walls sweat blue light, and every polished slab of obsidian reflected a slightly different version of her face—pale, wide‑eyed, faintly luminous from the Moonblood mark that throbbed beneath her skin. Damon marched at her side with the predatory calm of a wolf who knew the forest belonged to him, silver gaze forward, muscles held in quiet readiness, boots echoing over stone older than recorded history.
They moved deeper, beyond rooms where ancestral portraits whispered prophetic slurs, past libraries bound in scaled leather that rustled with imprisoned voices, until they reached an antechamber walled in black glass that pulsed with the faint heartbeat of runes. Damon pressed a clawed, blood‑flecked palm against a sigil carved like a wolf devouring a moon; the door clicked, inhaled, and slid aside to reveal a sanctum that looked less like a room and more like a memory made solid: a vaulted hall where the ceiling shimmered with constellations forged from liquid silver, where a marble dais supported a single iron pedestal and upon that pedestal rested a goblet no bigger than Dahlia's fist, wrought from mirrored moonsteel and etched with a spiral of names, each letter glowing faint crimson as though written in fresh blood.
Damon lifted the goblet, its surface rippling with runic heat. "The Tyrant's Oath," he murmured, his voice reverberating across rune‑veined columns, resonating with the chain wards coiled around the hall's circumference. He explained in a low cadence that the Oath bound an Alpha's blood to a chosen mate, forging a living bulwark against any who sought to claim her power; it granted protection but demanded surrender to a bond older than the packs themselves, a tether that could not be severed without death on both sides. Dahlia's pulse hammered beneath her collarbone—once for fear, twice for curiosity, thrice for the recognition that some part of her wanted the safety such darkness promised.
Damon produced a ritual dagger, its edge blacker than void, its surface inscribed with the Valemont crest. Without hesitation he sliced his palm, crimson spilling into the goblet; the metal hissed and drank. He offered the blade to her. She took it, cold weight of destiny settling across her bones, and mirrored the cut, silver‑tinted blood falling like liquid starlight onto Damon's offering. The goblet glowed white; a wind rose from nowhere, swirling dust and broken prayers. They faced each other, both breathing heavily, eyes locked—her irises storm‑lit, his molten—and together they drank. The blood mixture burned down her throat like wildfire, igniting hidden sigils along her spine, snapping chains she hadn't known existed until they spat sparks across the chamber floor.
The manor reacted instantly: portraits flared, chandeliers cracked, long‑dormant wards howled as though awakened from centuries of sleep; every window facing the thunder‑ridden horizon vomited lightning into the hall. Outside, storm clouds twisted into the shape of a dragon's maw, jaws open as if ready to swallow the estate. Damon steadied Dahlia as the floor pitched; he whispered that the Order would feel the bond's birth like a dagger to their ritual heart, that armies would march by nightfall to reclaim what they'd lost. Dahlia, sweating and dizzy yet unbroken, whispered back that she no longer cared how many armies came—only that they come quickly so she could measure how far her new power reached.
Vael burst through the outer door, cloak torn, eyes wild. He reported that the House of Ironsworn had declared blood feud after intercepting the surge of oath‑energy, claiming Damon had violated the Binding Accord forbidding Alpha lineages from forging god‑class bonds without council sanction; Ironsworn war‑priests now camped on the lower slopes, siege engines drawn by direwolves. Damon growled, a sound that cracked stone dust from ceiling vaults; he instructed Vael to wake the crimson sentinels, to unchain the glaive cannons along the east battlement, to summon the shadow‑crafters from the sub‑crypt because the night would run long with blood. Vael fled to obey.
Dahlia's knees buckled as the mark pulsed once more; vision split—she saw a burning throne room centuries away, a dragon heart coughing sparks in a glass sarcophagus beneath the Hollow Citadel, Sareth bowing before it, her body half‑consumed by void flames, chanting Dahlia's name backward until it folded in on itself. She blinked; the vision receded like tide.
Damon caught her, pulled her close, forehead resting against hers. He confessed in a blunt hush that he had dreamt of her every night for a year, that each dream ended with the world split open and her standing at the edge of a crater with silver wings; he admitted he'd paid one million not to own an Omega but to save the dream from turning into a prophecy of ruin. Dahlia, breath mingling with his, replied that prophecy could be re‑written if two stubborn souls pushed hard enough.
Glass shattered down the hall. War‑horns blared in the storm's throat. Damon's smile was feral. "Let them test us." Dahlia reached for the air, gathering moon‑lit embers in a whorl across her fingers, her newly bound power humming like a live wire; the entire manor seemed to inhale with her, walls vibrating, rune‑chains rattling. Thunder rolled—closer, deeper—followed by the roaring charge of Ironsworn war‑wolves at the gates.
Damon drew twin blades, steel singing promises of violence. Dahlia summoned a spear of silver fire from the marrow of her memories, and together they strode toward the great entrance of Valemont Manor—Alpha and Moonblood, storm and wolf—ready to drown the coming onslaught in the oath they'd just forged.qq