I narrowed my eyes, making out a woman in rust-colored velvet standing in the street.
Cristina Gillespie. The spoiled darling of the royal court's chief physician-arrogant, spiteful, and rotten to the bone.
"Did you deaf brutes hear me?" Cristina snapped, her arms crossed as she sneered at the two thugs flanking her. "Drag this wolfless mongrel into the dirt! Tear that bridal mantle off her shoulders! Cheyenne is of pure Alpha blood; he would never marry a beggar like her. She isn't fit to touch an inch of our court silk!"
A dense crowd of market idlers pressed close, their jeers grating against the stones: "Throw her into the ditch!" "A useless cripple without a beast in her blood dares dream of mating an Alpha?"
Two burly guards stepped onto the carriage rail with cruel smirks, their calloused hands lunging forward to seize my shoulders and throw me into the mud!
Their fingers caught the edge of my bridal cloak, wrenching hard enough to snap the silver fastening pin.
The sudden jolt snapped me into sharp focus.
The mental fog evaporated instantly, replaced by the cool, lethal clarity of a trauma surgeon.
As the first guard lunged again, his heavy hand reaching to drag me by the collar, my right arm snapped forward like an iron clamp. My fingers locked onto his radial artery, digging ruthlessly into the nerve bundle beneath the wrist bone.
Snap!
The brutal, kinetic shock of acute joint dislocation exploded through his forearm. His sneer died instantly, replaced by a choked shriek of pure agony as his legs gave out, sending him crashing face-first against the timber floorboards!
The second guard roared, cocking a heavy iron-knuckled fist toward my jaw.
I tilted my head by half an inch, letting the punch graze empty air. Pivoting on the ball of my foot, I drove the heel of my palm sharply upward, striking the nerve cluster beneath his chin while sweeping his lead leg with my combat boot.
The kinetic leverage was flawless.
The brute launched backward out of the carriage, flying through the air before slamming heavily into the mud. The breath erupted from his lungs with a wet thud, knocking him cold before he could even draw a knife.
The raucous avenue plunged into absolute, stunned silence.
"By the Moon Goddess... what just happened?" an apple vendor gasped, his wooden crate tilting.
"Did she just dismantle two armed guards in three seconds?" a merchant whispered, backing away in dread. "That's Alexandra Atkins! She used to weep if a wolfhound barked at her skirts! She couldn't lift a butcher's cleaver!"
"She has no awakened beast... where did that kind of lethal speed come from?!"
I paid their muttering no mind.
Reaching up, I unpinned the torn veil tangled in my hair, tossed the ruined lace onto the floorboards, and stepped down onto the cobblestones with measured, balanced strides. My breathing remained steady and even.
Cristina backed up two frantic paces, every drop of color draining from her painted face as she clutched her skirts, staring at me as if looking upon a walking corpse.
"Y-you..." Cristina stammered, her voice shrill with terror. "You wolfless wretch! You used to tremble and grovel whenever Cheyenne rode past! How dare you strike pack guards?!"
Her panic curdled into hysterical rage. Her right hand darted into the concealed fold of her velvet skirts, slipping three slender silver needles coated in a dark, oily sheen between her knuckles.
"Cheyenne will never take a stray like you-die!" she shrieked, lunging forward with the needle tips aimed straight for my throat!
A single glance at that oily sheen was enough. A fast-acting neuro-paralytic compound.
Amateur work.
Before her strike could bridge the gap, I stepped inside her reach to kill her momentum. My left hand clamped around her wrist like a vise, twisting her joint sharply against the natural bone angle.
Clatter!
The silver needles slipped from her numb, sprained fingers, scattering harmlessly across the cobblestones.
"For the daughter of the kingdom's chief physician, your clinical execution is pathetic," I murmured, releasing her wrist with disdain.
Cristina stumbled backward into the mud, clutching her sprained wrist, pure horror drowning out her pride. "How dare you...!"
Clack, clack, clack...
From the northern end of the avenue, the heavy, rhythmic thunder of iron hooves approached, vibrating through the stones beneath my boots.
The crowd scrambled toward the walls in panic. Galloping through the dust came a massive war stallion carrying a young nobleman draped in an ermine-trimmed mantle, his silver-crested light armor glinting coldly in the sunlight.
Cristina looked up from the dirt as if salvation had descended, wailing with shrill hysteria: "Cheyenne! Save me! This lunatic has lost her mind-she tried to kill me!"
The stallion skidded to a halt a few paces away, snorting as its iron shoes struck sparks from the gravel.
Cheyenne Mckinney sat tall in the saddle, looking down with a face dark as iron. His amber eyes, burning with arrogant contempt and furious hostility, locked straight onto me like drawn blades.