"Surrender, or Norvald ceases to exist."Wyatt Hale stood with his boot planted on the skull of the enemy nation's greatest Champion, his voice carrying across the frozen plain like a verdict from heaven. The wind cut through flesh and bone, but it was nothing beside the cold in his eyes.The man under his heel had been unbeatable, a Champion who had broken every challenger across the Ten Nations. It had taken Wyatt five strikes to put him on his knees.The Iron Legion, Norvald's proudest army, lay scattered across the snow, their blood soaking the ice until the ground itself looked like a wound. The battlefield ran past the horizon in every direction, heaped with the dead and choked with beacon smoke. The stench of blood was thick enough to lean on. And through all of it burned the will of the Nameless Legion, a force that had forgotten how to lose.But worse than the slaughter was the pressure coming off the man standing above him. Wyatt did not fight like a soldier. He stood over t

A crack split the air. Wyatt's foot had already caught the heavyset woman and flung her off her feet.She weighed easily two hundred pounds, yet he sent her flying forty feet as if she weighed nothing. Had the wall not stopped her, there was no telling how far she would have flown.A choked scream tore from her throat as she vomited a mouthful of blood and collapsed, unconscious before she hit the ground. Her chest had caved in, a deep crater where her sternum used to be."Someone actually dares break into Trey's villa? Get in there, now!"The noise from the basement finally roused the rest of the bodyguards upstairs. Over a hundred men in black uniforms came pouring in, long blades gripped in their fists, eyes bloodshot with fury. Their goal was simple: send the intruder to hell for setting foot in Trey's home.What they could not possibly have understood was exactly what kind of monster they were about to face.Wyatt had already become something closer to a reaper than a man, bare h

"You bastard!""You animal!"At Whitlock Manor, a middle-aged woman pounded her fists against Wyatt's chest, her voice cracking with fury."You ruined my daughter's life once, and now you've come back to bring this disaster down on us!""What did the Whitlock family ever do to deserve this? Are you going to stop only when you've torn our whole family apart?"It was Doris Whitlock, Elena's mother, and right now she hated Wyatt with everything she had."What are you doing!"Scarlet couldn't stand watching Doris treat Wyatt this way. She stepped in and seized the older woman's arm before she could land another blow.To Scarlet, Wyatt was no ordinary man. He was something close to a god. She wasn't about to let some shrieking woman manhandle him like this."You... let go of me!"Doris's face went white. Scarlet looked like a delicate young woman, soft and harmless, but her grip was anything but. It closed around Doris's arm like an iron band, and pain shot straight to the bone."Scarlet,

"Wyatt, isn't there some kind of misunderstanding between us?""When you suddenly disappeared, I had no idea where your father and brother had gone. Someone had to manage the family's assets, so I stepped in to look after them for you."Gideon showed no sign of being rattled.Every asset the Hale family once owned had already been carved up and divided. Even if Wyatt had returned, what difference could that possibly make now?This was no longer an age where brute strength settled everything. No matter how good Wyatt was with his fists, Gideon had ways of dealing with him.For now, a wise man didn't pick a fight he could avoid."Hmph." Caleb couldn't hold back any longer."You make it sound so reasonable. You teamed up with the Wentworth family and the Lockridge family to swallow every last asset our family owned, and now you want to pretend none of it happened?" he snapped, his voice rising with fury."Caleb, it seems you've misunderstood me too." Gideon spread his hands, his tone smo

With the crowd finally gone, a fragile quiet settled over the Whitlock family home.But it was the kind of quiet that fooled no one. Every face in the room was clouded with a different worry, every mind turning over its own private calculations.Only Nora seemed untouched by the gloom. She bounced around Elena, chattering nonstop about how fearlessly her father had swept in to save them, her eyes bright with open adoration.It was clear that in her small heart, the man she had met for the very first time that day had already carved out a permanent place."Mommy, let's go find Daddy, okay? I want Daddy to teach me martial arts. Then if anyone ever bullies us again, Nora can beat up the bad guys just like Daddy did!"She tugged at Elena's sleeve, ready to drag her straight out the door."Enough of that noise!"Walter had heard more than he could stand. His bellow cracked across the room, aimed squarely at the little girl.Doris shot her a look of pure irritation, not even bothering to h