The steam rose from the wooden basin in lazy, fragrant curls, scented with the crushed thyme Fenris had tossed into the water. The fire in the hearth had been banked to a deep, pulsing orange glow, painting the chamber in shifting shadows.

  Fenris had refused the servants. Had refused the healers; much to their dismay. There was many in the pack who tried to follow him inside the longhouse as he carried Albi's spent body in his arms. Bor's grandson, who'd told Fenris that his name was Alfric, after your Father–the last Alpha, followed at his heel panting from the weight of a wailing Isangrim, still cradled in his arms. He had the same easy temperament that his grandfather had, and Fenris had decided he could stay, and had been the only one Jorik allowed inside the longhouse as he shut the heavy oak doors on everyone else.

  He knew what Albi needed. He'd told Jorik to guard the longhouse, to not allow any to come to his chamber, that he would answer to the village, at the night-feast in the mead-hall.

  Now, in the basin, Albi lay back against the curved side, her body submerged to the waist. Her skin, always pale, looked almost translucent now in the firelight, the water shimmering over the faint, silvery lightning marks on her hips and the newer, angry claw marks and teeth points from the fight with Asger. They were already trying to knit close and heal by the demand of her wolf's blood; the red in them fading to a soft pink.

  Isangrim lay cradled against her chest, his small body half-floating in the warm water, his mouth latched onto her breast with a greedy, rhythmic suction that was the only sound in the room. One of her hands rested on the curve of his back, holding him steady.

  Fenris sat on the stone ledge beside the basin, the sleeves of his night-tunic wet and dripping as he rested on the worn wood. Cautiously, as if afraid to disturb her, he cupped his hand and gently scooped up the warm water, letting it cascade over Albi's shoulder. He watched it trace the line of her collarbone and run between her breasts before disappearing into the water cradling his son. He did it again, this time pouring it over Isangrim's tiny back, the droplets beading on the fine, dark hair there.

  He could feel it. Not just see the tension in her, but feel it. A deep, bone-aching weariness that was not just of the body, but of the spirit. It hummed through the bond between them, a dull, persistent throb. He could feel the specific, sharp pain in her ribs where Asger had slammed into her, the burn of stretched muscle in her shoulders from the violent transformation. The First Change was a tearing of the soul as much as the flesh; for wolves born to it, it was a dangerous, sometimes lethal trial. For a human to survive it......to not just survive but to dominate inside of it..... was unheard of, even in the most exaggerated versions of their Old Stories.

  Her eyes were closed and cared not for her own miraculous feat. Her head tilted back against the rim. He knew she was not asleep. Her breathing was too controlled, her presence in his mind too alert, a constant, quiet hum beneath his own thoughts.

  "We should talk about this." Fenris whispered, "about what has happened."

  "With the gray wolf?" Albi murmured, her accent heavy.

  "You and I."

  "What is there to talk about?"

  "Do you understand what the Imprint is? It has not happened in over sixty years, woman. It is a deep honor of the wolves. It makes us strong."

  "Then I am very happy for you." She pulled her lips together in a tight line; a play on a smile she did not feel.

  "I believe you've lied to me," Fenris said, his voice low, almost lost in the crackle of the fire, "you were no human. You were a wolf in human skin, to do what you've done to Asger. To control the First Change as you have. To Imprint with an Alpha."

  A faint, tired smile touched Albi's lips. Her accent was thicker, rounded by exhaustion.

  "If I had been wolf before, Fenris," she murmured, her eyes still closed, "I would have slaughtered every man of Deep Water for what they did to my children. I would have painted their longhouse with their entrails and howled their deaths to the moon. If I'd this power, then, I'd of been powerful enough to save my entire village."

  Fenris's hand, poised to scoop more water, stalled. The image her words conjured was not one of horror, but of a stark, brutal justice. He watched her chest rise and fall, the rhythm hitching slightly as a wave of old pain, emotional this time, rolled through her and into him through the bond. It tasted of ash and blood in the back of his throat.

  "Is that what you want?" he asked, the question gravel in his mouth. "Revenge?"

  Albi opened her eyes half-way, enough to give him a stern look. They were the color of smoked honey still, but in the firelight, they held a quiet, resolved grief so profound it made his own chest tighten.

  "I can feel you peering into my mind, Fenris," she said softly. "From whatever this Imprint is you speak of. You want to do it for me."

  Fenris nodded, a weak, helpless gesture. He could not deny it. The bond was not a suggestion; it was a compulsion. Her hurts were his hurts. Her enemies were his to rend. That is the gift of the Imprint.

  "That is not true." Albi whispered, hearing his thoughts, "my enemies are not yours......we are not the same, Fenris. It is hard to remember, but it is the Imprint tricking us"

  "I know we are not the same," he frowned, and tentatively touched the rounded edge of her shoulder, "But it is true then. You do want revenge." Fenris whispered it, finally finding the truth where it peeked over the walls of her inner control.

  "Taking the entire village of Deep Water," she continued, her gaze drifting to the sleeping child at her breast, then her eyes closing again, "won't bring my babes back. It won't clean from my skin the filth of memory that the wolf-men did to my body. It won't fix the sorrow in my dreams. It would just......spread it, a stain you want to scrub out of white wool but it will never make it white again, Fenris. No amount of scrubbing, no amount of death will make mine alive again. So leave it be."

  Fenris leaned forward, closer to her, the steam dampening his face. The sorrow she spoke of was a vast, cold lake within her, and he was adrift in it. He felt the ache of each lost child like a pierce through his flesh.

  One death was different, though. The grief of it deeper, darker, potent enough to taste; a void around which the other griefs orbited.

  His name was Finn.

  Albi's voice in his mind explained, as her feelings rose into his throat. A babe of only twelve moons. The first babe to ever find his home against her chest. His skin was the same smooth cream as hers, with the same unblemished white of hair and glacier blue eyes. Albi tried not to think of him, not to picture him fully, tried, Fenris knew, to protect even the memory of Finn from entering the mind of a wolf.

  Get out, Fenris.

  That's not how this works, Albi.

  She was too weak now to open her eyes against him. Her lips began to tremble uncontrollably.

  I'll never escape you wolves. I have not even the escape of my own mind to flee to anymore. Not even I, with my haunted imagination, could have seen this coming. You got me, Fenris of Black Rock.

  This is a gift, Albi. I would never hurt you.

  A gentle, stern anger welled in his chest. It was a blasphemy against everything he believed in, to rebuke the Great Mother's blessing; and an almost equal blasphemy, he grunted, for her to believe he would harm a single strand of white hair on her head.

  A Blessing for whom? For you maybe, Fenris. I just want to be alone.

  With your thoughts of revenge?

  When she didn't reply, Fenris scooped up more water and poured it down her shoulder again. He tried to focus on other things. But it was difficult. The bond was still new, intoxicating. And if he thought hard about it, he could feel the water slide down his shoulder, as he poured it over hers, and could feel the gentle pull of his son at his breast, though it was from her his son fed. The sensations of her body layering on top of his own was invigorating, entrancing, and addictive.

  From these enlightened, joyful thoughts, her sorrow hit him in the chest like an angry fist that sucked the air from him. She was thinking about it, still. About revenge for her son; quietly, in a soft path beneath his thoughts. The sweetness of an imagined justice was too tempting not to daydream of, and had moistened her dry mouth.

  "Who....who killed him, Albi?" Fenris asked, his voice a bare whisper as the face of a brute warrior blurred through his mind as if he were looking underwater. "who killed Finn?"

  Albi's lips did not move. But in the quiet space of their joined minds, her voice echoed, clear and cold as ice. She knew she could not win against him. His intrusion in her mind would be another suffering she would be forced to endure.

  Obin.

  And with the name came an image, flashing behind Fenris's eyes with the brutal clarity of a memory frequently remembered: Albi's own hand, clenched into a bloody fist. Nestled in her palm, a small, pale triangle of flesh—the tip of a man's ear, ragged where teeth had torn it free. The taste of copper and sweat in her mouth. The feel of hands dragging her back, women's voices pleading, screaming.

  She did not mean this, Master Obin. Have mercy on her. We beg of you. She is sick with after birth fever. You must forgive her, Master Obin----

  The fury, the helplessness, the failure.

  She had tried many times to kill Obin, her storm of thoughts explained, and been stopped by the desperate kindness of other broken slave women who could not bear to see one more spark of rebellion snuffed out.

  The sorrow in the bond curdled then, twisting into a cold, hard knot of hatred. It was so potent Fenris almost gagged on it.

  "You want Obin, then I will bring him alive at your feet." Fenris said aloud, the words falling into the steam-filled silence like stones.

  Albi looked at him for a long moment, her honey-smoke eyes seeing both the man before her and the black mammoth of wolf within. She searched his face, and whatever she saw there, whatever she felt beneath the vow he'd made, made the hard line of her jaw soften. She closed her eyes again, a single tear tracing a path through the steam on her cheek before vanishing into the warm water. Fenris watched the tear fall. For a moment, there was only the sound of Isangrim's soft, sated suckling and the pop of the fire.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  You will not go and get yourself killed for my revenge.

  Albi pushed it into his mind, as stern and as serious as he had sounded moments ago.

  Your daydreams of running off alone when Isangrim is weaned are out of the question.

  I will die as I was meant to die, whether you like it or not. You do not own my life, Alpha or no, slave or no.

  What does that mean?

  It was always supposed to end with Obin. Then I was sent to this godforsaken rock. I was supposed to kill him, and then they would kill me. Hroth himself or one of his other thick-headed brutes. But I would have my justice for Finn, I would die, and nobody else would get hurt.

  You are part of our pack now, Albi.

  No.

  Yes. And if they harm you, we will avenge you. And we will all fight Deep Water. And many of us would get hurt. I would get hurt. So let me handle this. You will not kill Obin alone. We will do this properly, in a way that does not cause any discord amongst us.

  Hroth will not give you the death of his second for the blood-debt of a human slave. You are lying to yourself, Fenris.

  You are not a human anymore, Albi. And I am the Alpha of Black Rock, and you are not my slave, you are my mate. Hroth will honor it by the peace alliance our Fathers swore.

  You are a damned fool, Fenris. It is this Imprint that has taken hold of you like a madness. You are mad for me. And I feel nothing but sorrow for you in these aching bones of mine.

  As if remembering then, he stood and reached into the water. He slid his hands beneath his son's warm, slippery body, gently disengaging the slack mouth from Albi's nipple. The babe made a soft, protesting grunt but did not wake, his belly full, his limbs heavy with sleep. Fenris lifted him, cradling the small, wet form against his own chest, feeling the rapid, steady beat of the tiny heart against his palm. He carried him to the fur-lined cradle carved from a single dark oak root. He laid him down, arranging the soft pelts of rabbit fur until only the peaceful puff of his lips were visible beneath.

  He turned back to the basin.

  Perhaps I am mad for you, Albi. That is my right. I am your mate. Whether you approve of it or not. And I know you are just as mad. I can feel it.

  Albi watched him, her head still resting against the rim, her eyes heavy-lidded. If she was not so tired, Fenris knew she would roll them at him.

  I will not ask for your permission to care for your life when it is bound to mine. He growled through the silence of their mind-talk.

  He leaned in, sliding his arms beneath her—one under her knees, the other supporting her back—and lifted her from the water. She was solid in his arms, her skin slick and hot.

  As he straightened, holding her dripping form against him, the bond between them flared into a shocking, multi-layered awareness that he had not prepared for in the midst of his irritation; and that had slightly buckled him at the knees in his surprise.

  He didn't just feel her weight. He felt her feeling his strength as he held it. The solid, dependable power in his arms was a sensation she was experiencing, and that sensation echoed back to him, amplified. He felt the heat of his own skin through her perception—a welcome, radiating warmth that seeped into her sore muscles. And he felt her body's reaction to that heat, to the proximity of him, to being naked in his arms: a faint, involuntary clenching deep within her, a quickening of her pulse. It was intense, intoxicating, and disorientating. It was a feedback loop of shared sensation that made his head spin hungrily.

  Easy. Her breathless thought reached him.

  He carried her the few steps to the great bed and laid her gently on the thick layer of furs. The firelight played over her naked body, gleaming on the water beaded on her skin, catching in the hollow of her throat, the curve of her hip, the white thatch between her thighs. All the pale planes and soft shadows of her body, marked now by the vivid, healing lines of battle.

  His skin was a living thing beneath her eyes. No. It was her skin, alive, chilled, humming with electric anticipation, beneath his eyes that was quietly drinking every softened curve of her in.

  Her hand came up. Her fingers, still warm from the bath, touched his cheek. The contact was electric, but it also focused the chaotic storm of shared sensation into a single point.

  It might be easier when you focus on a single touch, her voice whispering, almost pleadingly, in his mind; a calm eddy in the whirlpool. You try to absorb too much of me, Fenris. You will lose yourself in it. And I will lose myself, too. It is the same for me. Do not overwhelm us.

  He focused. On the rough calluses of her fingertips against his stubble. On the gentle pressure. He brought his own hand up, covering hers, pressing it more firmly against his face and grounding himself in that one, simple point of connection. He sat more heavily down on the edge of the bed, the fur damp beneath him. Decidingly, he drew her hand from his cheek, tucked it carefully against her side, and pulled the heavy furs up over her body. He could feel the gratitude radiating from her, not as words, but as a physical softening, a release of tension in the muscles of her shoulders and back, a sigh that never quite left her lips.

  He looked down at her face, scared she would see the embarrassment of his weakness. He found she was already watching him, her honey-smoke eyes seeing farther than eye-sight alone. They were gentle. They were kind.

  "Why does it seem as if you are better at being a wolf than me, Albi the Fierce?" Fenris asked, his voice lighter than he felt, a rough attempt at teasing.

  A faint, tired smile touched her mouth. "Because you try too hard to be the better wolf, Fenris of Black Rock," she murmured aloud, her accent softening the words.

  He reached out, his movement hesitant, asking, but the bond told him the truth before his fingers made contact. His presence did not repel her. Far from it. As his fingertips neared her temple, he felt in her body a deep, humming calm that his touch created. It was a sanctuary. And more—he could feel the accelerated knitting of her flesh where Asger's claws had torn her, the inflammation cooling, the cells dancing to a faster song. The relief was immediate and profound, for both of them.

  It is the Imprint. This is how it creates stronger wolves. He told her, answering a silent question at the back of her mind, we heal each other through our touch. It is how the Imprinted Wolves of Old could live lives that truly do rival the immortal myths of humans.

  He pushed the damp, white strands of hair back from her neck, letting his fingers trail across the smooth, strong column of her throat, then over the sharp line of her cheekbone. With every touch, he felt her body sigh into the bed, the residual pain dissolving like spoons of sugar in hot tea. The bond between them is burning now, a conduit of pure, undiluted sensation that he didn't want to stop.

  I could help you. He thought to her, and could hear the husky timbre in the thought.

  He wanted to erase all her pain, all the sorrow he now carried as his own. A kind of mania gripped him, with this knowledge that he could. He could heal her; most of her. He could dampen the pain of those hollows that were carved out by her loss. He could soften the ache that Asger's claws and teeth left in her muscle and skin.

  Fenris.....

  The desire was a physical ache, a desperate need to merge, to get so close that the pain could not tell which body it belonged to and would therefore cease to exist.

  His cock, soft until now, stirred and hardened painfully against the confines of his tunic, a blunt, hungry answer to the silent scream of the bond. He could heal her best this way. The oldest way. To become one flesh, to seal their bond in the most primal manner and let the fire that would consume them cleanse their bodies and forge them into something clean and new.

  Fenris look at me.

  Her voice in his mind broke through the rush of the flames. He met her patient, heavy-lidded gaze; her smile and eyes full of patient kindness, as though he were a babe needing soothing. Then her eyes drifted down his body slowly, exhaling, knowing she would find there his erectness, straining against the night-tunic. When she met his eyes again, they were no longer patient; they were just as hungry as his felt. Her chest beneath the furs rose and fell in hot, fast bursts.

  "You don't listen to me, Fenris." she whispered huskily, her voice a low thrum in the quiet room. Fenris managed only a shaky exhale in response.

  She pushed herself up on her elbows, the furs sliding down to pool around her waist. The firelight gilded the curves of her breasts as her hand came up with a decisive gentleness that was its own desperation. Her fingers closed around the back of his neck and pulled him down to her.

  Her lips crushed into his. They were soft, yet firm, and tasted faintly of thyme from her bath. The connection between them ignited; she, the kindling, and he, the flame.

  Fenris was overpowered by the sudden cascade of her. He felt it all layered over a fierce, conscious restraint—a will of a river trying to hold back the fire of the forest. He felt her desire for him; a sharp, painfully sweet ache in the now soaken thatch between her legs, moist in a way that had nothing to do with the water from the basin. More potently, he felt her feeling his need, and her mind, as disoriented as his, trying to process both needs at once. Her body's instinctive, submissive urge to yield, to open, to give herself to him, to answer his body's call for her.

  Alpha Fenris. She was trembling beneath him. The thought was sticky in their minds from the effort it took Albi to think it through. But it got his attention, if only for a second, and that is all she needed. She moved the focus of their shared consciousness into the kiss itself; not the sensations pulsating out from their bodies. It was only the slick, hot slide of her lips. The sweet, herbal taste of her mouth. Her breath, shallow and quick, washing over his face. Her tongue, at first tentative and shy, then bolder, hungrier, searching, tasting him.

  And she liked how he tasted.

  Focus on my voice, her thought begged through the kiss, intimate and clear.

  I can't focus.....on anything but you.

  On my voice, Fenris.

  Mmmmmm.

  The husky, sweetness of his name, even said with her mind-talk, even silently spoken, made him growl with need.

  What do I taste like? She thought carefully, gently bit down on the bottom lip she'd taken in.

  You taste sweet. He replied to her stupidly.

  You taste of ale, Alpha.

  And with it came an image, not from her, but from his own mind, pulled to the surface by her words: Jorik, wordlessly handing him a horn of dark ale as he'd gathered the thyme for the basin water from the kitchen's supply, the bitter brew drunk in one long, fortifying swallow to steady his nerves before returning to her.

  There is much I want to say to you, Fenris. Jorik had told him, taking the empty horn back from his trembling hands, I will say only this. I am proud of you. You are a wolf of honor, and the Great Mother made no mistake giving this gift to you.

  Slowly, as the kiss deepened, and Albi held on to the image of Jorik's loving smile, the frantic, clawing arousal in Fenris began to dissipate. It was not rejected, but gentled, soothed by the profound tenderness of her control. She was not putting out the fire; she was trying to bank it, to let it burn away slow and steady, knowing that to stifle it too quickly would only make them both burn hotter. She smiled into his mouth, triumphant.

  When she pulled back, resting her forehead against his, they were both breathing hard, their chests rising and falling in perfect, synchronized rhythm.

  "Why?" Fenris asked aloud as Albi gently tucked back the dark silken pieces of his hair that had escaped from the chord at the nape of his neck. For a moment he felt a flicker of the fire they'd escaped return to her, stoked by the breathlessness and husky timber of his voice.

  Don't talk aloud anymore. Not when you sound like this. She thought quickly, her thoughts just as breathless and just as timbered as her voice would be, had she the breath to use it.

  Why did you stop us?

  You don't feel your own heart beating in your chest like a bruise, Alpha? How every beat of it there is an ache you wince back from? You are a wolf of honor. Your yearning for me is a heavy betrayal when you still mourn her. Ygrid the Beautiful. You believe this is not right. Not now, not today. Not here, in this bed, in this room that still holds the ghost of her scent. You can respect Ygrid and the Great Mother and me, Fenris, at the same time. I will protect you from yourself. I know you wish to heal me. I will be fine, my Alpha. I am fine. I am healed already.

  Fenris listened, and in his chest, he felt the truth of her words like a key turning in a long-locked door. She had felt his grief, just as he had felt hers. She had witnessed it with eyes wide open, while his own had been tightly shut against it. He quietly settled again into the sensations of her body, and felt the change instantly—the wounds from the fight were gone, erased by the healing power of their touch. All that remained was the soft, deep ache of the First Change itself, the soul-deep fatigue of a metamorphosis survived.

  An ache that will fade with time. She promised him.

  He nodded, a slow, grave dip of his chin. The manic need replaced by a weary, grateful clarity. He rose from the edge, his movements deliberate. He pulled the furs back up as she slid back into the bed, tucking them carefully around her shoulders.

  "Enjoy your walk, Fenris." Albi said softly, her voice already slurring with exhaustion as she sank back into the pelts.

  Fenris paused at the doorway, a faint, bewildered smile touching his lips. He had not spoken his intention aloud. He had only just formed the thought himself—the need for cold air, for the silent, star-flecked courtyard to unscramble the riot in his soul before he spoke to his pack. She had sensed it as easily as breathing.

  He turned and looked at her one last time, a white shape in a nest of dark fur, already drifting toward sleep, yet profoundly, terrifyingly connected to the deepest parts of him.

  He slipped out, leaving her to her rest. Her taste—of thyme and sweetness—still lingering on his lips.