Fenris heaved open the heavy, iron-banded doors to the village mead hall. The wave of sound and heat, and smell that struck him was a wave of overwhelm that grated his already sensitive nerves.
The entirety of Black Rock was crammed inside—his warriors, their mates, their children, their children's children, even the ancient, wizened ones who rarely left their hearths. The air was thick with the greasy scent of roasted venison, the earthy tang of stewed turnips and onions, the sweet-sour aroma of fermenting apples, and the underlying, ever-present musk of wolf and woodsmoke. Platters of dark bread, wheels of hard yellow cheese, and bowls of boiled grains sat on the long trestle tables.
Alfric entered into the hall behind him, ducking beneath the gap of his legs, the boy's crooked-toothed grin widening his sun kissed face as he did.
"Boy!" Fenris called, and the boy turned on his heels some, "I expect to see you among my warriors one day, son."
Afric's chin lifted a hair, "Oh you will, Alpha Fenris."
His eyes followed Alfric down the hall for a moment longer, then went slowly to the dais at the end of the hall. Before it, at a smaller table, sat the Elders of Black Rock. Their faces like old leather stretched over sharp bone, the yellow of their eyes turned milky with age, but sharper still with judgment. They picked at their food with gnarled fingers, their silence louder than any shout. Old Jorik was amongst them, and ancient as he felt to Fenris, was the youngest Elder at the table.
He winced at a step that pulled at muscles in his back. Fenris's body ached. It was a hollow, gnawing sensation, an acute awareness of the normally invisible principle of distance. He knew, with a precision that was unnerving, that Albi was four hundred and thirty-seven paces down the muddy road back to the longhouse; knew it by how much ground each of his long steps could cover, and by quickly he would take them if he could. He wished nothing more than to be with her. He wasn't sure if this was the Imprint or simply a new, more desperate form of madness. He clenched his hand into a fist, the nails biting into his palm, and walked to the high table upon the dais.
Ygrid's chair there stood empty now; had been where she sat, all laughter and dimpled cheeks, doubled over and as loud and joyful as any warrior coming back from a long hunt. It was where she refused the meals of her early pregnancy, where she'd rested her head against the sudden rolls of nausea. Where she struggled to sit later, with the protruding roundness of her full term. The wood seemed to hold her ghost in its worn curves. He lowered himself into his own seat beside it, the weight of his body feeling like a silent betrayal when only a breeze sat in hers.
A slow, creeping silence followed his entrance. The roar of conversation died to a murmur, then to whispers, then to nothing but the crackle of the central fire and the shifting of bodies. The human slaves that rounded the tables felt the shift in the air and silently followed one another out a quieter back door behind him. A child whimpered and was swiftly hushed by a mother whose face was set in stern, anxious lines.
The first pair of eyes Fenris met belonged to Torin, Asger's son. A boy of six summers, with his blood-lines storm-grey eyes and a promise of his father's broad shoulders once he reached of age. But those eyes, now, were not a child's. They were red-rimmed, swollen from fury, and held a hatred so pure it was like a blade leveled at Fenris's heart. In them, Fenris saw the accusation, the shame of a father beaten and humiliated. It should have been him who challenged Asger. Now there was not even the dignity of Asger's defeat being from a wolf of higher rank. Torin's burden was the heavy fear of his world being overturned, and the hopelessness of being too young to know what to do about it. Fenris looked away, the taste of ash in his mouth.
He cleared it all away with his throat. The sound was like a stone dropping in a still pond.
"My kin," he began, his voice rough but carrying to the farthest shadowed corner. "My pack mates. My brothers and sisters. Remember who I am amongst you."
From the Elders' table, Jorik rose. The gaunt warrior moved with a silent grace, picking up a horn of dark ale. He walked to the dais, his face unreadable, and placed the horn before Fenris without a word.
Fenris took it, his eyes locking with Jorik's for a brief moment before raising the horn and drinking it deeply, the ale bitter and cold and washing through the dryness of his throat. He set the horn down with a soft thud and gave Jorik a grateful nod.
"I know already, the face of your fears," Fenris said, his voice stronger now, filling the silent hall. "They hold the same faces as mine. We are in a valley with the road ahead uncertain, and the rock on either side closing in. We are losing our young men and women to their First Change in numbers we've never seen. For the first time in Black Rock's history we go to sleep at night and pray to the Great Mother to give our children just one more day of not knowing what it means to be the mighty wolf. We ask Her, too, about our sister clan down the mountain. Why do they thrive and grow stronger while we shrink and grow weak? We feel the threat of their numbers in their howls that carry with the upwind, not knowing if our meager peace will hold or if they will one day take us and our land in a war we will likely lose." He leaned forward, his hands flat on the table. "I want to say this to you, before you say what you must to me. Our strength as a pack has always been in our faith of the Great Mother. It is our submission to Her, and Her guidance through the valleys of uncertainty, that define us." A ripple went through the crowd. A frown from one of the always frowning Elders. "The predator of Black Rock that has now come to our gates is not the human slave you all saw become a wolf today," Fenris continued, his gaze sweeping over them. "It is not our sister pack of Deep River, it is not the coming of age that looms over our young. It is not the lie of a curse that has tainted the village. It is our fear of change," he said, the word heavy, "that is the predator that we wolves of Black Rock never learned to kill."
He saw doubt in their faces, some he saw the truth of it plainly in their golden eyes.
"Albi was a human slave from Deep River with not a drop of wolf's blood flowing through her veins and yet the Great Mother has given her the gift of an Imprint," the mention of her name pulled the tight string in his gut, "and yet she survived the First Change. She overpowered the challenge of Asger, the strongest of wolves among us. And it is her milk that satisfies the future Alpha of this pack, when he had turned all others away." A low mutter rose, then died as he raised his hand. "You fear her not because you fear she will weaken you. But because you fear she will change you, change Black Rock, and change how we have always been."
He stood then, pushing back his chair. He looked at Torin, whose red-rimmed eyes still burned with hate, at the stoic mothers, at the grim warriors, at the ancient, judging Elders.
"I am not asking you to love her." He took a deep breath, the cord to the longhouse pulling tight in his soul. "I am asking you all to be wolves who have bravery. The valley is closing in, and the Great Mother has sent us a way forward. I am only asking for you all to be brave enough to follow where She will take us, even if it's somewhere we've never gone before, even if it's different than anything you've ever known. This is the dawn of a new era. The Imprints are returning. We need to be brave to accept them, and accept whatever it means that they should make their reappearance now among us."
The silence that followed Fenris's words was a thick, waiting thing, heavy with unsaid challenges and brewing storms. All eyes swung from the Alpha to the Elders, then to the warriors, waiting to see who would break it.
It was Jorik.
The gaunt warrior rose from his place at the Elders' table, the scrape of his chair loud in the hush. He did not look at Fenris. Instead, he picked up his horn of ale, raised it in a slow, deliberate motion to his lips, and drank it down in three long, slow pulls; then set the empty horn on the table with a soft, final thud.
He turned his wizened face to the packed hall. His eyes, pale and sharp as flint, found Torin, whose face was a mask of furious grief.
"I have never seen a stronger wolf, in all the days I've been alive, than your father, Torin," Jorik says, directly to him. The boy blinked, looking at the old warrior, his anger momentarily clouded by confusion and his young mind uncomprehending, "Asger was only a little older than a newborn pup when he first bit his mother—" gentle chuckles erupted in the hall, "--he was bigger than his father by two seasons old. Do not let his defeat tody become yours, young Torin. It is an honor to Challenge, and an honor to fail at it. It is only a defeat if we do not have the strength to Challenge against what we do not believe in, and your father alone has the most of that strength in this pack. That is what he showed all of us today. He is a wolf of bravery, young Torin. He has lost no respect from us."
Torin's tightened brows slowly relaxed on his rounded face, and as he looked around, the soothing smiles and nods of his pack seemed to cool the fire that had blazed in the storm grey of his eyes.
"To Asger!" Bor roared, raising his horn to Torin. The rest of the Black Rock warriors followed. "To his quick recovery!" "The Great Warrior of Black Rock!"
When the noise died down once again, and the horns had been cleared and refilled by the warriors' wives, Jorik cleared his throat again. His voice a booming rasp that carried to every corner of the hall.
"I have been a Guardian of the Black Rock Alpha's for almost all of my life," Jorik's thin lips quivered in a ghost of a smile. "I was a Guardian to Alpha Magnes and Alpha Alfric both. We have a tradition in Black Rock of making sure the Alpha carries the blood of our Great Father Wolf, but it is not this tradition that makes an Alpha great. It was their Honor, their Bravery, their Love for their pack, and their Rage against injustice. Alpha Magnes, Fenris's grandfather, combed the forest of Skoltha for ninety-two days searching for young Hilda's mother, who'd gone missing in the night. Ninety-two days he spent in wolf-form so he did not lose the scent. He took the risk of never returning home in man-form again, over the risk of young Hilda never seeing her mother again." Jorik puts a cautious hand on the shoulder of the crone, Hilda, her hair like winter moss, "if he had not been brave, we would have expected less of our Alpha's after him. Instead, he has given us a standard of trust we have built our pack upon, and have birthed our children in; the Alpha will always choose his pack before himself. The moment he does not, is the moment he is no longer an Alpha. And–" Jorik smiled down at Hilda beside him, "---if Alpha Magnes hadn't been brave, who knows how our Hilda would have turned out. She would not be the wise, joyful wolf she is today." The laughter in the hall came more easily and genuine. Fenris himself felt his chest loosen in a chuckle at the jest; for Hilda has never smiled a day he's known her, and had been scowling too at his speech. "Alpha Alfric, Fenris's father, for those who can recall in their memories, I remind you of how he turned down an opportunity to slaughter fifty of Deep River's warriors while we were at war. How he'd stumbled upon them in the clearing, in the dead of night, asleep and drunk with ale, vulnerable and senseless. Had he been a man without honor, we would have won the war, but we might never have been able to make our peace alliance in that clearing the next day. However rocky it may be, it is still peace." He paused, letting the history settle on their shoulders. "From what I know of Alpha Fenris, he is his Father, his Grandfather, and more. And he is destined to carry us forward with Love, yes, yes he will. His Love for us and through the powerful love he shares with his mate, Albi the Fierce."
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He looked down at the Elders seated beside him. Hilda was the only one to meet his gaze, though her expression was hardened, cautious, as if she wished to argue.
"This is the last thing I wish to say," he said, his voice dropping and yet somehow growing clearer in the quiet hall, "I was not born a wolf, either. Many of you do not know, but I was a slave of Hilda's Father's hut. And I was the last in this pack to experience the Imprint," his eyes lost their sharp focus then, narrowing in on a memory only he could see. "My lovely Aula was the baker's daughter. We were just a pair of foolish pups, barely past our nineteenth winter." A genuine, tender smile touched his weathered face, so incongruous it was startling. "And the Great Mother knows," he whispered, the words thick with a grief decades old but undimmed, "the love I had for her. The love I still have for her. Even now, I can feel her absence in my mind......my thoughts echo in the space that we used to share so close and so tenderly." He looked at Fenris, and for the first time, there was a shared understanding in his gaze, "I know where her body lies in her grave mound by the creek. I know how many of my aching, slow steps it would take these old bones to get to her."
He turned back to the pack, his frail-looking body suddenly seeming to hold the weight of all their history. "When I tell you, that there is no stronger love that is built, and no stronger wolf that is made, than one who has known an Imprint, I speak only from the truth of my own understanding of it. There is no fiercer loyalty, no deeper understanding of what it means to be a pack, to love the pack, and to fight for the pack, than from the wisdom you gain through an Imprint. An Imprinted Alpha can move any valley that closes us in; and I have full faith that Fenris will do just that, with Albi at his side."
He let his words hang in the smoky air, his pale eyes moving from face to face, meeting the doubt, the fear, the anger.
"Fenris does not ask you to love her, but I do." Jorik finished, his voice simple and final, "I wish for you all to love her and to accept her. As you love and accept me."
The silence after Jorik's words was different now—thoughtful, heavy with the weight of a shared history few had known. Before the tension could solidify again, a bench scraped back.
Rusk stood. He was young, his face still smooth despite the scars of early hunts, and where most in the hall wore masks of stern reservation, his expression burned with a restless, earnest fire. His eyes, a bright, clear green mixed with the amber.
"Alpha," he began, his voice ringing with a youth's unchecked passion, "I have dreamed of the Imprint my whole life. Since I was a boy listening to the Old Stories by the fire." He spread his hands, as if embracing the very idea. "I want to experience it, too. I want to embrace the hope that one day I might. If this is what it means to be a wolf of Skoltha, then I will not fear it. Does no one here love being a wolf? Does no one here remember how strong we are? Oh, how I love being a wolf! By the Mother, if I could live in my pelt like Alpha Magnes did for ninety-two days and never wear this man-skin again, I'd count it the luckiest day of my life!"
Beside him, his newly-wed wife, a young she-wolf named Elka with braids of honey-brown hair and a gentle face, reached up and lightly smacked his arm. A ripple of knowing laughter, the first genuine one of the evening, ran through the hall.
Rusk grinned, unashamed. "The second luckiest day, my sweet," he corrected, casting a warm, sheepish look down at Elka, who rolled her eyes fondly. The laughter grew, easing the stiffness in the room for a moment. Rusk's smile faded back into earnest intensity. He looked around at the pack, his youthful conviction a bright torch in the gloomy hall. "The Great Mother has sent us a test. Maybe... maybe if we pass it, if we prove ourselves worthy of this strange gift, she'll have mercy on us and make our troubles ahead lighter. Maybe we can get it back, the Imprint, the guarantee our children will survive their First Change, the security of our numbers.....if we are grateful and......if we trust in Alpha Fenris."
He sat down, his point made. Elka, her hands resting on the pronounced swell of her belly, gave his arm a proud squeeze.
The good feeling Rusk had kindled died as another figure rose. It was Haggatha. Asger's mate. Her face, once handsome and strong, was worn thin by worry. Her eyes, the same storm-grey as her husband's, held no fire, only a deep, tired sorrow. Her bench was empty beside her; Asger was absent, recovering slowly from his wounds in the darkness of their longhouse.
She did not look at Fenris at first. She addressed the smoky rafters, the packed crowd, the indifferent dark. "So the Imprints are coming back," she said, her voice flat and hollow. "Makes no difference to me." Now her gaze swung to the dais, landing on Fenris with the weight of a stone. "Tell me, oh wise Alpha... what happens to the rest of us? To the women who are not Imprinted? What happens when our mates hear the call of some other woman's blood? These Imprints seem to be gifting to humans more than to wolf-born" She swept a hand toward young Elka. "Say, Elka. You've a babe coming soon, sucking at your teat. How would you feel if your Rusk came home one night, his eyes full of a new light, and said his soul was bound to a slave in my house? That his heart belonged to me, by an ancient law older than his love and responsibility to you? Would you still take my extra eggs in the spring? Would you let my daughter come play with your goats? Would you feel any of the pack-pride that Rusk speaks?"
She turned her sad, relentless eyes back to Fenris. "You talk of strength. Of moving through valleys. Of faith and love. All I see is a thing that will drive us farther apart. Tear mates from each other. Make a pack into a war of hearts." She shook her head slowly, "Change isn't only good, Alpha. It can be a curse dressed in pretty fur." Her voice dropped to a bitter whisper that still carried. "Like that mother-killer pup of yours that took our Ygrid from us. Could be he was supposed to die, as the Great Mother intended. But you made it a point on yourself, didn't ya, to go and get a human bitch from Deep Water instead. Perhaps you've thwarted the Fate's plans because you were too weak to let the pup die. And even the Great Mother submits before the Fates. Perhaps this Imprint'll be the cursed consequence that puts us all under."
She sat down heavily, as if the words had drained the last of her strength. Her face crumpled for a moment, tight with the threat of tears she was too proud to shed. Then, a small movement at her side: her young daughter Lilla, a girl of three summers with her father's dark hair, leaned into her mother, wrapping thin arms around Haggatha's waist. The simple, instinctive comfort seemed to steel the woman. She drew a sharp breath, lifted her chin, and met Fenris's gaze again, her sorrow now armored in a mother's defiant resolve.
The silence that followed Haggatha's words was profound, thick with the unspoken fears of every woman in the hall and the uneasy conscience of every man. Before Fenris could find a reply that wouldn't sound hollow, a new weight settled into the space.
Bor rose. He was a mountain of a man, wider than he was tall, his shoulders a yoke that could carry an elk. The bones and teeth woven into his dense, chestnut beard clacked softly with the motion, a whispering chronicle of his kills. His face was broad and plain, marked more by weather than thought.
"I'm not good with words," he said, his voice a low rumble like stones grinding deep in the earth. "Do better huntin' and fightin' than speakin'." He looked around the hall, his small, deep-set eyes missing nothing. Alfric, who'd been beside him, smiled wide at Fenris now. "Suppose the only thing to do is put this to a Skall."
A murmur, this one of grim assent, rippled through the crowd. A Skall. The ancient way. A vote of horns. It was the only ritual that could overrule even an Alpha's judgement; the last remnant of a time when the pack itself was the true sovereign.
Bor raised his own drinking horn, a massive, weathered thing carved from an aurochs' horn. "Horns raise, the girl stays. Horns down, we let her drown.....back in Deep Water." He smiled at his own cleverness with the words, "Aye," he said, and thrust his own horn ceiling-ward, his vote cast.
The response was not immediate. It was a slow, deliberate unveiling of loyalty and doubt. Rusk, his face still flushed with passion, was next. He met Fenris's eyes across the hall, gave a sharp, respectful nod, and raised his horn high. "AYE!"
One by one, others followed. Erlend and Erland, the quiet twin hunters. Gunnar, the dour-faced weaponsmith. Old Thrain, who had lost two sons to the First Change, raised his horn slowly.
Fenris watched, his chest a cold, tight knot. He counted. The young, the hopeful—their horns lifted into the smoky air. He saw Jorik, his face impassive, raise his empty horn in a silent, steady gesture.
Hilda, the eldest of the Elders, kept her gnarled hands wrapped around her cup, her milky eyes fixed on the table before her. Beside her, the other Elders had their horns raised, but her refusal was a stark crack in their unified front. For reasons Fenris did not know, the hairs on the nape of his neck rose at Hilda's denial.
And there, near the back, Haggatha sat rigid, her horn untouched on the table before her. Around her, a small cluster kept their horns down in solidarity: Asger's younger brother, a surly man named Vgar with his father's same stormy eyes; two of the younger women mated within Asger's family, a handful of the older warriors who could not leave the comfort of tradition.
The split was clear. The majority of horns were in the air, a forest of raised, defiant points.
Bor lowered his own horn, his gaze sweeping the room, taking the tally. His expression was unreadable; then he gave a slow, ponderous nod.
"Aye," he said again, the word final. "The horns are raised so the girl stays. There is your answer, lovely Haggatha. This is what we will do from here on forward. We will stay united as one." He looked from the raised horns to the lowered ones, his voice gaining a rough-hewn gravity. "Whatever may come—change, strife, blessing, or curse—we wolf it together. That is the blood of Black Rock." He paused, letting the weight of the ritual settle over them all. "We live many lives together. We die only one alone. And now we drink and we feast, to many more lives to come."
