“Jorik did not need to tell me this was your son.” Hroth called over to him as they approached, “he looks exactly like you, Fenris, though I can see the beauty of Ygrid in him also. And by the Great Mother, your son is strong for his young age,” Hroth’s voice is a low, rolling bass that seems to swallow the creek’s murmur. “Good, loud lungs on him.”

  Albi inserted herself protectively between him and Isangrim, her body a line of taut defiance. The boy played unbothered at her feet. Even with the wet ropes of her hair dripping onto her soaken clothes her scowl was as dry and sharp as flint taking him in; a silent, cold challenge in the warm evening.

  Hroth’s gaze slid from Isangrim to her, a slow, deliberate drag.

  “I do apologize for the intrusion, sister,” he said, the familial term a drop of poison in honey. “Though, I had sent request for you early this morning–”

  “Which I refused.” Albi replied calmly.

  “Yes, well, a pressing matter has arisen. I am afraid you will not be allowed the gift of refusal this time. As it requires your…expertise, I suppose.” a slight nod then to Fenris, as he went to stand at Albi’s shoulder, “hello, Fenris. You will also be needed as well.”

  Albi’s voice was the winter wind that comes before a killing frost. “If you come asking for counsel on Alpha’s matters then it seems to me that the Alpha’s matters should not be yours to handle.”

  A smile touched Hroth’s lips, wide and slow and full of a private amusement. He leaned back, the log creaking under his weight. Fenris could see the glowing warmth of admiration in his glacial gaze. “Ah, but you misunderstand me, dear sister. It is not Fenris’s help I need.” His eyes, a mirror of her own flattened expression, searched her face. “It is yours.”

  Fenris’s gaze cut across the gathering; perhaps trying to find a hint of what to say from their faces. Jorik’s knuckles were white where they gripped a wolf-headed cane, his old face a mask of wary neutrality. Rusk had gone perfectly still, the way a wolf does before a spring. Elka had shifted Hanna to her other hip, a subtle move that put the babe farther from the center of tension. Lark and his wife, Brynna had quietly gathered their splashing children up to the bank, their bodies subtly angled, a family trying to become part of the scenery. Every face was turned from him, and every breath withheld.

  Don’t. Let me handle this. Albi told him fiercely right as his throat was working to speak. She stared at Hroth, her expression giving nothing away. But through the bond, Fenris felt the seismic shift within her—a cold fury, a bedrock of suspicion, and a fierce, blazing protectiveness that scorched the edges of his own mind.

  Hroth’s smile deepened. He was a man savoring something sweet in his mouth, and the air grew thick with the waiting.

  “You have caught me at an inconvenient time, brother” she said finally, her voice measured and each word a carefully placed stone. “I am enjoying an evening with friends. But I will be happy to come and speak with you on the morrow.”

  As if on cue, Isangrim let out a frustrated wail, his chubby hands slapping at the mud where a stick had crumbled apart. Albi turned from Hroth, a deliberate dismissal, and bent to scoop up the squirming child. Her movement was fluid, practiced, but Fenris saw the subtle, instinctive shift in her posture—the slight twist of her torso, the careful tucking of Isangrim’s kicking legs away from the soft plane of her stomach. It was the habit of a woman accustomed to protecting a larger swell; an unintentional preparation.

  Hroth did not miss it, Fenris frowned. His pale eyes tracked the motion, sharp as a hawk’s. He leaned forward on the log, a subtle shift, and drew a slow breath through his nostrils. His brow lifted a fraction, a silent note of understanding that passed as a small smile to Fenris, before producing a rolled leaf from behind his ear. He struck a flint from his pocket, lighting the one end as he leaned in, inhaling the sweet, herbal smoke that cut through the evening damp.

  He stood, unfolding to his full, imposing height. “I am afraid this matter cannot wait for your simple domestic pleasures,” he said around the smoker, exhaling a thin plume, “I will reserve my nightly feast for the both of you–only you two.” His gaze flicked to old Jorik, to Rusk and Elka, to Lark and Brynna and their wide-eyed children; a flat, final authority. “If you do not show, I will take it as a direct defiance of your Alpha’s orders.”

  Fenris felt the subtle ache in Albi’s lower back through their bond—a tired strain from carrying Isangrim’s growing weight. He stepped forward, gently drawing her behind him with a touch on her arm, and took the fussing babe from her. Isangrim settled nervously against his father’s chest, pinned into the crook of his strong arm; he was not particularly happy about it.

  “What matter could be so urgent, Hroth?” Fenris asked then, his voice low but carrying. “Have the wolf-hunters been sighted near Black Rock again?”

  Hroth smiled around his rolled leaf, the expression not reaching his cold eyes. “Well, it is… complicated. A yes and a no.”

  “Must you speak in riddles?” Albi spat.

  “I would love to be more direct, Albiana,” Hroth replied, his tone deceptively light. “But this is a complicated situation. It is not for all ears to know.” He gestured again with his smoke toward the silent, watching pack around them.

  Fenris sighed, the sound weary. “We will meet you at the longhouse, then, for a night meal,” he conceded, the words tasting of ash. “If it concerns the safety of my pack.”

  “I would not bother with this request if it did not. I know you would not help otherwise.” Hroth said, his smile turning razor-thin. He took a final drag, then dropped the smoldering leaf and crushed it under his boot.

  As he moved to pass them, he paused beside Albi. He leaned in close, his voice dropping to a murmur meant only for her ear. Fenris did not hear the words with his own, but through the bond, they arrived in his mind as clearly as if spoken aloud—a cold whisper laced with a venomous courtesy.

  Congratulations on your condition, sister.

  Then he was gone, striding back up the path toward the village, his broad back swallowed by the gathering dark.

  ????

  The fire in their hearth had burned low, casting a soft, pulsing glow over the small hut. Albi sat on the edge of their bed, the rough wool blankets pooled around her hips. Isangrim lay cradled in the crook of her arm, his dark, curling head a stark contrast against the pale skin of her breast. He suckled with a steady, rhythmic pull, his mouth working in earnest contentment as she unbraided his hair and placed the little bone-bead back into the drawer beside the bed. She rubbed his scalp soothing, taking out the tension from the tight braid, then lifted him gently up to press her lips to his forehead.

  Fenris stood across the room, dressing. His hair, still damp from his bath, clung to his neck and shoulders. He pulled a clean tunic over his head, the linen catching on the dampness of his skin. Through the bond, he felt the storm in her mind more clearly than he heard the crackle of the embers.

  Hroth’s visit was a poison needle buried deep. Beneath her placid exterior as she nursed his son, Albi’s thoughts churned like a violent, black river. Fenris saw the images flashing behind her eyes: a woman with hair as white as winter, stern-faced and quiet, moving through a small house. Her mother. The absence of her Father in the picture had been a silent, unasked question in her childhood, answered only by her mother’s rigid independence. Albi had woven fantasies of a handsome traveler, a human man lost to some noble cause. Now, she knew the truth. The man was not a human man. He was a wolf; Hroth’s father—a creature of power and cruel appetites. The word ‘sister’, spoken from Hroth’s lips, felt like a brand, claiming her to a lineage she despised deep down. A part of her wished her teeth had found Hroth’s throat instead of Obin’s.

  Then her thoughts spiraled inward, to the new life taking root within her. Then to the ruined peace of the evening, her lost plan for what should have been a joyous announcement, and deeper still to the fear coiling in her gut at the night meal they were about to attend—fall coming to focus into a hot, sharp point of anger. Fenris felt the phantom grind of her teeth in his own jaw.

  He finished fastening his belt and crossed the room to her. He tilted her chin up with a gentle finger and bent to press his lips to the column of her throat; his favorite place, and her favorite spot to be kissed. He did so with a slow path upward along the line of her jaw, to the place just below her ear where her pulse beat a frantic rhythm. He breathed her in—milk, and sleep, and the faint, sweet scent of the pregnancy.

  His quiet plan worked. He felt in her the rigid line of her shoulders soften. The torrential downpour of her thoughts slowing to a weary trickle. A sigh escaped her, long and shuddering, as the anxiety loosened its grip. She leaned her head against his standing chest for a moment, then carefully disentangled Isangrim. The babe murmured in his sleep, his mouth making soft, suckling motions before he settled deeper into the furs.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  I’m sorry, her thought brushed against his mind, weary and thick with unshed tears.

  Do not be. He helped her to her feet, his hands firm on her elbows. Tenderly, he drew the edges of her tunic together, lacing the front closed over her sore breasts. He tucked her clean-damp white hair behind her ears, his thumbs lingering on the high arch of her cheekbones.

  Let us go quickly. Before the boy wakes.

  Albi nodded, the movement heavy. She took his proffered arm, her fingers cool against his skin. The dread of facing Hroth was a cold stone in her belly, but she squared her shoulders, the mother and mate receding, the wary, resilient warrior woman stepping forward.

  They left the warm, sleeping peace of the hut and stepped out into the chilling night toward the longhouse and the feast there they did not want. The path from their hut to the village gate was a ribbon of packed earth. The night above a biting cold, heralding the end of this long summer; the kind of cold that made the stars seem sharper and closer, hard as diamonds against the black velvet of the sky. The world is silent, save for the synchronized rhythm of their breathing.

  The wolf at the gate was a dark shape against the paler darkness of the sky. It rose from its haunches as they approached, hackles bristling, a low growl rumbling in its throat. Then the scent reached it—Fenris, the old Alpha, and the she-wolf beside him. The growl died. The beast dipped its head and let out a long, mournful howl that echoed, a sound that was half-greeting, half-warning to those within. It stepped aside, and the gap in the wooden palisade opened slowly.

  Black Rock had once been a quiet, half-empty fortress of stone and shadow. It was no longer. It thrummed now with a feverish, chaotic life. Light and thunderous songs spilled from its taverns; crude structures of timber and thatch that casted orange rectangles onto the mud of the streets. The air was thick with unfamiliar smells and the sharp tang of cheap ale, the greasy smoke of frying fish, the musky sweat of too many bodies packed too close together. Laughter, loud and raucous, burst from a doorway as they passed, followed by the crash of pottery and a woman’s shrill curse.

  Somewhere down the village road a mourning wail rose into the night.

  Fenris walked with his head high, but he felt the weight of eyes upon them—curious and calculating. Through the bond, he felt Albi’s attention shift, and felt her seeing the village not through her own wary eyes, but through his. She felt the strange, hollow ache in his chest at the sight of the bustling streets, the life that now filled the empty spaces he had never been able to populate.

  You seem like you don’t, but you like seeing it like this, don’t you? her mind-voice was soft against the noise of the village. Alive and full.

  He could not deny it. This was the Great Mother’s desire for their kind, a pack thriving, dens close and warm, the strength of numbers. But it was a bitter draught. He had not been the Alpha strong enough to forge this unity. It had taken Hroth’s cunning, Hroth’s ambition, to draw the scattered wolves together. Fenris had failed where the usurper had succeeded.

  Albi’s fingers tightened on his arm where her hand rested in the crook of his elbow. The pressure was firm, insistent.

  It was your pack who accepted them, she sent, her thoughts fierce and cutting. You led them to be good wolves. You taught them how to live together. This warmth is your doing, not his. Hroth runs from the wolf-hunters; he cares nothing for his people. It was Black Rock that opened its doors. Black Rock that made them welcome. And Black Rock is you, Fenris, not Hroth.

  Fenris felt the truth of her words, but it sat in his gut like a cold stone. He offered only a slight shrug of his shoulder, a gesture of half-convinced resignation. The streets grew narrower, the crowds thinner, as they approached the Alpha’s longhouse, his longhouse, where it stood like a dark crown upon a slight rise.

  The building, larger than the rest, was of simple stone walls black with age and soot. Before its heavy oak door stood a figure, massive and still as a standing stone.

  Secil, Albi’s thought hit him like cold water down his spine. She recognized him instantly.

  He was a giant of a man, standing head and shoulders above even Fenris’s considerable height. His hair was a black curtain, long and unbound, sweeping the ground at his feet like a mourning veil. His face was brutal; heavy-browed, thick-jawed—and bisected by a vicious scar that ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth, pulling his heart-curved lips into a permanent sneer. He wore leather armor studded with iron, and his hands, hanging loose at his sides, were the size of dinner plates, scarred from claw and blade.

  As they approached, Albi’s steps began to falter, and then the surge of a flood she’d tried to hide from him—dark, viscous, and drowning she could not control, as the smell of Secil hit her and slammed the memory before her eyes, dragging her back to the years of the winter hunts when the Deep Water warriors returned from the forests heavy with elk meat and pent-up violence. Secil had been among them. He had taken her to her Master’s storeroom while the snow fell through a slitted window high on the wooden wall, his hand over her mouth, his weight crushing the air from her lungs, and his dark hair a veil over her eyes. And again. And again. Until his seed had taken root in her womb.

  Through the bond, Fenris saw it all. He saw the tiny babe she had borne in secret in that same storeroom beneath that small slitted window, alone in a pile of gathered straw. The newborn had been a girl, strong but small enough to fit in a single hand, with a rosebud mouth shaped like a heart and eyes that were already showing to be the pale blue of her mothers. She had named her Yiva. She had loved her with a desperate, aching ferocity; for she was small and sweet, and knew nothing of monsters or what they’d done. Her only crime in this cruel world was that she was helpless and needed the milk of her mother’s breast.

  When Secil had come for her again it was not for the pleasure of her body. It was for the heavy milk of her breasts. He came to tear her from the slave pens and deliver her to his own sister as a wet-nurse. Albi had screamed as he dragged her from the pen. Had screamed across the frozen road where the rest of Deep Water watched with wide, wandering eyes, and through the thin walls of the hut where they had left Yiva swaddled in rags upon the straw, she had heard the babe’s crying out for her. A thin, reedy wail that lasted for three days. Albi had been whipped and lashed by her new benefactress for trying to leave to go to her. Had been, eventually, chained inside and forced to listen with the she-wolf's pup suckling contented on her breast while her own babe cried for the same comfort.

  Then the wails stopped for good, and Albi knew the slave-women had been the one to put a merciful, quiet end to it.

  The memory broke over Fenris like a black wave. He felt the hollow space in Albi’s chest where those cries still echoed. He felt the longing for the phantom weight of the infant; Albi never had gotten to hold her again. It had been only once, and for so short a time.

  Secil’s pale eyes fixed on Albi. His scarred face split into a smirk, lazy and cruel, a man tasting an old victory.

  “Albiana,” he drawled, the name rolling off his tongue sickeningly sweet, “Come to—”

  The growl that tore from Fenris’s throat was the sound of ancient trees uprooting from the earth. He crossed the distance in a blur of shadow and fury. His shoulder slammed into Secil’s chest with a force that drove the air from the larger man’s lungs. Secil flew backward, his heavy body crashing into the heavy oak doors of the longhouse with a thunderous boom that echoed across the village. The iron hinges screamed. The wood threatened to splinter as Secil’s body slid down to the ground against it.

  Fenris was on him before the brute knew he was, his hands—human hands no longer, but twisted halfway toward claws—closed around Secil’s thick throat. He slammed the brute’s skull against the oak door once, twice, the sound wet and heavy like a mallet on meat. Secil’s face went from red to purple, his eyes bulging, his tongue protruding. Fenris bore down, his teeth bared in a rictus of murderous rage, squeezing with a strength born of grief and vengeance. He would crush the life from him. He could not let him live. He would tear his throat through his mouth. He would—

  Fenris. No. Please.

  The thought was a hook pulled back in his mind, sharp and desperate. Albi’s hands were on his shoulders, her nails digging into the muscle of his back.

  Fenris, please. Stop. For me. For Isangrim. Stop. Hroth will have you killed.

  The bond flared between them, her terror—not of Secil, but of losing him, of seeing him torn apart by Hroth’s guards—cutting through the red haze. Fenris gasped, his chest heaving, his hands still locked around Secil’s throat. The brute’s face was the color of a bruised plum, his eyes slowly rolling back. Beneath Fenris’s knees, he felt the vibration of the Change beginning in Secil’s bones, the pop of ligaments as the wolf tried to surge forth in desperation.

  “Enough.”

  The voice was iron wrapped in velvet. The heavy oak door, which had held against Secil’s weight, swung inward. Hroth stood in the threshold, massive and golden, his ice-blue eyes taking in the scene with a predator’s calm. He looked at Secil, purple-faced and gasping on the ground, then at Fenris, still crouched over him with murder in his eyes.

  Hroth stepped forward. With one booted foot, he kicked Secil in the ribs—not hard enough to kill, but enough to send the choking man rolling away from Fenris’s loosening hands, coughing and retching into the mud.

  “I have not the tolerance for this today, I am afraid, and Secil’s family is quite…..nagging. If you were to kill him, there would be no stopping their vengeance. So while I do know he is not particularly the best pup the Great Mother has cooked up for us, I need him alive. And I apologize for whatever it is he may have done. Right now, though, we have more pressing matters than this.” Hroth said this all smoothly in one elegant breath, his gaze never leaving Fenris’s face. He extended a hand, not to help Fenris up, but to bar Secil from rising in retaliation.

  “Secil, by the order of your Alpha, go take a fucking walk. Clear your head. And forget of all this.”

  Secil dragged himself to his knees, his face a mask of hate and humiliation. He looked from Hroth to Fenris, his hands twitching at his sides, the Change still shimmering just beneath his skin like heat lightning. But under Hroth’s cold stare, he lowered his head. With a final, venomous glance at Albi, he staggered away down the road and into the dark, his breath coming in ragged, ugly gasps.

  Hroth stepped back, gesturing into the warm, smoky interior of the longhouse.

  “Come,” he said to Fenris, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “Before my other guards decide to take offense. As I have said, I have no tolerance for this now. We have much to discuss, brother. And sister.”