“Come to see our returning warriors.” I stepped up to him with caution. Hix stood to the side and wore a more intense version of his usual scowl.
“Warriors? These aren’t warriors. These... things...” He growled, unable to form coherent words.
“They smell terrible.” I ventured a truthful observation.
Gabel’s laugh ran all over my skin as if his claws had raked me to the bone. It was a huge, horrible, awful laugh from the maw of a dark moon.
Gabel’s hand shot forward toward me. I squeaked. His huge palm caressed my cheek gently. “It isn’t so much what they did, my dear buttercup.”
“No?” My voice trembled.
“No.” He spoke tenderly, but there was a crazed look in his eyes. “No. It’s what they didn’t do. They failed. They failed the pack, they failed me, they failed you.”
“What do I have to do with this?”
“You don’t remember them? I suppose you wouldn’t.” He caressed my Mark. I shuddered. “You remember this from that day. Not these... insects. These insects I left behind in Shadowless to scout the territory. Make certain everyone knew the new order of things.”
A wave of homesickness hit me, followed by a crunch of grief, then anger. He’d been checking up on his newest vassal and enjoying the northern outpost that gave him a border with SableFur. “It looks like they got into a fight.”
Gabel snarled. “They were exploring the border with SableFur and crossed paths with a SableFur scout party.”
The northern ridgeline, where some foothills of the natural mountain boundary between the southern part of Shadowless met the barren, empty tundra that comprised most of SableFur’s northern reaches. The SableFur didn’t normally scout or hunt that area, but after Gabel had claimed it for himself, Alpha Magnes and Luna Adrianna may have taken notice.
Gabel paced a few steps, growling under his breath. “They didn’t fight. The SableFur ran them right back home. Did you even stop long enough to breathe, or did you run until your paws bled you were so frightened?”
Gabel’s pulse visibly throbbed in the large artery of his neck.
“They outnumbered us,” the lead warrior croaked. “They were hostile and—”
“You were in your own territory!” Gabel shouted. “You didn’t defend it! You turned and fled like cowards, and let the SableFur run all over it!”
The room swelled around his fury like a pounding heart about to explode. Mortification coursed through his rage. “I don’t believe that’s what happened,” Gabel snarled, “but I can’t think what lie you’d be trying to cover up worse than this.”
He jerked his head toward Hix. “Take them to the basement. I’ll deal with them later.”
There was nothing in the basement except an old, broken grandfather clock and boxes of holiday decorations. It was dusty and musty and dark, and certainly didn’t have anything in it suitable to confine werewolves.
“Alpha.” Hix saluted him with a crisp snap of his arm.
Hix and another warrior barked commands at the wolves and herded them single-file out of Gabel’s office.
“Gianna.” Gabel’s low, slow growl crept toward me like something from a nightmare.
I licked my lips, and my voice shook, although at the same time, I had developed a very special hatred for runners. “Gabel.”
“Tomorrow, you will ask the Moon the same question before. Is Alpha Anders working against me.”
Anders? Not Magnes? Not SableFur? Not Shadowless?
Didn’t matter, didn’t care, I wasn’t going to argue with him. I murmured obedience and fled into the hallway.
I gasped several deep breaths of the cool, clear air.
SableFur. SableFur on the IronMoon side of the mountains.
The SableFur were an ancient, vast, powerful pack that holed up in a territory naturally protected on the south and west by mountains. The north was a vast, flat tundra, and another range of mountains protected about half of SableFur’s eastern border. The Shadowless and some more northern packs had shared that boundary.
It had made sense when IronMoon annexed Shadowless. A wide-open staging point for an eventual move against SableFur. Except Gabel wasn’t that stupid. The tundra was barren and empty, with no roads or places to hide. The actual heart of SableFur sat farther to the south. They’d see a force of any particular size from a hundred miles. The scouts doomed to patrol SableFur’s north were pairs of unfortunate youngsters. A couple of barely-grown SableFur weren’t going to send six IronMoon warriors running.
I’d lived two years in SableFur completing my training. The pack was insular and disinterested in the affairs outside their territory.
Did Gabel know I’d trained at SableFur? It wasn’t a secret. I worried my lower lip. This encounter with the scouts might not be as random as it appeared.
Or perhaps SableFur didn’t like Gabel having an Oracle of his own. Maybe they didn’t like him having a SableFur trained Oracle. Perhaps they took issue with Shadowless turning me over, or were stepping up patrols of that border. Gabel also had control of GleamingFang, and the GleamingFang Pass: a four-lane highway that lead straight into SableFur’s heart. Hence, perhaps, his ongoing interest with Anders?
Or maybe...just maybe...my last teacher, Elder Oracle Anita, had appealed to Magnes to help me.
My spine weakened. Hope coursed through me like a cold drug. Amber’s promise to come for me had never materialized (of course), but perhaps...
Down the hallway something large slammed against something immovable. A shudder moved over the wall. I jumped, shaking, heard more thuds, the scrambling of claws on tile and floor, growls and snarls, an agonized yip, and then a hair-raising howl.
Gabel stormed out of the drawing room and nearly trampled me.
Glass shattered. More howls. Splashing water.
I rushed to the stairway landing, grabbed the railing, and peered into the chaos below. The front doors lay in splinters. The koi pond’s surface churned. Water and blood smeared the marble floor. Broken vases.
Gabel lunged through the shattered remains of the doors. Four of the wolves previously in his office cowered along the wall.
I hurried down the steps and jumped over the remains of the door.
Gabel grabbed me and yanked me against him. “IronMoon hunts. Stay close, buttercup.”
“Hunts what?” I exclaimed. “What happened?”
Howls echoed from behind the house. In two lines all the IronMoon wolves streamed from either side of the property, forming into two dark lines. Their howls struck the sky. The lines converged on a single point: Hix’s dark wolf-form running toward the horizon.
I looked back at the four wolves cowering along the wall, did quick math. There had been six wolves.
“Those two ran!” I exclaimed in disbelief.
Hix’s dark form leapt, shifted into his massive war-form, and crushed one of the fleeing wolves. Screams, yelps, yips, snarls. They tumbled over and over again, and the IronMoon pack converged on the other wolf, swarming over him so I could not see him.
Gabel held me against him, his fingers tight against my skin. Not to prevent me from running, but to prevent himself from moving.
“I would kill them,” he growled as he gripped me, “and that would be a shame.”
The sea of warriors dragged the wolves up before Gabel and I. Master of Arms Flint, who was a glorious, tawny-gold wolf with his hair balded in the pattern of his tattoos, shifted back to human form and knelt. He crushed the ruff of the first wolf traitor into the dirt with one huge arm.
His tattoos shone as he bent over one knee.
Next to him, Hix stood with one paw on the other wolf’s tender throat.
Nobody moved. The other warriors waited in a semicircle of wolves and humans, breathing in one heavy rhythm. Gabel released me, but held my hand in his, crushing my knuckles in his grip.
His eyes sank into Hix, then Flint. “Eroth! Bring collars!”
The wolves shifted, the pulse of their combi
ned breathing twitched.
Eroth, one of the higher placed, unranked wolves, broke from the circle after a moment of hesitation.
“Take them,” Gabel directed Hix and Flint. He pointed at the woods.
The pack murmured again, restless, and some growls rose to the surface.
Hix’s captive had a broken foreleg. White bone poked through the skin.
Gabel offered me his elbow. His smile was too genuine for me to feel safe. “Come, Lady Gianna.”
“Where?” I faltered.
He seized my hand and pressed the flat of my palm to his lips. My skin surged with sick pleasure. “Discipline, of course.”
He then placed my hand on his forearm. Patted my fingers.
“I should get Gardenia.” I tugged my hand, but he held it onto his wrist. “She attends all these official functions with you!”
“Why, buttercup, are you still jealous?”
Jealous—why yes, yes I was, but only because he’d forced it on me, forced me to care about this, be a part of it, and worse, he’d ruined me so I’d never go back and look at any other male like I looked at him again. “No, I don’t want to do the dirty work. I guess she’s too pretty and gutless to watch you butcher your own kind.”
“You are jealous. How adorable.”
The Bond lashed me and clutched my throat with a ghostly hand. It hurt, I groaned, and Gabel’s eyes twinkled as he shuddered in pain. I wheezed, “I hate you.”
“Ah, if only that were true. If only.”
We arrived in a large, open dirt circle cut into the forest. Sunlight shone through the trees, the birds chirped, and it was a beautiful day. In the center of this extremely large circle were four thick iron posts twice my height. Various iron rings had been welded along their lengths. Loops of chain and clamps hung over a re-purposed bicycle rack to the side.
Those were not Maypoles for pretty dances involving chains.
Flint, back in his human form, bowed to me. “Lady Gianna. Your presence reminds us that males must always be courageous in the face of difficult circumstances, as females do not question their own lives being imperiled to give birth to the next generation.”
What the hell did I have to do with this? I dared not ask.
Eroth returned with a large knapsack that jangled in time to his gait. He presented it to Gabel. The grove fell quiet. The rowdy anticipation of a bloody circus disappeared and transmuted into distinctly un-IronMoon sobriety.
Gabel pulled a heavy leather and metal collar from the bag. The leather was thick and stiff, and it had steel prongs placed along its length. The prongs were double-ended and long enough to extend beyond the collar’s leather. The tips of the prongs were not sharp; they were pea-sized metal balls.
Gabel extended the strange device so I could get a good look at it. I didn’t see anything exceptionally barbaric about it, but I could smell silver, and that was barbaric enough for most.
He took the first collar to the wolf with the broken leg. He slipped the loop of leather over the wolf’s head and tightened it with the leather tug. The wolf whimpered and whined and pleaded.
Then the true horror of the collar became apparent: the prongs prevented the head from dropping forward or to the side. The wolf could lower his head to sleep, but the silver balls would press into his skin top and bottom. Silver was a soft metal, so the balls would deform to the shape of the body and sink perfectly into the skin.
It would burn and sting, and the flesh would start to die. His skin would slough off, and the wolf would die a slow, horrible death from exhaustion and necrosis.
If the Moon had more pity on him than IronMoon did, the compound leg fracture would finish him first.
Gabel fitted a second collar to the other wolf.
“Chain them.” Gabel gestured to the posts.
“They should run! That’s how they disgraced us. We are owed!” Romero shouted.
“Run them down!” Another wolf somewhere howled. A few more shouts.
“We are owed!” Romero pointed at Gabel. “SableFur will think we are cowards! That we are weak and will not face them! We want a Hunt! Let us chase them straight to SableFur and leave their bodies there!”
Howls of agreement.
Gabel returned to my side. He nodded to Eroth. “Chain them.”
Romero shot Hix, the First Beta, a burning look, then Flint, then glared at me, his lips curling and his teeth glinting in the afternoon sunlight. He spat on the ground and turned to go. “I have no time for this!”
“No stomach for death’s slow approach?” Gabel inquired.
“No patience for it. You have gotten soft, Gabel!”
Gabel ignored the blatant disrespect. He gestured to the posts, and a few wolves moved forward to manipulate the chains. Romero paced back and forth a few times before he accepted he wasn’t getting a Hunt.
Within minutes the wolves were chained between the posts. They could not move left nor right, and chained up so high, they dared not try to lay down. They could only sit or stand. A wrong move, and the silver would push into their throats. They twisted and keened and yelped for their packmates to aid them.
Romero spit at them. The wolves began to disperse.
Then they yowled at me. “Lady Gianna!” The one with the four good legs pled. “Pity! Mercy!”
Gabel smiled and turned his head slowly to me.
“You cruel bastard,” I whispered.
“Shall they suffer, buttercup? Or shall I release them?”
“Pity! Mercy!” The wolves howled. “Pity, mercy, Lady Gianna!”
“You do not deserve mercy!” I snapped, thinking of the wolves I had put down because they had been abandoned by everyone, including Gabel. Those wolves had deserved pity. These wolves did not. These wolves had shown Shadowless and SableFur that IronMoon warriors were weak. Weakness was death. “You had four good legs, and you used them to flee. Enjoy this time, dog. Because what the Moon will do to you for your sins is far worse than this.”
Rage clouded my mind. Fire licked at my brain. I shouted, “You joined IronMoon knowing how things are done! You joined knowing what your Alpha demands of his warriors! You knew, and you joined, and you think you can flee his orders? You think you can beg for mercy? This was the choice you made. This is what you wanted.
“Why should I help you? You were garbage no other pack wanted, and this pack gave you a chance to prove you had some value. And you proved you have no value. You got what you wanted, so now you get what you deserve!”
My heart swelled, then cracked on bitterness and sadness and despair and fury. Before my tears erupted, I spun, dropped to wolf form, and bolted back to the house.
Flint’s Song
The wolves howled all night. The howls pled for the Alpha’s forgiveness, for his mercy. They cried for him to excuse their weakness and take them back.
“Don’t cry for them, buttercup,” Gabel told my tears. He didn’t sound angry, nor regretful. Just matter-of-fact.
I knew I shouldn’t, but the howls still pulled at my heart. Couldn’t I weep for what had been lost? Mourn what might have been? I didn’t even know why I was crying, exactly. I didn’t disagree with what had happened. I didn’t even want to get all snotty and headachey over wolves like this.
“Your last Alpha did not punish idiots and weaklings?” Gabel asked.
“Of course he did.”
The sheets shifted. His presence moved closer. “Then why are you sad?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s about them at all.”
His rough fingertips brushed the small of my back. I jumped and squeaked. My skin also jumped, but for an entirely different reason. The Bond caught fire.
His fingertips trailed over my spine, up and down, a tender sweeping motion. Every touch left light trails on my skin. “You should not care.” His voice heavy with contemplation. “They proved to be worth nothing.”
“I know,” I whispered through my tight throat. I knew, and it broke my heart that I knew.
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He traced a pattern over my shoulders, one way, then the next. I did not think his hands were capable of anything gentle, but this was a delicate whisper that made my skin quiver.
“Is that the pattern you would have given me?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said softly, contemplating the pattern his index finger created. “Strange, how I can still sense its outline when I touch you.”
It felt like it would have been beautiful coils and loops and strong lines. Instead there was just three rakes torn into my skin and soul.
“Does it feel beautiful? I think it would have been beautiful,” he mused.
“How do you expect me to respond to that?” He’d taken me against my will, degraded me, humiliated me, terrified me... and still our souls fit together like this. Why did the Moon even let it happen?
His other hand moved over the dip of my waist and pulled me the few inches across the sheets to him.
His naked body. His very, very, very naked, very male body pressed right against mine, every inch and dip and curve. I arched in surprise and unbidden pleasure. My ears pounded. My skin trembled as if his hand raked delicate metal bristles all over me. Wrapped in warmth and strength, I even felt the raised ridge of the brutal scar over his hip and the rise and fall of his breathing.
He nipped my collar. I whimpered and arched against his hands, shivering all over with exquisite pleasure.
His hand pushed up along my ribs and over my breast. I made a small sound and squirmed against him. His lips met mine, his tongue against mine. My soul sighed as my skin bloomed, and his fingers very gently pinched my nipple. His palm pressed into my breast, lifting, fondling. I gasped.
This is wrong. This is so wrong.
The sad howls echoed my ears.
He broke off the kiss, kissed under my jaw, down my throat. His teeth raked my skin.
Teeth.
I opened my eyes.
Teeth.
He would have left those RedWater wolves to die. He would have thrown their teeth away just out of petty hatred.
I yanked against his hands and kicked. My heel impacted his shin. It hurt me more than it hurt him. “No!”
His silhouette loomed over me. Hot breath pulsed against my cheek.
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