I listened in at the door to find out what they were going to do to him as soon as I gleaned that his name had been thrown around as a potential way to wreak revenge on the people who had done this to Ansel. I felt my heart clench with terror at the thought. I couldn’t allow them to do that, not to some innocent child. Yes, he was part of their clan, but he was too young to know anything, to have done anything. If we let him go now, perhaps he would show us leniency in the future. Perhaps it was a way for us to begin to rebuild something between the two clans once more. But I knew they would never listen to me. I needed to free James myself, and I needed to do it before they could commit the same hideous act on him that their enemies had committed against our friend Ansel.
I supposed Cora may have guessed what was on my mind, since she seemed keen to dissuade me from whatever it was I was leaning towards.
“You won’t do anything stupid, will you?” she asked me as we returned from a run one evening. “You won’t…get yourself into trouble?”
“Of course not,” I lied to her, knowing that I was being untruthful, but unwilling to implicate her in my plan. I knew I would be punished for it, and harshly, but I had to release that boy. The thought of a child as small and slight as he was being beheaded just to make a point was too much to bear. I could look the other way on a lot of the shit that had gone down as part of this ridiculous war, but that was a step too far, even for me. I needed to put a stop to it. It was the only thing I could do to live with myself in clear conscience.
I snuck to his cell in the middle of the night, pulled back the grate, and left the door open for him; I made sure he did not see me at work, in the vain hopes that I might get away with this kind of action, but someone must have, for a mere day later I was cast into the very same cell myself and left to rot. But I knew the child was safe – I had watched him, hurrying up to my room at the top of one of the towers of the keep and keeping a careful eye on him as he fled from his cell in the dead of night and into the woods, no doubt back to his family and friends. The ones who could keep him safe. As soon as he was gone, I felt something tighten in my chest as I realized that I may have given up my freedom for a boy who probably hated me and my family.
Had it been worth it?
“And you dare sit here, in front of the entire clan, and not show a single jot of remorse?” he demanded, gesturing up to the crowds around us and shaking his head at my apparent insolence. “You must understand how betrayed we all feel by your choice, Arianna.”
“I do.” I lowered my head and closed my eyes for a moment, so aware of all the gazes bearing down on me.
“Can you at least offer the people here an apology for your actions? For the actions that endangered the well-being of the entire clan?”
I met his gaze as steadily as I could, and knew in my heart that I should just apologize. Maybe things would be different if I told them I recognized what I’d done was wrong and told them I would take it back if I could. Maybe I would get an ounce of the leniency that I so desperately craved. But I knew that what I had done wasn’t wrong. Two wrongs didn’t make a right, no matter how badly they wanted to believe otherwise.
I kept my mouth firmly shut, and the longer my silence went on, the deeper it seemed to weigh on everyone in the room. The place filled with whispers and I didn’t dare look around, knowing that they probably hated me even more now that I had refused to answer. But I knew I had to say something.
“I’m sorry if I put any of you in danger,” I began, my voice filling the room and flattening the rest of the noise around me. “But he was a child, a victim of this war as much as any of us, and I couldn’t in good faith let him die for it. I would do it again if I had to.”
I glanced up at my father and saw his face crumple at once – it was just for the briefest second, but it was enough for me to know that he had prayed with all his heart that I would offer him something that he could base my reprieve on. But I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I had to stand by what I had done and would do so another thousand times should I have to. He drew himself to his feet and held his hand up, and the room silenced itself once more.
“I sentence the accused to exile,” he announced, not meeting my gaze.
The word took a second to settle into my head – exile? I had assumed death was the only punishment for what I’d done. But exile was worse. Exile was the cruelest thing he could have done to me or anyone in this room, and the flurry of gasps that followed his announcement let me know that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. My entire world had shifted on its axis, my life turning upside-down in a moment. I couldn’t leave the clan. It was all I had ever had…all I knew.
“The sentence is effective immediately,” he continued, forcing himself to look away from me, as though meeting my gaze would have been too much to bear, even for him. Even after everything he’d done, he knew that what he was doing to me now, doing to his own daughter, was darker than all of it.
I felt two sets of hands on my arms, dragging me backwards, and for the first time I actually began to put up a fight. My words were trapped in my throat but that didn’t matter – I threw elbows, kicking my legs up, trying to scramble and wriggle out of their control. I wouldn’t stand for this. I couldn’t.
“No!” I yelled up to him. “Please, don’t-”
But before I could finish what I was saying, I was being dragged from the hall and out into the courtyard. I passed Cora as I went, and her eyes were wide as they met mine – she was as stunned by my sentence as I was, that much was clear. The air was cold and crisp but now felt frozen and intimidating instead of welcoming and fresh. I was being led to the gates, to the gates that led to a world outside this clan, a world that I never thought I would have to face without their backing.
I turned to one of the guards on my arm, a man around my age. “Don’t do this…”
“I don’t have a choice,” he replied, but I could hear the regret in his voice, like he knew how much this must be hurting me. I could hardly blame him. The punishment would be at least as severe as my own if he dared disobey orders from on high.
My head sank to my chest as they scraped the gate open, and then heaved me over the threshold.
As soon as the gate closed behind them, I felt it – I had heard tell of it before that moment but had never really thought that I would have to face something so unthinkable. A severing, that was the best way to describe it. After all those years in the clan, all those bonds I’d formed were cut off at once. It felt as though I had been cast adrift, every connection I’d made over the last twenty-two years ripped out from beneath me just like that. I wondered, briefly, if it hurt them, too – but soon, the pain overwhelmed me, the weight of what had just happened bearing down on me, and I fell to my knees in the snow, dropping the pack that they had given me to keep me alive to the ground next to me.
Tilting my head back and letting out a long, low howl, I felt it happen, that familiar tug at the bottom of my stomach. Before I knew it, I had shifted, vanishing into a form that couldn’t feel the intensity of the agony of leaving behind everything I had ever known.
Chapter 3
My fingers frigid, I did my best to arrange the sticks I’d gathered into a reasonable enough shape to roast this rabbit; I needed to eat, but it was a long laborious process without the trappings that came with living up in the keep.
I had been taught to hunt a long time ago, not that I needed much teaching – it was buried deep in all of us, that knowledge and desire, and catching food hadn’t been difficult for me. But cooking it? Yeah, I had hardly ever been the domestic type. I could have eaten it raw in my wolf form but it would have caused a major stomachache later in the day when I shifted back to human and I knew that I couldn’t handle that on top of everything else. It was freezing cold out there and I felt as though I might just sit down here and never move again, some young shifter finding me frozen to the ground right here in a few months time once the snow had cleared.
But how long would that
be? Two months, three? I still had January and February to make it through alive, and I had no idea how I was meant to do that. I glanced over at the rabbit I’d caught just a few minutes earlier; it was still bleeding slightly into the snow, staining the white a sickly pink. My stomach rumbled. I had hardly eaten over the last few days, my appetite vanished after what had happened back at the keep, but after days of fighting off the cold, I needed something hot in my belly.
With the sticks stacked up, I pulled a book of matches that I’d found stashed in the pack that they had given to me after I’d been kicked out and lit the fire. It took a couple of matches to get it to stick, which irritated me, as I knew that I needed to conserve them, but eventually it sputtered to life. I held my hands out over the feeble flame, grateful for even the mildest heat, and watched as my breath steamed in front of me.
For a moment, it all came crashing back down on top of me, the knowledge of what had happened – when I was focused on staying alive it was easier to ignore the enormity of what had gone down at my trial, but in moments like this, I was just lost to it. I felt as though I was dragging a million trailing threads behind me, each one having been attached to someone just a few hours before and now left to rot as I tried to figure out what to do next.
I began to prepare the rabbit, almost on autopilot, as I ran through my options in my head. I could go back there, beg for forgiveness, tell them I’d do anything if they took me back? No, they would shoot me down at once and remind me that what I had done had put the whole pack in danger. It still hurt that they couldn’t see just how wrong it was for them to keep that child trapped up in there, to even consider hurting him the way they wanted to.
I could, of course, go find another pack. That was always an option. But it wasn’t like I was some sweet little cub who would get in with a pinch of my chubby cheeks anymore – no, I was a grown-ass woman, and for a lot of people that meant that I posed a serious threat to their standing in their tribes. Now that I was out of my teens, any woman I met in a new pack would view me as a potential mating threat and they would be right, too; our mating seasons were intense, bloody, and sometimes even fatal, and no one wanted to add someone new to the mix if they could avoid it.
Besides, where would I even find another pack that I could actually be a part of? Would I just wander these woods until I found someone kind enough to take pity on me? Even if someone did, did I really want to just…give up on being part of the pack that had raised me ever again? I still hadn’t really had a chance to mourn my old pack, the Kellums, the group that had raised me and taught me and been me over these last twenty-two years. It was still so raw that it felt almost surreal, like there was no way it could actually be happening. I half-expected a dozen pack members to leap out from behind a tree and yell “surprise!” and laugh at me for falling for such an obvious joke. But I had felt that severing – you couldn’t fake that and you couldn’t undo it, and I knew better than anyone now that I was adrift in this world without them. I would just have to get used to it, somehow.
As I pulled the skin off the rabbit and used the small knife I had been provided with my pack to gut it, I thought of what lay beyond these woods, beyond this world of keeps and clans and grudges; the human world. I hadn’t given it a lot of thought over the years, having been born into shifting and assuming I’d die as part of the Kellum clan. But now that I was out and on my own, I had to acknowledge the fact that there was a whole world outside the one I’d grown up as a part of.
I could leave the forest, suppress my shifter status, go live in the city somewhere choked with pollution and pretend that I was just one of them. I could get an office job, work nine hours a day behind a desk and try to ignore the desperate, keening need deep inside me for something more than that.
“No,” I muttered out loud to myself, as I pushed a stick through the rabbit and began to roast it. I could tell myself as much as I wanted that that was something I could put myself up to, that I could give up my life as a shifter to be something close to normal, but even I knew that was a lie. I could never do it. Even if I numbed myself to the pain of never being able to shift again, I would go mad with boredom stuck in a place like that for the rest of my days. I didn’t know how humans did it. I never would.
The crackle of flesh drew me back to reality and I looked down at the rabbit to see that it had nearly caught fire on one side; I cursed quietly to myself and flipped it over, focusing on cooking it through evenly. So focused, in fact, that I didn’t even notice when I heard what felt like a strong wind moving through the trees to the left of me. I had been jumping at every little sound since I’d arrived out here in the forest and I was refusing to indulge myself any further; leaping out of my skin at shadows was only going to end with me exhausted and upset at every little sound, and I needed to conserve my energy.
The rabbit was nearly done, and I leaned down to pull it from the fire – but before I could, I heard another sound. The same thing, like a whoosh of air, but this time closer to me. A few twigs snapped, and I heard something that sounded distinctly like footsteps.
My head snapped up and I looked around; even in this form, I had a better sense of smell than most, and I could tell for damn certain that there was something in these woods out here with me. Another shifter? No, too big for that, too lumbering. Those footsteps would have been lighter if this had just been another wolf. I got to my feet, my rabbit forgotten, looking back and forth and squinting into the darkness. What was out there? And was it coming for me?
Suddenly, I saw it – a movement in between trees, in the darkness. A bear. My heart dropped to my feet. No doubt about it. It was enormous and lumbering towards me, the space it took up too big to be anything but a grizzly. It must have smelled the wolf on me. I knew I wasn’t getting away from this without a fight. I dropped my rabbit to the ground and it hit the snow with a slight sizzle, and before the steam had finished rising from it, I had shifted.
Things seemed to intensify when I was in my wolf form – not just now, but always. I felt tenser, tighter, and as the bear approached me, a rush of blood ran through my head and I did my best not to panic. The thing was huge now that I could actually see it, lit by the flames of my dying fire like something out of a horror film. It was at least seven feet tall and a good few hundred pounds, with a hide as strong as flayed leather and a body that was clearly rippling with muscle.
I would have run but my pack was here, right next to the bear, and I was as good as dead if I left without that. Besides, it wasn’t in me to flee. I had never been one to run away. And so, with a flood of adrenalin, I lunged forward and attached myself to the creature’s hind leg.
It swatted me away with one single swipe, sending my sprawling across the snow; I leapt back to my feet and found it reaching its claws for me again, and dived out of the way. Oh shit. Oh shit. I was bleeding heavily, the liquid warm as it coursed through my fur and down my haunches. My back leg was aching and the bear was already lumbering towards me once more. I raced around the back of it, hoping that I could latch myself onto it from behind, but it turned and towered over me, so enormous, that for a split second, I could only focus on the pure primal fear pulsing in my veins. And then, all at once, it came crashing down on me.
I let out a howl of pain as the full weight of the bear came down on top of me; he had me pinned, its yellowish eyes flashing with something like triumph as it held me there. I was splayed at an odd angle, half on my back and half on my side, paws up in a defensive position as though I could still fight this thing off somehow if I just kept my nerve. But I knew that was never going to happen. And suddenly, acceptance took over. I didn’t care. Let this thing kill me – I would never have the nerve to do it myself and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to be alive anyway. I let my eyes close as it lifted its paw high to deliver the killing blow and peace swept through me. I had lost everything. My life might as well be the next thing on the list, right?
But, after a long pause, I opened my eyes again to see w
hy it hadn’t struck, and noticed that the bear was looking around, peering back and forth as though something had caught its attention. And, beyond the heady smell of my own blood and the thick, cloying scent rising from the fur of the bear above me, I could smell something else, too. Wolves. More than wolves. Shifters.
The bear let out a roar, the kind of sound that seemed to rattle the very trees around us, and veered back from me, allowing me a moment to get out from beneath it. I dived away, putting as much distance between this thing and me as I could. If some other crazy shifter wanted to take it on, they could be my guest –
But before I could get too far with that train of thought, I realized that it wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t even two. No, there were four of these creatures – timber wolves, judging from the faded grey of their pelts. And they were surrounding this bear, closing in on it; the one closest to me, I could see its fangs dripping in the light of the smoldering fire, and it looked like something plucked straight from a nightmare. Who were they? Why were they doing this? I knew I should have run but I found myself sealed to the spot, unable to move – and that’s when the first one launched its attack.
It leapt from behind the bear onto its back in one swift move, sinking its teeth into the back of the bear’s neck and tightening; the bear lumbered back a few paces and I heard one of the other wolves let out a warning snarl before it launched itself at the bear’s exposed belly, closing its jaws and whipping its head back and forth to deliver the killing blow. The blood was running from its fangs and falling to the icy-white snow beneath, and the bear was groaning in agony.
Suddenly, the other two wolves, who seemed to have been holding back till now, launched themselves into the fray, one attaching itself to the bear’s leg and the other delivering a crunchingly sickening blow to its spine.
Her Howling Harem Page 2
