by Unknown
“’Tis dying,” Raife observed, pinching another brown leaf off the plant—Sybil could have sworn it turned brown just in the time she’d been watching. “Laina will’na be pleased.”
“I know.” Sybil sighed, reaching out to pluck a bit of white from Raife’s hair. “We will have to keep her busy here until I can go out and find another.”
“No more woods for ye.” He scowled at the little smile that came over her face.
“Darrow will protect me,” she said. Darrow would have done anything for Laina. If that meant going out into the woods with Sibyl, well, he would even venture to do that.
“I can’na let you go again.” Raife shook his head, frowning at the dying plant as if it was all the fault of the willow. “It is far too dangerous, lass.”
“No more dangerous than a human living in a wolf’s den.” She teased, laughing, standing and holding her hand out to him.
“Ye are safe here, Sibyl.” That scowl on his face deepened as he stood, ignoring the hand she had held out to help him. “Have we not proved it to ye?”
“Of course. You know I jest.” She blinked at him in surprise. “You have proven to be a perfect gentleman. Far less of an animal than my…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, both of them knowing just who she meant.
“Aye.” Raife grimaced, turning his back on her and heading toward the mountain. “The perfect gentleman.”
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
“Dinner!” he yelled back, not turning. “I better eat something before I decide to devour ye instead!”
“Raife!”
But there was no way to catch up to those big, long legs of his. She saw the men corralling the horses. The horses ran free in the valley during the day, but they kept them penned at night, just like the sheep and the goats. The wulvers would not harm them—unless it was during one of the female changes. The females were unpredictable, and while they wouldn’t harm a human, they might take down an animal. It was just safer, Raife had told her, to pen them up at night.
Otherwise, they could have roamed the valley to their heart’s content. There was no way out of it, unless you took a horse up a winding, treacherous mountain path and down the other side. Or went through the mountain den itself. She knew they had taken horses out through the den before—when the wolfen warriors were ready for warfare—but not very often.
“Sibyl!” Laina called her name as Sibyl’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. Coming into the den was always such a surprise to her system, even though the wulvers adjusted easily. Of course, they could see almost as well in the dark as they could in the light. “How is our little plant?”
Sibyl smiled, but she didn’t want to say. Instead she distracted them both by fussing over the baby. He was a handsome fellow with big blue eyes and a thick, thatch of dark hair.
“You are looking so much better, Laina.” Sibyl smiled, chucking the baby under his chin. “Your color is coming back.”
“That’s not all that’s coming back.” Laina frowned at the way the baby turned his head, looking for something to chew on and found his fist. “He’s started solid food. The elders say my moon cycles will start up again soon.”
“The plant… it’s…” Sybil swallowed as they entered the center of the mountain. All the tunnels led to and through here. It was the heart of all things, this place where they cooked and ate together.
“It’s dying isn’t it?” Laina sighed, switching the baby to her other shoulder. “It can’t live anywhere but the borderlands. I knew it. I’m going to have to go look for it myself.”
“Laina, no.” Sybil frowned, catching Raife’s eye across the room. He was teasing Kirstin about something because she flushed pink and laughed, hitting him on the arm.
Everyone loved Raife, especially all the wulver women. Sybil had noticed it from the very beginning, but once she found that he had not chosen a mate, she also discovered that most of the wulver girls dreamed of being that one. Not that she could blame any of them, of course. He was quite a catch, as far as wulver men went. There was no one bigger or stronger in the pack, which was likely why he had assumed the role of leader, but she didn’t think that was all of the reason. There was something different about Raife. Something calmer, more reserved than the rest of the wulver men. They liked to wrestle and tussle like little boys. Raife was far more serious than that.
Which made times like this, when he smiled and teased one of the girls, even more unusual. Sibyl found herself bristling at it and she tried to ignore it, turning her attention back to Laina and her tiny baby.
“You need to stay here for this little man,” Sibyl reminded Laina as she slipped onto one of the benches in front of the long table. Sybil saw Darrow enter the kitchen, carrying a thick, heavy sword. He hung it in a notch on the side of the mountain wall. There were hundreds of others there. The men forged new swords all the time. She was fascinated with the process and Raife had laughed at her when she once tried to lift one off the ground—she’d wielded a small sword of her own back at her father’s castle—finding it far too heavy. She couldn’t believe how the wulver men swung them around, over their heads, the strength it must take.
“How can I care for him when I’m a wolf?” Laina’s lower lip trembled.
“But… isn’t that what your wulver sisters are for?” Sibyl asked.
She knew the other wulver women cared for the babies when the moon time of a mother returned. Wulvers wouldn’t hurt their young, but a human baby required things a wulver pup did not. Sibyl thought it was ironic, because a human woman could care for a wulver pup or a human child, but a wulver, with no hands or thumbs or even voice, had a much harder time caring for a human child.
“But he’s my baby,” Laina protested.
“I know.” Sibyl smiled at the infant who sucked greedily at his fist. “He looks just like you.”
“You don’t know, though.” Laina kissed the top of the baby’s head, her eyes sad as she looked at Sibyl. “Even if you mated with Rai—a… wulver… you would never have to worry about changing.”
Raife.
That’s what Laina had almost said.
Even if you mated with Raife.
Sibyl glanced over at him. He was talking to his brother, their heads bent, expressions serious. Did everyone in the pack think she was in love with him? She wondered. Did everyone think what Laina had almost said aloud?
She had thought about what it would mean, to be a wulver’s mate.
To be Raife’s mate.
She would have denied it aloud—and had, on several occasions, when the women had teased her about it. They soon learned not to mention it, because if they did, Sybil would bristle. And Raife—no one ever said anything about Sybil in front of Raife. The last man who had said something suggestive about Sybil had spent the afternoon in the pig pen, shoveling it out.
But as much as she denied it, she thought about it. She felt the way his eyes followed her, wherever she went. He always knew where she was, at all times. He had spent a month sleeping in the cold hallway somewhere outside her door, wrapped in his plaid. She couldn’t count the times she’d stood on the other side of that door, her ear pressed tight, imagining she could hear him breathing, feel the pound of his wulver heart. Of course, it was really only the sound of her own quickened breath, the thud of her aching human heart.
Because, if nothing else, her heart beat for him.
She knew it wasn’t unheard of, a wulver choosing a human mate. It had happened before. Raife’s own father had been a human man, after all. But Raife was the leader of his pack. He had a responsibility, not just to himself, but to all of them. He hadn’t yet taken a mate, but they expected him to, and soon. They expected him to choose a wulver woman, someone who matched him in spirit and strength, a woman who wouldn’t put herself at risk every time she gave birth to a new heir.
And Sibyl knew any issue from a human and wulver would be a changeling. No human-wulver pairing ever resulted i
n a child who was fully human.
She had been sold to a man who was as different from her as night from day, or so she once thought. The Scots ways were odd to her, so often opposite her own, but the more time she’d spent in their presence, she’d grown used to the soft brogue, their jokes and forward behavior. Donal and his men had endeared themselves to her, over time. Well, most of them had.
It was only Alistair, her intended, who had still rankled her.
Now that she’d lived with these wulvers for a month, she knew what real “difference” was. They couldn’t have been further apart, she and these creatures. They were wild, untamed, a close-knit pack of warriors, the men strong and protective, the women nearly as strong and just as territorial. Sybil had watched them argue, tussle, fight and make up, had listened to the women tell stories and watched them take care of their young.
And yet, in their hearts, she had found they were the same as she was. Their needs and wants were no different. They hungered. They fed. They laughed. They wondered. They loved. And in that last, in her estimation, they were perhaps superior to her own breed. They loved with a passion and devotion she had never seen before. The connection between wulver mates went far beyond contracts. In her world, men of power and pieces of paper served to join two factions.
She had been little more than a pawn on her uncle’s chessboard. King Henry had sought to unite the English and Scots, to ease the tension between them by uniting families along the border, so everyone was invested in the future generations that issued from each union. She was but one bride who had been sold for that purpose, she knew. And ultimately, if her uncle was to be believed, James IV of Scotland would marry a Tudor and the union of Scots and English would wind its way all the way to the top of the hierarchy.
“Sibyl?” Laina’s voice brought Sibyl out of her reverie. Sibyl tore her eyes from Raife, focusing on the woman and her baby.
“I’m sorry?” Sibyl apologized. She hadn’t heard a word, didn’t even know if Laina had been speaking at all.
“He will claim ye.” Laina was the only one who dared speak of it aloud, although even she was cautious and spoke in hushed tones, so no one overheard them. “If ye let him.”
“Who am I to let him?” Sibyl laughed, trying her best to sound as if it mattered not at all. “I am just a woman. I get no say in such matters.”
“From what I hear, ye had a great deal to say about such matters with an arrow.” Laina leveled a knowing look in her direction. “Ye are more wulver than English at heart, I think.”
Sybil had escaped her captor, had defied her uncle, had shamed her mother. That was not a ladylike, English thing to do. There was nothing to return to for her anymore, and if there was, she wasn’t sure she would want to go back. Her world had died the moment she fled. Now she belonged nowhere. She lived in this fantastical place, with these strange creatures, but she didn’t belong with them either. That’s what it came down to, in the end. She wasn’t just a stranger in a strange land, she was forever an outsider, a foreigner who could never fit in.
An Englishwoman could act like a Scot, could someday become Scottish in language and mannerisms, but a human woman could never become a wulver. That was a transformation no person could ever perform, no matter how much they wished it were true. Just as Laina, who longed to change her wulver nature, could never prevent her own change.
We are what we are. That’s what Raife often said, and it was true. More true than Sibyl wanted to admit, even to herself.
“Hello, Darrow.” Sibyl glanced up as Laina’s husband joined them, kissing the top of his son’s dark head, looking upon him with great affection. Sibyl didn’t stay long between them. She was too afraid they might start asking her about the huluppu tree again and she didn’t want to have to tell them the truth.
She told herself she’d go the next day and pull off a shoot and try to get it to root, and replant it. Mayhaps she could get it to grow somewhere else further downstream. Maybe it needed partial shade instead of full sun. She was still puzzling over this when she took her seat across from Laina and Darrow at the long table. Raife had insisted she sit by him from the very beginning. At first, she thought it was so he could translate for her from Gaelic, but then he had insisted everyone start speaking English. Of course, they still didn’t pay much attention to the rule, especially at dinner, when everyone talked at once, hundreds of people sitting at four long tables.
Sibyl didn’t care much, not really. She was too hungry most of the time to pay attention to the jokes and laughter, the talk of training and babies. Besides, it allowed her to keep Raife’s attention. They sat and talked together every night at dinner like they were in their own little world. She liked it that way and she thought he did too. She’d learned a lot about the wolf pack—and its leader—this way. And she had revealed a great deal about herself and her life before this, far more than she would have otherwise, if she’d been focused on making small talk with the other wulvers, whether it was in English or her poor attempt at Gaelic.
But tonight, Raife was quiet. He ate his bacon and sopped up gravy with biscuits and just grunted yes and no answers to her questions. In spite of her attempts to get him to talk, he stayed quiet, thoughtful. It was only when Darrow made a joke across the table in Gaelic that made everyone laugh that Raife took notice and snapped at his brother.
“Beurla!” Raife insisted. “English!”
He taught Sibyl that way, saying the word in Gaelic, and then repeating it in English.
“You mustn’t force them for my sake.” Sibyl nudged Raife with her right elbow, trying not to make it too obvious she was doing so, as he told his brother to speak English at the dinner table.
The pack gathered for dinner in one large, central room, a fire always burning cozily in the kitchen’s hearth. This was the heart of the mountain and the foundation of the pack. This was where they met, where they ate, and at night, where many of them slept. It was during her first week in the mountain, unable to sleep, when she’d wandered into the kitchen, her stomach looking for biscuits, that she’d found them all huddled together like the pups in the kitchen back home.
The bed she slept on, she discovered, was Raife’s, but while she’d protested to Kirstin about taking his room, she assured Sibyl that he rarely occupied it. He wrapped himself in his plaid, like the rest of his pack, and slept on the kitchen floor with a hundred other canines. Aside from Raife’s—the pack leader’s—rooms with doors inside the mountain were usually reserved for mating couples and birthing females. Darrow and Laina were in a much smaller room next to Raife’s. It was the room Sibyl had first woken up in, where Laina had given birth.
Raife had not taken a mate to fill his room, much to his pack’s frustration. So far, he had, according to Kirstin, been far more interested in training, not only himself but his pack mates, for a war he never wanted to fight. It was strange to Sibyl, given it was Darrow who seemed far more interested in starting a war, even if he wasn’t quite as diligent about training and preparing for such.
“I told them to speak English.” Raife frowned down at her, his expressive blue eyes showing concern over her confusion at Darrow’s Gaelic words. Raife had made it a new pack-wide rule that, in Sibyl’s presence, English should be spoken at all times. All of them could speak and understand English, although they spoke it with a thick, Scottish brogue, but most of them forgot and needed reminding when she was around.
“I am learning Gaelic,” she protested, sticking her tongue out at him when he raised those dark, arched brows at her. She picked up a biscuit and waved it at him. “Aran. See?”
“Seo?” Raife lifted his glass of wine, tipping toward her, asking what it was.
“Uhhhh.” Sibyl frowned. She was drinking goat’s milk—the goats were kept in the valley behind tall fences, or else they would get eaten instead of milked—and she knew the word for “milk” was “bainne.” Laina, still nursing her baby balach, Garaith, said the word “bainne” enough for Sibyl to remember i
t.
She noticed that many of the pack were watching her. Kirstin, who had been a patient, excellent Gaelic teacher so far, was particularly interested in Sibyl’s struggle
“F-f-f…” She knew it started with that sound. She remembered that much. “Fiodh! Now give me!”
Sibyl reached for his wine to take a drink, triumphant.
“No, lass.” Raife grinned, letting her take sip. “Fion is wine.”
“What did I ask for then?”
“Fiodh is wood.” Raife chuckled.
“Methinks ye give me brother plenty of that.”
Sibyl’s cheeks reddened at Darrow’s words and the laughter that ensued.
“Darrow.” Raife scowled a warning at his brother.
“The scouts say Alistair’s men have finally given up searching for her.” Darrow met his brother’s eyes across the table.
How long had it been? She wondered. She hadn’t been counting the days, but it was still summer. So Alistair had given up on her. It was a relief to her, and it must be to them too, she thought.
But then Darrow said, “It’s time for her to go back to her own kind.”
“Darrow, enough,” Raife snarled. His words brought silence to the whole pack. They all stopped talking, putting down their food, looking between the two men.
“You’re going to start a war,” Darrow said, standing and staring pointedly at Sibyl.
She shrank against Raife’s side, afraid of the anger in Darrow’s eyes. This was a man who had taken her on his back deep into the woods, who had been willing to risk his own life—and hers—in hopes of finding some sort of relief for a wulvers’ plight. They had talked together on those trips, had jested and laughed, had found they had more in common than not. Sibyl had come to believe that Darrow had not only accepted her among them, but that he even liked her. Now, looking at the anger on his face, she wondered if she’d been mistaken.
