by H. D. Gordon
The ferocity in Goldie’s eyes was tempered by a bit of hurt, and I immediately regretted my words. In all the years we’d known each other, I’d rarely cursed at her before, and I’d never said such harsh things. Some rational part of my mind understood that she was only doing what she had always done; looking out for me, as I had always done for her, but the other part of me was weary and angry and hated the fact that she was right.
I had frozen, and it had almost gotten me killed.
But I was not in a particularly rational state of mind at the moment, and my pride kept me from immediately apologizing.
When Goldie saw that I had no intention of retracting my words, she shook her head and sneered. “Fine,” she said. “Whatever. You want to act like everything is fine, that you don’t have some serious issues to deal with, that’s on you. Come see me when you’re not acting like such a jackass.”
With that, she stalked away. I watched as she crossed the arched stone bridge spanning the canal, disappearing between the structures of Mina and taking her probing gaze with her.
I let out a low breath, feeling very much like a jackass indeed.
Though it was the middle of the night, I couldn’t sleep. So, eventually, I climbed out of bed and went to the library, where I often sought solace on the nights when the Sandman refused to visit me.
Which seemed to be often as of late.
Something about the smell of all those books, parchment and glue, and the stacks and rows where they made their home, had a way of soothing me.
The library was always quiet, even when there were multiple people present, as if everyone respected the sanctity of such a place, and shushed themselves accordingly.
I wandered over to the section where I knew the historical fiction to be, and plucked a tome from the shelves before finding a spot in a comfy chair by one of the many fireplaces. I curled up there, opened the book, and crawled into the story the way a child might crawl under the safety of a blanket on a cold night.
The tale was just beginning to get good when I felt a powerful presence behind me. He moved with such silence that I never heard him approach, despite the fact that Wolves have the most sensitive ears of any supernatural creature. But there was nothing he could do to dampen the raw magical force perpetually surrounding him, the aura that followed him wherever he went.
“Can’t sleep, Rukiya dearest?” Adriel asked, in that strange lilting accent of his.
I sat up in the chair, closing the book and placing it on the low table nearby, rolling my neck.
“I froze,” I said, the admission coming out as if of its own accord. Why I was so easily able to admit it to him, but not to Goldie, I didn’t know.
Moving with that otherworldly grace of his, Adriel took the chair across from me, settling back into it and waiting silently for me to continue.
I sighed. “Yarik, Goldie, and I went on a mission tonight.”
Adriel nodded once, still silent, watching me with his scarlet gaze. Of course, he knew about the mission, and if I knew Yarik, he also knew that it had gone awry. He listened patiently nonetheless.
“It was a trap,” I continued. “It was supposed to be a single Seller and a wagon of pups, but there were no pups in the wagon…” I swallowed, recalling the paralyzing fear that had stolen over me. “There were only Hounds. Somehow, they must have known we’d be coming. I was taken off guard… I froze, and if Goldie hadn’t jumped in, one of those Hounds would have killed me.”
I released a long breath, feeling somehow lighter now that the words were spoken, and also like even more of a jackass for the way I’d reacted to my friend’s justified concerns. It seemed that lately, I was always spilling my secrets to Adriel.
Part of me expected him to say that I should not go on any more missions, that clearly, Goldie had been right, and whatever was messing me up mentally needed to be dealt with first.
But Adriel didn’t say this, because Adriel never said the things that others would say.
“What were you thinking of when you froze?” he asked.
My head tilted. It took me a moment to pinpoint the answer to his question, but when it arrived in my mind, I knew that it was the right one. “I was thinking about how I couldn’t go back to life as a Dog. Not now. Not after being here in Mina.”
The unspoken words I did not add were: After being here with you.
It seemed my cowardice knew no ends on this particular evening.
Adriel studied me for a few long seconds, in which the silence stretched between us. I could do nothing but sit where I was, looking into the scarlet irises that once upon a time I had found so very intimidating. When I looked at him now, he was still the most handsome male I had ever laid eyes on, with his thick ebony hair that somehow managed to look both stylish and messy all at once, and the perfect angles of his face, the single dimple that appeared in his right cheek when he decided to bless the world with one of his half smiles.
The raw power that always hung around him had become something other in my mind as well. Whereas before, I would cringe away from it, afraid to get too close for fear of being swallowed whole, now, I found myself craving the warmth and safety it brought.
Though I had not told him this, when I was away from him, I often would count the minutes until his aura would wrap me up again. We’d gotten very close since I’d returned to Mina, but I hadn’t yet found the strength to tell him how I really felt, and how afraid those feelings made me.
And, as Adriel—surely one of the most powerful creatures walking the planet with his mixed blood—slid out of the chair across from me to kneel before me, that warmth and strength surrounded me, providing an invisible barrier between the rest of the world and me, tucking me in a small cocoon of safety.
He folded my hands into his, his skin smooth and warm, and met my gaze with eyes the same shade of the scarlet tattoo on the back of my shoulder.
“You are free, Rukiya Moonborn,” Adriel said, his accented voice caressing the blessed words. “You will never wear a collar again. You will never again be forced to step into The Ring. You never were a Dog, and you never will be.”
I squeezed his hands, unashamed when a couple tears slipped out of my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Adriel leaned forward slowly, still kneeling before me, his perfect face coming within inches of my own, pausing, as he always did, forever offering me a chance to get away.
Because Adriel would never cage me. Even if he disagreed with my decisions, he would still allow them to be mine.
I found my own lips curving up, and my hand cupped the side of his perfect face, my heart fluttering when he leaned into my touch. I closed the small distance separating us, pausing just before our lips met.
“You’re wrong,” I said.
Adriel’s head tilted, causing a thick lock of ebony hair to fall across his forehead. “How so, Rukiya dearest?” he asked.
My lips brushed against his when I whispered, “Because until we are all free, none of us are free.”
The smile he gave now stole my breath away, paused the world and all its troubles along with it.
“Mm,” he said, dimple appearing with a half smile. “So then what do we intend to do about it?”
3
The sun rose over Mina, breaking over the peaks of the mountains in the near distance and glittering on the surface of the wide canal cutting through the town. The people were starting to wake up, going about their tasks in the easy and carefree manner that I had come to expect from them.
After the Hounds’ attack on the town, the citizens of Mina had recovered quickly, and though it was still the most peaceful place I’d ever been, the people happier than I’d been aware was possible, I sensed a little anxiety that had not been here before. They knew a threat loomed, as if it was something every conscious being could sense in the air.
The day was still cool for the early hour, and my breath hung in a cloud in front of me. Thinking of my fight with Goldie, and my subsequent conversation with Adriel,
I came to the mature conclusion that I needed to seek out my friend and apologize for what I’d said. Goldie loved me, and I her, and that meant that sometimes we got into it with each other, but the important thing was that we always made it right.
This time, it was my turn to make it right.
I pushed off the side of the building on which I’d been leaning, cutting through an alley between houses and striding up one of the four main streets in Mina, heading in the direction of the cottage Yarik and Goldie shared. I shook my head and smiled a little as I imagined the look my friend would give me when I showed up on her doorstep, a bottle of moonshine in my hand and a sheepish smile on my face.
Passing by a few people whose faces were now familiar, I was about halfway to Goldie’s place when I spotted a lithe figure jumping from one of the slanted rooftops to another, and my feet took me in that direction.
She was fast, and I had to pick up my pace to catch her, but eventually, Freya paused in her rooftop jumping and apparently found a suitable place to watch the sun rise. I crouched on my spot on the ground, letting the power coil in my legs, and then I leapt up to join her.
The girl grinned when she saw me coming, her eyes going wide before she realized it was only me. I crawled over to her and took up the spot on the roof beside her, leaning back so as to accommodate the rather sharp slant of the structure.
“You thought I was Goldie, huh?” I asked, grinning as I recalled the way her big brown eyes had gone wide.
Freya giggled. “Miss Goldie doesn’t like it when I climb the roofs,” she said.
I’d met the girl upon my return to Mina, when she started showing up to the little classes I’d been holding in the library, teaching some of the children and anyone else who was interested how to read the common tongue. Freya had wandered in, a shy Wolf of no more than twelve, her arms folded over her chest and her eyes darting around the room.
Amara, who’d been sitting beside me at the time, had told me telepathically that Freya was special, that she was different in the head. When I’d asked her how she knew this, she’d told me that everyone knew. When I’d asked Adriel later, he’d confirmed Amara’s words, and said that the community in Mina looked after her, making accommodations to suit the girl’s needs.
She was small for her age, a Wolf runt, no doubt, and had been slated as bait when Yarin had rescued her from the Sellers. She also looked different; her features portioned in a way that suggested her mother might have used Wolfsbane while pregnant. She was a quick study with words, though, and had picked up my reading and writing lessons with avid interest.
“Miss Goldie is right,” I said to Freya now, and then mumbled to myself, “She usually is.”
Freya’s shoulders fell a fraction. “Are you going to make me get down?” she asked.
I tapped a finger to my chin, as if considering. Then I winked at her. “Nah. I think I’ll leave that to Miss Goldie.”
Freya’s smile returned instantly. It made my heart feel light. She’d been very standoffish when she’d first come to my class, and now she was willing to let me sit beside her.
“Miss Goldie left, so I’ll get to climb all I want until she gets back.”
This prospect clearly pleased her. She crossed her ankles and leaned back against the slant of the roof.
“What do you mean she left?” I asked.
Freya’s brown eyes flicked away from the horizon and back to me. “Her and Mr. Yarik. They went on another mission. Said they’d be back in a few days.”
I cursed in my head, wishing that I hadn’t been such an ass during our last encounter. Odds were that her and Yarik would return safely in a few days, as promised, but if something did happen to them, I would feel terrible about how we’d left things.
Freya patted my hand; another sign of progress between us. “Don’t worry about Miss Goldie,” she said, withdrawing her touch quickly. “She’s very tough and strong. She’ll come home. She always does.”
Until she doesn’t, I thought, but did not say. I saw little reason to infect the girl with my foul mood.
“Do you know when she left?” I asked.
“Yes,” Freya said. “It was only half an hour ago. She always comes and kisses me goodbye before she leaves.”
A moment of silence fell between us, and I watched as the sun slowly rose over the peaks of the mountains, kissing the city of Mina with its golden light.
“Look,” Freya said, after the silence had gone on for some time. She pointed into the distance opposite the mountains, beyond the trees of the emerald forest. “Storm clouds,” she said. “It’s going to rain.”
I followed her gaze, taking in the gathering of dark thunderheads far off in the distance. She was right; it was certainly going to rain, and rain hard, if the look of those clouds were any indication.
“Whether Miss Goldie is here or not,” I said, giving the girl my serious face, “no climbing in the rain. Promise?”
Freya’s thick brows rose as she looked at me like I might be a tad dim.
“I don’t want to get hit by lightning,” she said.
I found myself smiling, as was often the case when I spent time with the girl. No matter the troubles of the world, children always had a unique knack for putting things into perspective. I nodded and sat in comfortable silence beside her, and since I no longer had to go find Goldie, we watched the sun rise over the town together.
No matter the regrets I may have about all of the things that had happened in the past year, meeting and teaching the children of Mina was not one of them. It wasn’t only Freya that had stolen my heart, but also Amara, whom I’d saved from the life of a Dog back at the start of all this. It was safe to say that I loved the children; that perhaps I had been destined to end up here from the moment Amara had looked out at me from behind the bars of that wagon in Dogshead.
“I don’t like when it storms,” Freya admitted, sliding a little closer to me on the rooftop, her eyes darting around in that way of hers.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into my side, more than pleased when she did not cringe away. Adriel said this meant she trusted me.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It gets so dark, and the loud noises scare me.”
I nodded, giving her a light squeeze as my eyes drew back to those thunderheads gathering in the distance.
“I don’t mind the storms,” I told her, “even though I don’t like the dark or the loud noises, either.”
Freya looked up at me from beneath dark lashes, ever the curious little pup.
“After the storms comes the sun,” I said, and placed a kiss to her forehead before propping my other hand behind my head and crossing my ankles to settle in for the sunrise.
I watched Freya’s face as she considered this. After a moment, she nodded, her gaze returning to the horizon as well.
“After the storms comes the sun,” she repeated, as if speaking truth to fortune.
Due to the fact that my most recent mission with Yarik and Goldie had failed spectacularly, Adriel decided to call a meeting to discuss our next moves, and since those two knuckleheads couldn’t even wait a day before running off again, that left me to explain to the others what had happened the previous evening.
“They knew you were coming,” said Akila, the Harpy warrior, as she leaned forward in her seat and rested her dark ebony arms atop the table around which we all sat.
I nodded. “Yes. There were no pups in the wagon. It was full of Hounds.”
“That was surely an unpleasant surprise,” Asha muttered, studying me with her sharp eyes.
My jaw clenched. “It was,” I replied.
Aysari and Eryx, the two Fae among us, exchanged glances, and Bakari, the Angel, muttered a curse.
“We need to kill the Pack Masters,” Asha said, her dark eyes going to Adriel. The Demon was always in favor of this approach to our problems, and if I was being honest, it was one thing we agreed on.
Aysari’s slanted eyes flicked
to me. “Rukiya killed Reagan Ramsey,” the Fae said, “and what happened then? Another Wolf took his place. Killing the Pack Masters won’t win our war. We need to change the minds of the people.”
Asha rolled her eyes. “Killing the Pack Masters is a start. We should have struck before now. And we should never have freed those Gods damned Hounds. That was also your idea, Aysari, and how fruitful has that been? You manage to change any of their minds?”
Aysari raised her chin, meeting the Demon’s hard glare dead on. “I think I reached a few, and what’s done is done, so get over it.”
Asha snorted, leaning back in her chair and wearing her usual expression that revealed how unreasonable she thought the rest of us were.
Two moon cycles ago, when I’d returned from Marisol after being rescued from Ryker by Adriel, Asha, and Akila and her Harpy daughters, we’d argued for three long days about what should be done with the Hounds we’d trapped in Mina’s town square. Some of us, like Asha and myself, had voted on killing them all. Our argument had been that if we freed the Hounds now, we’d only face them again someday on the battlefield or elsewhere, while others had argued that the only real way to win this war was if we could convince the Hounds to switch sides, to turn on the oppressive Pack Masters and join us in our fight for freedom.
Needless to say, both sides had felt very strongly about their arguments, and things had gotten more than a little heated. At one point, Aysari and Asha had almost come to blows, and only a stern command from Adriel had curbed the clash.
“We need to find a way to remove the collars from the Dogs,” Bakari said, his deep voice filling the hut in which we all sat. “Convincing the Dogs to fight with us would be a much easier feat than convincing the Hounds.” The Angel looked at me. “Find anything in those books?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
