Chapter 2

Elowen’s POV

I didn’t really know how it worked between a man and a woman.

I had watched the pack’s sheep breed in the spring, the male mounting without care while the female stood still and took it. I had seen warriors celebrate victories with group sex around the fire, bodies moving hard and loud, no softness, no privacy.

Sex was common in the North. As common as eating and drinking, but I had never done it myself.

Watching it happen so often, I told myself it couldn’t be hard.

Back in the kitchen, I found Mira stirring a pot over the fire. She was one of the older women who worked there, and she had already had two children.

Her first child came from her first husband. After he died in battle, she was given to his younger brother and she had a second child with him.

I sat down beside her, my mind still elsewhere.

“You’ve been quiet all morning,” Mira said, not looking up from the pot. “Something’s wrong with you.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said quickly.

She laughed under her breath. “You’re a terrible liar, Elowen. Always have been.”

I picked at the edge of my sleeve, unsure how to ask what I wanted to ask.

“Does it hurt?” I finally said. “Having a child?”

Mira looked up at that, one eyebrow raised.

“Why do you ask me such a thing out of nowhere?”

“I just want to know.”

She studied my face for a moment and something in her expression softened, like she already understood more than I’d said.

“It hurts,” she said. “No use lying to you about that but making of the child, that part can feel good If the man is good at it, If he takes his time and isn’t just chasing his own pleasure.”

“And if he doesn’t take his time?”

“Then it’s like most things in this pack,” she said flatly. “Painful and over quickly and you learn to bear it.”

I swallowed hard.

She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at me more closely now, her eyes narrowing like she was putting pieces together.

“I heard something,” she said slowly. “That the King ordered you to give a child to the Southern wolf prisoner.”

My stomach dropped. “Who told you that?”

“Everyone knows, Elowen. This pack has no secrets, only whispers that travel fast.” She leaned in. “Is it true?”

I didn’t answer, which was answer enough.

Mira let out a low whistle. “Well. I heard he nearly took my husband’s head off in battle. Cut clean through his shoulder before my husband got away. Screamed about it for a week afterward, more from the shame than the wound.”

“That’s supposed to comfort me?”

“It should,” she said, smirking now. “A man who can fight like that, with that kind of strength in his arms shouldn’t have any trouble at all in bed, trust me. The fiercest ones usually aren’t gentle but they know exactly what they’re doing.”

My face went hot and my heart beat faster than I wanted it to.

“He’s not like our men,” I said quietly. “He’s Southern. Smaller and he’s wounded.”

“Wounded doesn’t mean weak,” Mira said. “Don’t judge a wolf by the size of his shoulders. Judge him by what’s in his eyes.”

“I’ve seen his eyes,” I muttered. “They’re full of hate.”

Mira shrugged, unbothered. “Hate burns just as hot as anything else and sometimes hotter.”

I wanted to believe there was some comfort in what she said, but I still couldn’t fully trust it. I had heard Southern women screaming when Northern warriors took them after raids. I had heard the pain in their voices, not pleasure. That frightened me more than anything Mira could tell me.

“What if he refuses?” I asked. “What if he’d rather die than touch me?”

Mira’s smile faded a little.

“Then you’ll have a harder night than most,” she said honestly. “But Elowen, this isn’t a question of what he wants. It’s the King’s order and you know that.”

I did know it but It didn’t make the fear sit any easier in my chest.

“Not even my brother can undo it,” I said, more to myself than to her.

“No,” Mira agreed. “Not even Thorne, not even if he wanted to burn the whole pack down for you and we both know he would if he could.”

That much was true and it was the only thing keeping me steady.

My brother and I were orphans and mixed-blood. Our mother had been a Southern captive forced to breed for the North. The pack had looked down on us from the start, we went hungry more nights than I could count. Thorne had fought battle after battle, trading blood and flesh so I would never again sleep with an empty stomach. Everything good in my life came from him.

I didn’t want to make his life harder. I wanted to help him the way he had always helped me.

The next day, the pack held a feast to celebrate the victory. Fires burned high around the hall and meat turned on spits filling the air with smoke and grease.

Warriors shouted and laughed, already half drunk.

The King rewarded my brother in front of the entire pack, praising him loudly for the win and for capturing the Southern Alpha Prince.

The Alpha King stood and raised his cup.

“Thorne,” he called, voice carrying over the noise. “You brought us the Southern Alpha Prince, you gave the North a weapon sharper than any sword and for that, you are rewarded.”

Furs, gold, and other spoils were piled in front of my brother. Warriors slammed their fists on the tables and shouted his name.

“To Thorne.” The Alpha King said.

“To Thorne.” The warriors responded.

I sat beside him unable to sit still, my hands twisting in my lap.

At the other tables, warriors sat with women beside them, women who weren’t even given proper seats. They knelt or stood at the men’s sides like they were part of the furniture refilling cups, laughing when they were told to laugh ready to be pulled down or taken away whenever a hand reached for them.

It made my stomach turn.

A warrior two tables down grabbed the woman beside him and pulled her onto his lap without asking and the whole table roared with laughter as she stiffened.

I looked away quickly.

My brother noticed me shifting and leaned close, his voice low under the noise of the hall.

“You really don’t want to go,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” I said.

“It matters to me.”

I looked at him, surprised by the roughness in his voice.

“If I say no,” I said quietly, “I’m refusing the King, and then what? Our lives go back to how they were before you fought for us.”

His jaw tightened. “I would find another way.”

“There isn’t another way, Thorne. You know that better than I do.”

He was quiet for a long moment, watching the fire instead of me.

“I’m nervous,” I finally admitted. “That’s all, just nervous.”

He studied me like he didn’t quite believe it was only that but he didn’t push further. He simply stood and took my arm leading me away from the noise and the smoke out into the cold night air.

Once we were alone by the side of the hall, he took out a small bottle and placed it firmly in my hand.

The sharp smell of blood rose the moment I took it from him.

I knew what it was.

After a hunt, the wolves collected deer blood and mixed it with a potion from the pack witch, It makes a man’s sex drive burn hotter and faster than it should, hot enough to override sense, sometimes even pain. I had seen warriors drink it before going to torment captured women, their eyes would darken and their bodies would harden within minutes.

“Is there no other way?” I asked, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.

“There isn’t,” Thorne said. “Believe me, if there were, I would have found it already.”

“What if he throws it at me? What if he refuses to drink it?”

“Then make him,” he said simply. “You’ve fed him for a month against his will, this isn’t so different.”

“It’s very different, brother,” I whispered.

His face was grim, and for a moment I saw something close to guilt behind his eyes, quickly buried.

“The peace we’ve earned wasn’t easy,” he said. “I don’t want it broken now, not after everything it cost us to get here.”

He looked at me carefully, his hand briefly resting on my shoulder.

“The silver chain has already been taken off him,” he added. “The King wants this done tonight.”

“Can I wait until tomorrow?”

“There is no tomorrow for this,” Thorne said. “If you don’t go soon, the King will send another woman in your place and then all of this, everything we’ve built, means nothing.”

I understood what he was saying. If another woman went instead of me, our family would lose whatever standing we had left. All his years of fighting, all his scars would count for nothing in the King’s eyes.

I nodded slowly, my throat tight, closed my hand around the bottle until the glass bit into my palm.

“I’ll go,” I said.

Thorne exhaled like he’d been holding his breath the whole conversation.

“Elowen.”

“What?”

“Be careful with him,” he said quietly. “Whatever happens in there, don’t let your guard down completely, he’s still an enemy of this pack, wounded or not. Do you understand?”

I met his eyes but didn’t answer, because I wasn’t entirely sure I did.

Then I turned and walked toward the dungeon, the bottle clutched tight in my hand, my heart pounding harder with every step.