Chapter 6 : Stop Calling Me Sir

 

The heavy iron broadsword came down with a bone-shattering CRACK.

The granite training dummy in the center of the muddy courtyard fractured straight down the middle. Chips of black rock sprayed across the perimeter, clattering against the shields of ten battered warriors.

Alpha Elias didn't pause to wipe the sweat dripping from his chin.

His massive chest heaved in violent, rhythmic surges, steam rising from his bare bronze shoulders into the frigid morning fog. Even without a shirt in the bitter autumn air, the heat radiating from his skin was like an open kiln.

He didn't possess his eyesight, but in the center of the ring, his hearing and instincts were lethal.

"Next," Elias rumbled, his voice like gravel grinding under an iron wheel.

He was annoyed by what his father's personal scout said to him hours ago. He knew the news would get to his father and it might become an issue. 

Ten paces away, two senior pack warriors exchanged uneasy glances. Their knuckles whitened on the hilts of their blunted steel practice swords, their boots shifting backward in the mud.

"Alpha," Beta Gavin called out from the raised wooden platform, leaning his forearms over the railing. "That's five dummies shattered and eight warriors in the medical tent before breakfast. Give them a break. You're tearing through iron like it's dry kindling."

Elias swung his heavy blade through the air, the steel whistling sharply before the tip drove six inches deep into the frozen dirt.

"If ten warriors cannot land a scratch on a blind man," Elias snarled, tilting his head toward the trembling soldiers, "they have no right to wear the Blackwood crest on their chests. Get off my field."

The warriors didn't wait for a second command. They scrambled for the armory archway like men escaping an executioner's block, their heavy boots splashing through the freezing puddles.

Gavin hopped down from the platform, his boots landing with a soft thud. He tossed a coarse linen towel toward Elias's chest.

Elias caught it effortlessly with one hand.

"Still restless?" Gavin asked quietly, stepping closer. "You've been pacing the third-floor corridor since four in the morning. Even the maids in the lower wing are whispering."

Elias dragged the towel across his damp throat, his jaw clenching until the tendons in his neck flared.

"He called me 'sir' again, Gavin."

Gavin rubbed his temples, letting out a dry, exasperated breath. He had never heard Elias speak like this before.

"Elias. He is a servant. A Null from the southern border. The boy was beaten for nineteen years by masters who would have whipped his skin off if he didn't say 'sir'. You can't expect him to forget his survival instincts in four days."

"I don't want his survival instincts," Elias growled, dropping the towel into the mud.

He turned toward the edge of the courtyard, his fists clenching at his sides.

"Every time he looks at me, his pulse races like a cornered rabbit. Every time I step into a room, he presses his back to the nearest wall. He thinks I'm going to break him."

Gavin's eyebrows rose.

"Aren't you? Look at that dummy behind you, Elias. You nearly sheared through solid granite. The boy is made of glass and starlight. If you lose control around him, you'll crush him."

Elias didn't answer.

Instead, he turned on his heel and strode toward the dense perimeter of the ancient pine forest flanking the manor. He stopped in front of a centuries-old cedar, its trunk thick as a wagon wheel.

"Pushing me away," Elias muttered, his knuckles turning white as his arm pulled back.

THUD.

His bare fist slammed into the rough bark. The trunk shuddered, pine needles raining from thirty feet above.

"Trembling like a frightened pup," Elias rasped.

THUD.

His second strike splintered the wood, bark peeling away under the raw kinetic fury of his strike.

"Calling me SIR!"

CRACK!

Elias's third strike drove three inches deep into the core of the timber. A sickening groan echoed through the morning mist as the massive cedar tilted, cracked at its base, and came crashing down into the brush with a thunderous roar.

Birds burst from the canopy in a flurry of black wings.

Elias stood motionless amidst the settling dust, his chest rising and falling in ragged gasps, small beads of crimson welling on his bruised knuckles.

Gavin let out a long whistle from behind.

"Remind me never to buy you cedar furniture."

Elias ignored him, turning his blind face toward the stone manor. His nostrils flared, filtering through the wet moss, the pine resin, and the distant woodsmoke of the chimneys.

And there it was.

Faint, fragile, but unmistakable.

Warm cinnamon. Wild violets.

Drifting from the second-floor gallery.

"He's awake," Elias murmured, his lips curving into a dangerous, hungry smirk that sent a chill straight down Gavin's spine.

Without another word, Elias strode past his Beta, heading straight for the manor's service doors.

Upstairs on the second-floor landing, Jace was struggling under the weight of three folded stacks of heavy wool blankets.

The rough fabric scratched against his jaw, smelling cleanly of lavender and lye soap. Jace kept his head down, his soft leather boots making no sound against the polished floorboards as he made his way toward the linen closets.

His body felt strangely heavy this morning.

A dull, thrumming warmth had taken root beneath his ribs since midnight...an unfamiliar, restless fever that made his skin feel prickled and tight. He had opened his bedroom window twice during the night, letting the freezing mountain draft blow over his cot, but the heat refused to break.

Just exhaustion, Jace told himself, tightening his grip on the blankets. You haven't eaten enough. That's all.

He turned the corner near the central gallery.

Thud.

Jace walked straight into a solid wall of scorching, unyielding muscle.

"Ah!"

Jace gasped, his balance giving way as his boots slid on the slick wood. The heavy stack of blankets tumbled from his arms, scattering across the runner rug in a flurry of gray wool.

Before Jace's knees could hit the floor, a massive, calloused hand shot out.

Long, scarred fingers locked firmly around Jace's slender wrist, halting his fall with effortless, iron strength.

Jace scrambled to find his footing, his breath catching in his throat as he looked up.

Alpha Elias stood towering over him.

The Alpha was completely shirtless. Sweat glistened over the sculpted contours of his broad chest, tracing the deep grooves of his ribs down to the low waistband of his dark trousers. Damp, charcoal-black curls clung to his forehead, and his heavy jaw was dark with a day's stubble.

The sheer physical heat radiating off the man hit Jace like a furnace blast.

Jace's breath hitched. His eyes darted down Elias's chest, taking in the cut of his collarbones, before instantly snapping to the floorboards in panic.

"I... I was just carrying the linens, sir," Jace stammered, his fingers trembling as he tried to pull his wrist free.

Elias didn't let go.

Instead, the Alpha's grip shifted, his thumb gently smoothing over the racing pulse point on the inside of Jace's wrist.

Badum. Badum. Badum.

"Still calling me that," Elias murmured, his voice deep, gravelly, and entirely too close.

Elias took a slow step forward.

Jace took a hurried step back.

"It's... it's proper, sir," Jace whispered, his throat tightening as his back hit the cold stone wall of the corridor. "You're the Alpha of the domain. I am the help."

"It's distance," Elias countered, closing the space between them until his bare chest was mere inches from Jace's chin.

The rich, intoxicating scent of rain-soaked pine and dry ozone rolled off Elias in waves, swallowing the smell of lavender blankets completely. Jace felt his knees turn to water.

"I need distance," Jace whispered, his voice trembling so hard it cracked.

"Liar...," Elias murmured softly.

The Alpha raised his free hand, letting the backs of his bruised knuckles brush lightly along Jace's jawline. Jace flinched, but he didn't pull away. He couldn't. His body seemed frozen beneath the magnetic gravity of the predator pinning him to the stone.

"You're not afraid of me, Little Wolf," Elias whispered, tilting his head until his hot, shallow breath brushed against Jace's earlobe. "You're afraid of what your body does when I stand this close. Your body tells the truth more than your mouth."

A dark flush burned across Jace's cheeks, rising all the way to the tips of his ears.

"I'm... I'm not like that," Jace choked out, turning his face away toward the frosted windowpanes. "I've always wanted a normal life. A simple mate. A girl from the valleys... someone like me."

Elias's fingers paused on Jace's jaw.

A dangerous, quiet stillness settled over the Alpha's massive frame.

Slowly, deliberately, Elias leaned in further, pressing his weight forward until their shadows merged completely on the stone wall.

"What if she never exists?" Elias asked, his baritone dropping to a possessive, velvet rasp that vibrated straight through Jace's ribs. "What if the mate you've been waiting for is standing right in front of you?"

Jace's heart stopped.

The world seemed to drop away, leaving only the terrifying, electric friction of Elias's bare skin against his linen shirt.

"Please," Jace breathed, tears of sheer sensory overwhelm stinging the corners of his eyes. "Please don't say things like that. It is a forbidden thing to even think of..."

"There is nothing wrong with pure intentions...little wolf..." Elias whispered.

Elias's thumb moved, gently tracing the soft curve of Jace's bottom lip.

Jace let out a high, broken gasp. Using both hands, he shoved frantically against Elias's muscular chest.

The Alpha didn't budge an inch, but he deliberately loosened his grip on Jace's wrist, letting the boy scramble out from beneath his frame.

Jace didn't pick up the fallen blankets. He didn't look back. He bolted down the corridor, his boots pounding against the floorboards until he ducked into the servants' wing, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.

Elias remained standing against the wall.

He raised his hand to his face, breathing in the lingering scent of cinnamon on his knuckles.

His lips curved into a slow, wicked grin.

"Keep running, Little Wolf," Elias whispered into the empty corridor. "You won't get far."

Midnight fell over the Blackwood estate with the weight of an iron shroud.

Inside his tiny room in the servants' wing, Jace was suffocating.

He threw the thin wool blanket onto the floor, kicking his legs out. His cotton shirt was soaked through with sweat, clinging uncomfortably to his chest and ribs. The fever beneath his skin had mutated from a dull ache into a searing, liquid blaze.

His lower abdomen pulsed with an agonizing, hollow hunger.

What is wrong with me? Jace thought, digging his nails into his palms as he paced the narrow floorboards. I'm a Null. Nulls don't feel like this.

His thoughts drifted back to the hallway.

Elias's broad, sweat-slicked chest. The rough heat of his calloused thumb on his bottom lip. The dark, possessive promise in that deep baritone voice.

Every time the image flashed behind his eyes, a hot jolt of electricity shot straight down between Jace's thighs, making him gasp and clutch the wooden bedpost for support.

"No," Jace whispered, shaking his head furiously. "I'm not into men. I can't be. He's an Alpha... and he's not on my level...."

He remembered the hushed conversations he had overheard between two older footmen by the stables two days ago.

There's a tavern down in the lower trading district, one had whispered with a grin. The Red Lantern. Where the servants and common shifters go to let off steam. Music, dancing, pretty girls who don't care about your pack rank. No names asked.

Jace clutched his burning chest.

That's it, he realized, a desperate hope clawing at his throat. I just need to be around women. If I dance with a girl, if I hold someone normal, this madness will stop. It will prove Elias is wrong.

Moving quickly before his nerve failed him, Jace pulled on a dark wool tunic and laced his boots.

He unlatched his window, checking the perimeter. The courtyard was bathed in pale moonlight, the stone mansion quiet as a tomb.

Jace slipped out through the ground-floor scullery door, melting into the shadows of the pine trees, and hurried down the mountain road toward the distant glow of the lower district.

Two floors above, in the pitch-black silence of the master bedchamber, Alpha Elias lay in his grand bed.

Suddenly, his glassy unseeing eyes snapped wide.

He sat bolt upright in the dark.

His nostrils flared sharply.

The mountain breeze blowing through the open balcony carried many scents...frost, fallen leaves, the iron of the gates.

But cutting straight through the night air was the distinct trail of sweet cinnamon and wild violets.

And it was moving away from the mansion fast toward the lower border town.

Elias's jaw clenched with terrifying force. A low, guttural snarl ripped from deep within his chest, rattling the glassware on his nightstand.

His inner wolf, silent for years, bared its fangs and roared in primal fury.

OURS! HE LEAVES OUR DOMAIN!

Elias threw the heavy fur covers aside. His feet hit the cold floor as he grabbed his heavy dark wool coat from the chair.

"Where do you think you're going, Little Wolf?" Elias whispered, his voice dripping with lethal promise. "Are you trying to run away from me?"

He shoved open the balcony doors, his coat billowing behind him like raven wings, and vanished into the night.