ROSALIND

He straightened, his patience visibly thinning, his eyes tracing my face.

“Follow me,” he ordered, and there was no mistaking the authority behind it. He turned and walked briskly toward a private hall—arched stone, heavy doors that whispered with history.

I followed because I had no other choice, because my pride was little and my purpose was larger, because if I wanted to stand on the same ground as him and not fall to my knees in a puddle of useless revenge, I needed to learn how the world bent.

When the doors shut behind us he stopped and turned, face blank as a slate. He cocked his head with the faintest hint of irritation. “Do you have a hearing problem wolfling?” he asked, straight-faced, and before I could answer he muttered to himself, “If you were deaf, you probably wouldn’t even hear me anyway.”

I heard that, of course I could not miss it. I could hear every thin, cutting thing he said and save them away like teeth. I let my gaze form a sterner look that looked like death itself.

He studied me with a look that was almost amused, and then more sharp curiosity. “Have we met before?” he asked. “You’re staring at me like we have a problem and you are one second away from pulling my guts out.”

Perhaps I am you dim witted murderer.

My chest burned with the promise of it, one day pulling his guts out and sticking the dagger in his chest, the same one I had pulled out of Rivan and kept all these years.

He blinked, and for the first time his eyes lingered on me like he was cataloguing evidence. A deathly smirk curled my lips, and his expression shifted, he knew I could hear him. 

“If you can hear me, then is the problem speaking? Can you not speak” he pressed, his tone sharp, eyes searching mine.

I stayed silent, watching him fume in frustration and before he could sharpen whatever retort he had been composing, a dark-haired man around the same age as him, with amber eyes pushed through the hall, just as smug as Aklan was and grinned at us like we had been in on a private joke.

“Your pants are ripped,” the boy said loudly, brow arched in faux concern.

I felt heat flood my face. “What?”

The boy smirked at Aklan. “There you go, she speaks Aklan. How could you not know that? She was toying with you.”

Aklan narrowed his eyes at me, the look like a steel trap snapping closed. He peered down at my uniform with a brief, dismissive glance, then back up, voice flat and lethal. “Combat and war strategy. That means you’re my headache.”

I could feel the press of dozens of pairs of eyes outside the hall, waiting to see what the Captain would do with the insolent new wolf. He didn’t smile. He did not offer the patronizing mercy so many did when confronted with a trembling recruit. Instead, he folded his hands and gave me the kind of sentence that would have my father up at night.

“You’ll be at the training ground by nine tonight,” he said. “Before curfew. You will be serving your punishment. You’re late? You’re dead.”

Punishment.

For what? For daring to breathe in a space he occupied? For surviving? For daring to hate?

He turned on his heel and walked away as if the exchange had been routine. The amber-eyed boy trailed behind muttering something about me being odd, and the sound made my skin prickle.

My nails dug into the palm of my hand until I tasted metal. I wanted to reach for him, I wanted to grab his throat with both hands, to drag his eyes to mine and make him see the shape of the grief he had created. I wanted to tear the captain’s crest from his chest and watch it fall in pieces at my feet.

But I didn’t, I couldn’t. I stood there with my fists clenched, lungs burning, while the rage roared inside me like a caged wolf. I was not strong enough, not yet. It was the truth and it was a bitter stone in my mouth.

I swallowed that truth down and let it sit heavy in my chest. For now, there were rules, there was training. For now, the blade of my patience had to be sharpened by hours and iron until I could wield it. Until then, I would learn, I would wait, I would grow until the day I no longer had to imagine ending him and I could do it for real.

The assignment echoed in my ears as the hall emptied and normality reasserted itself. Nine tonight, I would serve punishment, the word tasted like nails on glass.

I breathed in. I mapped the curve of the training ground in my head—the barricades, the dummies, the course that would become the gauge of my worth. I would be there, I would get better. Every punishment was only making me better, making me his equal. Closer and closer till I could fulfill my promise.