Chapter 4 Varek

The wolf in Varek hadn't settled since the chamber, and pacing the length of his assigned room for the better part of an hour hadn't helped. It kept scenting the air for snow and cold iron and a thread of heat underneath. Her scent. It had been in his nose since the courtyard, and he could not scrub it out.

He kept seeing her exactly as she'd looked across that table: pale gold hair dragged back in a braid so hard it looked like a weapon, blue eyes gone cold as glacier ice the second she recognized him, fists already curling like she wanted to put one through his teeth. He hated that some helpless part of his body had wanted to close the distance anyway, bond or no bond, hatred be damned. He still didn't know what he'd been thinking when he growled at that guard. He knew exactly. The wolf had thought it, and he had only been the mouth.

He'd been given quarters on the third floor of Cairnhold's guest wing, stone walls, a narrow window, a bed he had no intention of using tonight. What he hadn't been told, not until a steward mentioned it in passing on the way up, was that Senna Vaelkarn had been given the room directly beside his, connected by a single door neither of them had asked for.

"Binding preparation protocol," the steward had said, like that explained anything. "The Council wants proximity before the ceremony. They say it helps the bond settle."

Varek had said nothing. There was nothing to say to a wall that thin. A short, ugly sound had escaped him after the steward left, more growl than laugh, because the alternative was putting his fist through the wall, and Cairnhold's stone had outlasted better tempers than his.

He could hear her on the other side of it now, footsteps, the scrape of something heavy being moved, maybe a chair shoved against the door like that would do anything against two people who could claw through stone if they lost their tempers badly enough. He almost laughed at that. He didn't have it in him tonight. Everyone said the pull faded once a wolf stopped fighting it. Nobody had warned him how much fighting it would cost before he got the chance to find out whether that was even true.

Five years he'd carried what he did to her brother like a stone in his chest, and he'd told himself, every fifth of Ashfall, that it was a debt he'd never get to pay back. Now the Council had handed him a version of penance he hadn't asked for and didn't trust, wrapped in a bond that made his whole body ache toward the one person who had every right to hate him.

He thought about his father's silence in the war room.

I gave the order that made you do it.

Not an apology. Dravin Rhoswyn didn't apologize. It was the closest thing to one Varek had ever gotten, and it hadn't made the memory of Emeric Vaelkarn's face any easier to carry. Something coiled tight and restless beneath his sternum, agitated in a way it hadn't been since the day of the raid itself, some old certainty marking exactly how close she stood through that wall and refusing to let him forget it for a single moment.

A sound on the other side of the wall stopped him mid-thought. Not footsteps. Something smaller, sharper, a fist against stone once, twice, like she was hitting something that couldn't hit back.

He was at the connecting door before he'd consciously chosen to move.

"Senna."

Silence.

"I know you can hear me."

"Go away, Rhoswyn."

"I'm not doing this because I want to either." He kept his hand flat against the wood, feeling the faint warmth of the wolf in her answering the wolf in him even through solid stone. His own wolf pressed against the wall of his ribs like a hand against glass, wanting the door open. He did not open it. "For what it's worth."

"It's worth nothing." Her voice was closer now, right on the other side of the door, like she'd crossed the room to stand exactly where he was standing. "You don't get to feel sorry for yourself about this. Not after Emeric."

"I don't feel sorry for myself." His jaw tightened. "I feel sorry that the only way the Council found to end what I did to your family was to tie you to the person who did it."

"My father sold me." It came through the wood flat and raw. "Three weeks ago. He signed the page, and then he looked me in the eye and asked."

Varek's mouth went flat. "Mine signed beside him. He told me nothing either."

"Then we've both been handed over." A hollow laugh. "Congratulations."

A long pause. He could hear her breathing, uneven, closer to the door than she'd probably meant to get.

"I was nineteen when the raid happened," he said, before he could stop himself. "My father gave the order, and I ran it anyway, because I didn't know yet that I was allowed to say no to him."

"That's not an excuse."

"I know." He pressed his forehead briefly to the wood, eyes shut. "I'm not giving you one. I'm just done letting you believe I don't think about it every single day."

He heard her exhale, long and unsteady, like she'd been holding that particular breath since the chamber and hadn't found anywhere safe to let it go until now.

Silence stretched long enough that he thought she'd walked away. Then he heard her hand meet the door from the other side, flat against the wood exactly where his was, like some instinct neither of them had agreed to had made the decision for both of them at once.

The wood between their palms wasn't thick enough to stop what happened next, the pull surging up both their arms at once, sudden and electric. Neither of them pulled away.