3 - A Beast

It wasn't a hard shove, but it was enough to make her stumble backward, her heel catching on a loose stone. She flailed, dropping the coin purse, the few coins scattering into the mud.

“Oh look at that” he laughed. “As clumsy as she is cursed.”

Winter fell to her knees, ignoring them, her hands scrambling in the dirt and muck to retrieve the precious coins. If she came back without them, or without the bread, the punishment would be severe. Her fingers were numb with cold, trembling as she fumbled for a small copper piece.

A large, calloused hand suddenly appeared in front of her face, holding out the last coin. Winter looked up slowly, her heart pounding with fear. But it wasn’t Marcus. it was an older man, Jorunn, the blacksmith.

His face was stern, etched with lines of soot and age, but his eyes held no malice. They held a deep, weary sadness.

“Here child” he said, his voice a low rumble. He didn’t smile. He simply pressed the coin into her palm and closed her fingers around it.

He then straightened up and turned his gaze on Marcus and his friends. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to.

He was one of the pack’s elders, and the sheer weight of his disapproval was enough. Marcus’s smirk faltered.

“We were just having some fun, Jorunn,” Marcus muttered, shuffling his feet.

“Go have it elsewhere,” the blacksmith said, his voice flat. “The Alpha’s men are here. Don’t make our pack look like a bunch of undisciplined pups.”

Marcus and his friends glanced toward the center of the square, where two large, imposing wolves in the Alpha King’s black and gold livery were indeed overseeing the collection of tithes.

They threw one last sneer in Winter’s direction before slinking away.

Winter quickly gathered herself, clutching the coins in her hand. “Thank you, Jorunn,” she whispered, not meeting his eyes.

“Be on your way, girl,” he said gruffly, but without the usual bite of contempt she was used to. He turned and walked back toward his smithy, the moment of kindness already over.

She hurried to the baker’s stall, her heart still hammering. She bought the loaf of bread and the small packet of salt, her interaction with the baker swift and silent. He took her coins without a word and pushed the items toward her, avoiding her gaze.

As she turned to leave, her eyes were inadvertently drawn to the center of the square.

To the Alpha’s men. They were nothing like the wolves of her village. They were bigger, harder, their presence radiating a quiet, lethal authority. They worked with brutal efficiency, their faces impassive.

Everyone gave them a wide berth. These men served the Alpha King.

The Alpha King. Ezekiel Crescent.

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran down Winter’s spine.

No one in the village had ever seen him. He was a creature of myth and terror, a king who ruled from the shadows of his impenetrable citadel deep in the northern mountains.

Stories about him were whispered around fires on the darkest nights. They said he was a monster. That he was thrice the size of a normal wolf when he shifted, with eyes of molten gold.

They said he had single handedly crushed the rebellion in the Southern packs, slaughtering hundreds. They said a witch had cursed him as a boy, giving him all that power but replacing his heart with a cold, dead stone.

They said he had no mate, and that he never would, for what woman would ever be paired with such a beast?