MasukIrinaHe had to drag me three steps before my body remembered how.We ran for an hour. The two that had not gotten Torin came after us into the trees. They were behind us and they were closing and we were down to maybe twenty yards of running room before a rock face when they stopped.They turned around. They walked back to the road.We had thought, at the time, that the smell of the kill had pulled them off us. I had needed to think that, because anything else would have stopped me from running.I let myself think the other thing now.Wolves of conquest, Aldric had said an hour ago in the study. With the right person in charge, you could direct an entire Northern army of rogues. Point them wherever you needed them to go.He had said it because he was telling me he knew. He was using the captain's debrief as cover to tell me exactly what he thought had happened on that road. He was watching my face for the answer.And what he had got was yes.I pressed both hands flat against my mouth
IrinaI stood up. I did not mean to. My legs went out from under the chair before I knew why, and the cramp under my ribs went sharp and I bent forward over the bedpost, fingers wrapped around the cold wood, and I tried to figure out where my body wanted to go.Out. Out was where my body wanted to go.Where, though.I pressed my forehead to the bedpost.Not back to Holt. The thought came up and I shut it down. Not my father.Beren of Holt was the alpha of a small pack at the end of the southern provinces, and his alliance with Valdris was older than my marriage to Aldric. The marriage was the alliance. The marriage had paid for the alliance. The original loan from Valdris had covered eighteen years of failed harvests and missed payments and one bad winter where half my father's pack had starved, and by the time I was sixteen, the interest on the principal was higher than anything my father's lands could ever produce. I was the interest. I had known what I was on the night my father ca
IrinaI made it to the bedside chair before my legs went out.The chair was velvet. Cold against my palms when I gripped the armrests. I sat there for a long minute with my mouth open and my throat working, breathing through my teeth, trying not to make a sound that would carry into the corridor. My chest had been holding the same shape for the last two hours and the muscles weren't sure how to do anything else. Down by the door I could still hear the senior maid's footsteps fading into the carpet, and then nothing.For the first time since the carriage had crossed back into Valdris territory, I was not being watched.I drew a breath in through my nose.Lemon oil. Beeswax. The faint sweet rose of the soap the maids used in the linen press. The fire in the hearth was a clean orange, the wood already burned down to the second log, and the smoke smelled the way smoke was supposed to smell in a civilized house — like a fire, and nothing else. No iron in the air. No stone. No three-deep wo
AldricI looked at the captain."Hey," I said.He looked up. I smiled at him."Relax," I said. "Take a sip. It'll help, I promise you."He looked down at the glass. He picked it up — I watched his hand, the subtle shake in it — and he brought it to his mouth and drank. A real sip, a proper one.I nodded, watching him."There, there," I said. "That's good."I gave him a moment. Watched the color come back into him, the faint loosening that alcohol produces in a body that has been locked tight for too long."How are you feeling now?"He nodded. "Fine, my King. I’m better."Lies. But I nodded anyways.I leaned back in my chair, one hand resting on the arm of it, and looked at him for a moment. Then, pleasantly, as if it were a natural next question:"Who was it?"The captain's throat moved. He looked for just a moment genuinely scared. But he was able to compose himself fast enough."I don't know, my King. They had us locked away. I had no access to anything outside the cell." He paused.
Aldric"Apparently, our daughter prefers women."I watched it land. I watched her face — the way her brows came down into the small, immediate frown of someone receiving information that doesn't fit what they know. I nodded, letting it settle in. I held my cup out slightly, and chuckled."I was very surprised too," I said.Irina shook her head. "That can't be true," she said.I shrugged. My lips pressed together, even, noncommittal. "I’m just as surprised as you are."She stared. The information was still sitting in the air between us, unprocessed, too new to know what to do with it.Almost immediately, a knock, and the door came open. The senior maid — twelve years in this house, absolute discretion, knows exactly when to appear and when to become invisible. She greeted me with her customary composure, and then turned to Irina with a genuine smile, warm and unperformative."Welcome home, my Queen. We're so glad you're back.""Irina." I set down my glass. "I know this is a lot to sit
AldricI went to my knees in front of her.She followed me down with her eyes. Nothing else moved — not her hands, not her chin. She just watched me go down, and then she was looking at the top of my head, and I looked up at her.I smiled. Then I shook my head slowly, with the particular remorse of a man who means it.I reached up and took her face in my hand. My thumb moved across her cheekbone, back and forth."I'm sorry," I said. "You shouldn't have had to do any of this alone. That was too much."I started to check her over — her jaw, her neck, the line of her collar. Looking for anything the journey had left behind, any sign the attack had gotten closer than the story suggested. After a moment I looked up at her."Were you hurt anywhere?"She shook her head. "I'm fine," she said. "Just exhausted from the running, and the hiding—" She stopped. Shook her head again, and then the tears came, suddenly and properly, spilling down her face and dropping onto mine where I was kneeling be
SeraI watched Kael. His chest heaved sporadically. He was choking on the blood flooding his windpipe."Hold his shoulders down!" the healer yelled at Yvara. "The bone is completely displaced."I knew exactly what that meant. Taya’s arm had healed crooked because her wolf biology kicked in before t
FenrisThe embers in the hearth were bleeding out, turning from angry orange to a dull, dying red.The den was freezing again, but the cold didn't register. I just sat in the heavy oak chair in the corner of the room, perfectly still, watching the dark bear pelt rise and fall over her chest.Sera’s
Sera“What just happened?”"Forced healing takes fuel," Yvara explained. She paced in front of me. "It pulls energy directly from your reserves. It burns calories at a massive rate. In a battle of attrition, this will keep you alive, but it will also kill you if you aren't careful. You just got the
SeraMy mother’s hands were too soft. They felt strange against my skin, like something that didn't belong in the North. She dabbed a wet linen cloth against my cheek, her fingers trembling so badly she kept missing the dirt.The guest room was stifling. She had ordered the Valdris servants to buil







