Chapter 6: Judged By The Wolf

Rhydian’s POV

Her hood fell back, and the whole clearing went quiet.

She had silver-black hair, pale skin, and a beauty that took my breath away.

My wolf slammed against my ribs so hard I nearly stumbled on the top step. I hadn’t stumbled in front of my pack in over a year.

“On your knees,” Toren ordered.

She did not move quickly enough, so he placed a hand on her shoulder and forced her down. Snow soaked through her skirt, yet she kept her chin raised.

I walked slowly down the steps. Warriors lowered their heads as I passed, but I barely noticed them. I could not look away from her.

I stopped a few steps away from her. I felt it was not safe to get too close, especially with the unease her attitude was stirring in me.

“Who are you?”

My voice came out wrong, broken in a place it should not have been.

She lifted her head.

Icy blue eyes met mine, with a thin ring of violet around the edges that flickered when she blinked, like a candle catching a draft.

She did not answer right away, and something about the silence pressed against my chest until I had to breathe through my mouth.

“A witch,” Toren said behind me. “Caught sneaking the healer’s path. Says she was invited.”

“Invited by who?” I asked her directly.

“You.”

Her voice was calm and steady, almost too controlled. A liar’s voice, except my wolf didn’t growl at the lie the way it should have. It went still and listened, the way it used to when Seraphine talked in her sleep.

I crouched down so we were closer to level. Guards shifted uneasily, muttering that an Alpha didn’t crouch for a prisoner, but I cared less.

“I never sent for a witch.”

“Then I was misinformed.”

Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile, more like she was daring me to call it one.

Up close, her scent hit me. Herbs, snow, and something underneath that made my chest ache in a place I’d stopped checking a long time ago.

I gripped my knee to keep my hand from reaching for her jaw the way I wanted to, and hated myself a little for wanting it at all.

“Search her.”

I stood too fast and stepped back.

Two warriors patted her down. They found a dagger sheathed at her hip, plain and unmarked. No talismans, no hex bags, nothing that explained the pull I felt standing away from her, as though there were a rope tied around my ribs and someone kept tugging at it slowly.

“Nothing else, Alpha.”

Eldric came up beside me, his voice low enough that only I’d hear it.

“Exile her before dawn. A witch on our land, uninvited, during a season this unstable. The council won’t sit still for less.”

“She fought no one. Threatened no one.”

“That’s not the point, and you know it.”

I did know it. I’d known it since I was old enough to carry the title.

A stray witch was escorted to the border and told not to return, or things got worse, depending on the mood of whoever caught her. It was simple.

My father would’ve had her gone before the snow settled on her shoulders.

I looked at her again.

She was watching me the way you watch someone you’re waiting to make a mistake, patient, almost amused. But there was something underneath it. Something she was trying very hard not to let show.

My wolf pushed against my skin, wanting out, wanting to get closer, wanting things I didn’t have words for and didn’t trust myself to name in front of my own Beta.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Elowen.”

The name meant nothing to me and everything to my wolf, which surged so hard my knees nearly buckled a second time.

I set my feet firmly and breathed through it, jaw tight, aware that half the clearing was watching their Alpha struggle to stand upright in front of a kneeling witch.

“Alpha.” Eldric again, sharper now. “Give the order.”

Lysandra had come down from the steps at some point, her arms crossed, white fur pulled tight around her shoulders.

She wasn’t looking at Elowen.

She was looking at me, and there was something in her expression I couldn’t place. Not fear, neither was it curiosity. Maybe calculation.

I filed it away and turned my attention back to the problem in front of me.

“She stays,” I said.

The clearing went still in a different way than before. Even Toren’s hand slipped off her shoulder.

“Rhydian…” Eldric started.

“In the pack house. Under guard. My guard.” I said it before I’d fully decided to, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. “Nobody touches her without my say.”

“On what grounds?” Lysandra’s voice was sweet and sharp at once. “She snuck onto our land under false pretenses.”

“On the grounds that I said so.”

I didn’t look at Lysandra when I said it. I looked at Elowen, who was staring at me now with an expression I couldn’t read at all. Something close to grief, wiped from her face before I could be sure of what I’d seen.

“Take her inside,” I told the guards. “Gently.”

Toren hauled her up by the arm, careful this time, and started toward the house. She didn’t fight him.

She glanced back at me once over her shoulder, her hood slipping again, her hair catching the torchlight, and something in my chest twisted so hard I had to look away first.

The doors shut behind them.

The crowd started murmuring, breaking into smaller clusters, warriors already arguing about what their Alpha had just done and why.

I stood in the snow for a long moment, waiting for my wolf to settle the way it always did once a decision was made, but it didn’t do anything at all.

For the first time since the night Seraphine died, my wolf had gone completely, utterly silent.