Tearing-c

I knew where I was. Everyone knew. Every kid in Moonstone learned it before they learned to read: *never cross the black oaks. This was Riven land. Riven didn't take prisoners. Riven didn't take slaves. The Lycan who ruled them, a monster called Vane, was said to feed trespassers to his hounds, just to hear them scream.

My breath fogged in front of me. I took one step back.

Go home, I told myself.  Go back. Beg Garrick to let you scrub floors in the pack house. Anything is better than this. Anything... 

A twig snapped.

It was loud, and it was deliberate, and it came from my left.

"Hey," a voice said out of the dark. "You. Girl."

Panic went through me like a thrown knife. I spun. There were three of them, stepping out from between the trees like they'd been part of the trunks. Huge men in dark leather, boots silent on the dead leaves, each one holding a heavy crossbow. They weren't in wolf form. They didn't need to be.

"Please," I said, and put my hands up. My voice shook, and I hated it. "I didn't mean to cross. I was just running. I got turned around in the dark..."

"Shut up," said the one in front. He came closer, eyes crawling over my torn dress, the mud on my face, the blood running down my shin where the brambles had opened it. A slow, ugly smile spread across his mouth. "Look at that. A little Moonstone stray."

"I'm nobody." I backed up. My heel caught a rock. "I'm wolfless. I'm worth nothing to anyone. Just let me go back."

"Wolfless?"

He laughed. It was a dry, grating sound, like something being dragged over gravel. He lowered his crossbow and unclipped an iron collar from his belt, and it clinked in the quiet, a small bright terrible noise.

"Even better," he said. "The Lycan likes breaking the ones who think they've got nothing left to lose."

He lunged.

I didn't think. My body just did what it had been doing my whole life, which was try to get out of the way. I dropped low and swept my leg at his ankles, and if he'd been a Moonstone boy it might even have worked. He wasn't. His boot caught me under the ribs before I'd finished the move.

The air left me in one awful rush. I hit the dirt on my side, mouth open, nothing coming in, the whole world narrowed to the taste of leaves and iron. I got one hand under me. A heavy boot came down on my shoulder and pinned me flat to the mud.

Sweat. Leather. Sour wolf musk. He filled my nose, my whole head.

"Feisty," he grunted, and reached down and twisted his fist into my hair, and yanked my head back until my neck creaked.

Pain, sharp and bright.

And somewhere deep in my chest, the lock on the door I'd kept shut for ten years  cracked. 

Let me out, said the thing in the dark. It wasn't asking now. Let. Me. Out. 

No! I thought, wild with fear, clawing at the inside of my own skull to shove it back.  If we shift, they'll know. Everybody who ever knew what a wolf should look like will know. They'll kill us. They'll..

The pressure in my chest built and built. My eyes were watering. Behind me the guard was fumbling with the collar's lock, and the cold iron touched the back of my neck, and I thought, very clearly, I am going to die here in the mud in my mother's dress, and my father won't even hear about it until spring.*

"Get off her."

It wasn't shouted. It wasn't even loud. It was three quiet words, and they cut through the cold like a blade drawn across silk.

The boot lifted off my shoulder.

The guard behind me went absolutely still. I felt it, the fist in my hair loosening, his whole body freezing like a rabbit's. The other two didn't wait. They dropped to one knee so fast I heard their armor scrape, heads bowed, crossbows laid in the leaves.

I rolled onto my back, gasping, coughing dirt. My ribs were on fire. I blinked hard, and blinked again, and looked up.

A man stood at the edge of the trees.

He was enormous. Easily seven feet, and broad through the shoulders, dressed in dark, fitted clothes that were far too fine for the muddy woods. His hair was black and cropped close. His face was all sharp angles, cut from stone, with no expression on it whatsoever. He wasn't angry. He wasn't even interested. He looked at the guard the way you'd look at a stain.

But his eyes.

His eyes made the breath catch and stay caught. They weren't human. They weren't a wolf's, either. They glowed a slow, molten gold, and the pupils were slits, and they had found me in the dark like they'd known exactly where I'd be.

 Vane,  I thought.  The Lycan. 

"My Lycan," the guard stammered. He was on his knees now too, gone the color of tallow. "She crossed the border. We only..."

"I didn't ask what you were doing." The voice was low and smooth, and I felt it more than heard it. It went through the dirt and into my back and up into my bones. He took one slow step forward, and the golden eyes never left my face. "I asked why you touched what is mine."

My heart stopped.

I mean that. For one full, terrible second, nothing in my chest moved at all. And then the hollow place where Garrick's bond had been, that raw and bleeding wound, flared with heat. Not pain. A different kind of heat entirely. Something answering. Something waking up.

My mother's stone, under my collar, went hot as a coal against my skin.

Vane crossed the last few feet without a sound. He crouched in front of me and ignored the mud soaking into his trousers, and reached out, slowly, the way you'd reach for a skittish animal. His fingers were large and rough and dry. They brushed a streak of blood off my cheek.

I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Inside me the wolf I'd locked away for ten years had gone completely, unnaturally still, and then, for the first time since I was twelve years old, it spoke in something that was almost a word.

 Finally. 

Vane's thumb rested on my cheekbone. The gold in his eyes flared.

"Mine," he whispered. And then, softer, almost to himself, like a man reading something off a page he'd been waiting years to see: "Hello, Sloane."

I had never told him my name.