The Hollis House

Chapter 3: The Hollis House

"You are not leaving this kitchen."is 

Callum's hand closed around Wren's arm before she reached the doorframe, and she rounded on him with a look that promised he'd lose the hand if he didn't release it in the next breath.

"Those children are going to die for looking like mine," Wren said. "I'm not standing here while that happens."

"And if it's a trap built to pull you out into the open, you'll die instead, and then whose mother are Ashe and Elowen?" 

Callum's grip didn't loosen. "Vaelith wants you gone as much as they want the twins taken. You walking into a screaming village in the dark is exactly what they'd hope for."

"He's not wrong," Mira said, low, and reluctant. 

"Wren, think."

"I am thinking. I'm thinking about Sela Hollis trusting me to keep an eye on her boys while she's away, and I'm thinking about what kind of woman I'd be if I let them die in my place."

"Then I'll go," Callum said. "Alone. Faster, and Vaelith's men don't know my face the way they'd know yours if you shifted again tonight."

"You said your own men are two hours out."

"They are. I'm not waiting for them."

Elowen's voice cut through the argument, smaller than either adult's but somehow louder for it. "Take me with you."

Three heads turned toward her at once.

"Absolutely not," Wren said.

"They think it's us, right? The Hollis boys, whoever's out there thinks they're grabbing me and Ashe. If I'm not here, and Ashe isn't here, and someone tells them the children they already have aren't the right ones"

"They will not stop hurting those boys just because you announce yourself," Wren said, horror climbing into her voice. "Elowen, no."

"I'm not saying announce it to the men with swords, Mom. I'm saying tell them where the real danger is standing.

" Elowen looked at Callum, not her mother, when she said the next part. "You said your men are coming. 

If they know the false trail's been laid, they'll follow it instead of tearing this village apart house by house looking for us."

Callum studied her for a long moment, something like reluctant respect settling into his expression. 

"She's not wrong about the tactics."

"She's eight," Wren snapped.

"I'm eight and I've spent every one of those years learning how to disappear," Elowen shot back. "You taught me that. Let it be useful for something besides hiding."

Ashe, who had been silent through most of the argument, finally spoke. "If she goes, I go."

"No," Wren said, sharper than she intended. "Absolutely not, both of you"

"Wren." Mira's hand landed on her shoulder, steady in a way the rest of the room wasn't. "Whatever we decide, we decide it fast.

Standing here debating it isn't keeping anyone safe, it's just delaying the part where someone has to choose."

"Then let me choose," Wren said. "And my choice is that neither of my children walks toward armed men tonight, whatever clever plan they've built to justify it."

"Even if the plan works?" Elowen pressed.

"Even then."

The scream came again, closer this time, cut short in a way that made everyone in the kitchen go silent at once.

"That's not a child's scream," Mira said, barely above a breath.

"No," Callum agreed, already moving toward the broken door. "That's one of Vaelith's men."

Wren's confusion lasted only a heartbeat before understanding arrived cold and fast. "The Hollis boys aren't unshifted children. Sela's husband was Ferrin stock, those boys have been shifting since they were six."

"So whoever grabbed them," Mira said slowly, "grabbed something that fights back."

"Good," Ashe muttered. "Maybe that buys them time we don't have to give them ourselves."

"That's not the comfort you think it is," Wren said.

A new sound reached them then, not screaming, but growling, low and layered, more than one throat behind it, rising from the direction of the village green.

Callum's face went through several calculations in the space of a breath. "That changes the shape of this. If the Hollis boys are holding their own, Vaelith's party may already be falling back to regroup rather than press the attack."

"Or they'll escalate," Wren said. "Men who came prepared to kill children don't retreat just because the children bite back."

As if summoned by the thought, hoofbeats sounded on the road outside, not the unhurried procession from before, but urgent, scattered, more than one rider moving at speed.

"That's not a retreat," Callum said, voice going flat and cold. "That's reinforcements."

He was already reaching for the second blade at his hip, tossing it hilt first to Mira, who caught it without hesitation despite never having held one like it in her life.

"I need you both in the cellar," Callum said to the twins. "Now. No arguments, no clever plans, the moment this door is compromised again, I need to know exactly where you are, and I need that to be somewhere I can defend with one entrance."

"And Mom?" Ashe asked.

Wren was already shifting, fur rippling up her arms before the question finished leaving his mouth.

"Your mother," Callum said, watching her transform with something unreadable behind his eyes, "is about to remind Vaelith exactly why the crown was foolish enough to let her go in the first place."

The hoofbeats grew louder, and through the shattered doorway, torchlight multiplied across the tree line, not two or three riders now, but a dozen, banners no longer furled, the crowned wolf facing left unmistakable even in darkness.

And behind them, unhorsed, moving on foot with the unmistakable gait of a shifted wolf still learning to run upright, came a boy no older than Ashe, dragging his younger brother by the collar, both of them bleeding, both of them screaming a name that made Wren's blood run cold.

Not Wren's name.

Theron's.