Chapter 19
RIVIK
The valley went quiet first. That was always the tell.
I'd learned it from my father before I could hold a spear.
When the birds stop singing and the deer lift their heads, something with teeth is coming.
The ptarmigan had gone silent in the scrub grass.
The small herd of ibex that had been grazing the lower slopes all afternoon had frozen mid-step, ears swivelled toward the eastern ridge, and then bolted as one, white rumps flashing as they disappeared into the treeline.I was checking the snares on the eastern ridge when Torvak's howl split the air.
Not a hunting call. Not a greeting. The long, rising note that meant threat approaching, many, come now.
I'd heard it twice in my life. Once when the Greywash pack had tested our borders. Once when my father died.
My wolf spirit surged forward before the howl finished, and I was running before I'd made the conscious decision to move.
The shift came mid-stride—bones cracking and reforming, skin splitting into fur, the world tilting as my centre of gravity dropped and my senses exploded outward in every direction.
Scent hit me first. Pine resin. Frozen earth.
Woodsmoke from camp. And underneath it all, threading through the cold air like poison in water—wolves.
Dozens of them. Their scent was sharp and musky, laced with the particular territorial aggression of males on the hunt, and it was coming from the west.
Broken Ridge.
I was already halfway back to the camp when Ryke reached me.
He came at a dead run, his wolf barely contained beneath the surface, eyes bright gold.
He didn't need to speak. The expression on his face told me everything, confirmed the thing I'd been dreading for weeks, the thing that had kept me awake at night staring at the roof of my shelter while the bond hummed uselessly in my chest.
"How many?" I asked.
"Twenty. Maybe more. Crossing the western boundary in formation. Scouts said all were in wolf form."
Twenty. More than twice what you'd send for a hunting party. More than you'd bring for a trade negotiation or a border dispute. Twenty was a statement.
"Karik?"
"Centre of the formation. Walking like he owns the ground."
Of course he was.
I'd known they would come. Since the night Cera had stumbled into our camp with blood on her paws and horror in her eyes, I'd known it was only a matter of time. Karik didn't leave loose ends. He didn't tolerate defiance, real or perceived, and I had taken something he considered his.
I'd just hoped for more time.
"Warriors to the boundary line," I ordered, and my voice came out steady despite the roaring in my chest. "Noncombatants to the inner camp. Elders, children, anyone who can't fight, get behind the shelters. Now."
The camp erupted into controlled chaos. Wolves who had been lounging in the weak afternoon sun were on their feet in seconds, shifting and forming up with the instinct of a pack that had drilled for this.
Mothers scooped up children and moved toward the caves without needing to be told twice.
The elderly were shepherded by the adolescents too young to fight but old enough to be useful.
Kessa appeared from somewhere, already organizing, her voice cutting through the noise with calm authority.
I shifted back to human form at the camp's edge. An alpha met a challenge standing upright, on two legs, where words carried weight alongside teeth. My father had taught me that too.
"Rivik." Ryke was beside me, already armed. "The travellers."
Ellie. The name hit me like a fist to the sternum, and my wolf spirit howled inside me, not in warning, but in raw, consuming need. Protect. Mine. Protect.
I shoved it down. Hard.
"Get them behind the pack line," I said. "All of them. Nathan, Megan, Dev, and…" I couldn’t even bring myself to say her name.
Too late. All four of them had joined the small crowd of wolves near the main fire pit. Dev was beside her, leaning heavily on his walking staff, and Nathan and Megan stood a few paces behind them.
She looked at me.
Across thirty metres of packed earth and moving bodies and barely contained chaos, Ellie looked at me, and everything in my chest pulled tight like a bowstring drawn to breaking point.
Not now. Focus.
"Ryke. Formation." My voice came out steady. Good. "Full defensive line at the western approach. I want every wolf we have on that line. No gaps. Sila, Torin, and Jarak take the flanks. Miska, you're with me at the centre."
Ryke nodded and moved, already calling names, and the pack responded swiftly.
Within minutes, the defensive line had formed.
Twenty-three wolves in human form, armed and positioned across the western approach in a crescent that blocked the main path into camp.
Behind them, another dozen in wolf form, hackles raised, teeth bared, a second line of defence that said very clearly: you are not welcome here.
I took my position at the centre. The place my father had always stood.
Daska appeared at my left shoulder, and I didn't need to look at him to know his expression. Calm. Steady. Dangerous in the way only a bear could be dangerous, not the flashy, snarling threat of wolves, but the deep, tectonic certainty that if this went wrong, someone was going to die badly.
He wasn't looking at me. He was looking behind us, at the cluster of noncombatants pressed against the inner shelters, and I knew without following his gaze exactly who he was looking for.
"She's behind us," I said quietly. "She's safe."
"For now," he said, and the weight in those two words told me he understood exactly what was coming.
I turned back toward the western approach.
They were already visible. Broken Ridge wolves emerged from the treeline in a loose wedge formation, and the sight of them made something cold settle in the pit of my stomach.
They moved with discipline. Not the ragged sprawl of a raiding party but the measured, deliberate advance of wolves who spent their lives attacking others, rather than hunting and spending their time with their loved ones in pleasurable pursuits.
Grey pelts and dark brown, a few near-black, all of them large, all of them male.
They fanned out as they cleared the trees, filling the open ground between the forest edge and our boundary markers with a wall of muscle and teeth that was designed to intimidate before a single word was spoken.
It was working. I could feel the tension rippling through my own wolves, the instinctive bristling of fur and baring of teeth as two dozen of my best positioned themselves along the boundary line.
They were steady, but steady and comfortable were different things.
These were my people. My pack. Every single one of them was here because they trusted me to keep them safe.
I could not fail them.
Karik walked at the centre of the formation.
Human form. Of course. The same power play I'd chosen.
His dark hair was pulled back from his face, and he wore a wolf pelt across his shoulders like a trophy, the dead animal's head draped over one shoulder with its jaws still fixed in a snarl. It was meant to convey danger, he’d killed an animal he shared a spirit with, therefore he was someone to fear.
All it told me was that he had no respect for anything sacred.
Everything about him was calculated for maximum effect—the unhurried stride, the way his wolves parted around him like water around a stone, the casual arrogance of a man who believed he had already won.
He stopped ten paces from the edge of the camp.
Close enough to be heard without raising his voice, but far enough away that there was space to fight if it came to that.
I truly hoped it wouldn’t. His wolves fanned out behind him, settling into a loose semicircle that mirrored our defensive crescent.
They didn't shift. They stayed in wolf form, a deliberate choice—it kept the threat visible, kept the teeth on display, and it meant that when Karik spoke, he'd be the only voice.
The only one who mattered. The silence between the two formations was thick enough to choke on.
"Rivik. You look well, old friend. The winter must have been kind to Hanging Rock as you’ve been able to provide for new faces."
I didn't respond immediately. Let the silence stretch. Let him stand there in the cold with his wolves behind him and wonder whether I was going to speak at all. My father had taught me that too—the value of making a man wait.
"We are not old friends, Karik." I let the words drop into the space between us, flat and cold. "And you are standing on ground that does not belong to you."
Karik smiled. It was the kind of smile that never reached the eyes—a baring of teeth dressed up as warmth. "Such hostility. I come in peace, Rivik. Merely to discuss a matter of mutual concern."
"You come with twenty wolves in battle formation. That is not peace. That is theatre."
A ripple of something moved through the Broken Ridge wolves behind him—not quite a growl, not quite a shift in posture, but an acknowledgement that their alpha had been challenged. Karik raised one hand, casual as swatting a fly, and they settled.
"A precaution," he said mildly. "The wilderness is dangerous. Surely you understand." His eyes moved past me, scanning the line of my wolves, the shelters behind them, the cluster of noncombatants pressed against the inner caves.
Then his gaze stopped.
I saw the exact moment he found them. His head tilted slightly, the way a predator's did when it caught movement at the edge of its vision, and his lips curved into something that turned my stomach.