Chapter 20
DASKA
Ifound him at the overlook.
The place where the ridge jutted out above the camp like a jaw set against the sky, where you could see the whole valley spread below.
Rivik stood at the edge with his back to me, watching the last of the Broken Ridge formation disappear into the shadows between the pines.
The wind had picked up since the confrontation, carrying the bitter tang of coming rain and the fading musk of enemy wolves, and it whipped his hair across his face in strands he didn't bother to push away.
He heard me coming. Of course he did. I wasn't trying to be quiet.
The bear in me was close to the surface.
Closer than it had been in years, maybe ever.
I could feel it pressing against the underside of my skin like something trying to claw its way out, hot and vast and utterly, devastatingly furious.
My hands were shaking. I was trying very hard not to shift, which took most of my concentration, because the bear inside me had been clawing at the walls of my chest since the moment Karik had looked at Ellie and called her property, and the only thing keeping me in human form was the thin, fraying thread of knowledge that if I shifted now, I would not stop until something was dead.
I stopped three paces behind him. Close enough to be heard without shouting. Far enough that I wouldn't do something I'd regret.
"You would give her to him."
The words came out low. Rough. Barely human.
Rivik didn't turn around. He just stood there, silhouetted against the bruised sky with his shoulders set like a man bracing for a blow he'd already decided to take.
The silence stretched between us like a wound opening, and with every heartbeat that passed without him speaking, the fury inside me climbed higher.
The bear pressed harder against my skin, my vision sharpening at the edges the way it always did before a shift, colours bleeding away until the world was all contrast and movement and the dark shape of the man in front of me who had just traded away the only person I had ever…
"You just stood there," I said, and my voice cracked on the words like ice splitting. "You stood there and you bargained her away like she was a winter hide. You looked that animal in the eye and you agreed."
"I bought time." His voice was flat. Controlled. The alpha's mask, locked in place so tight I could see the strain of it in the rigid line of his spine. "Which is more than we had an hour ago."
"Time? You gave him permission." I grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him around to face me. "You looked that animal in the eye and told him she would be here when he came back. You promised him, Rivik. Before your pack. Before the Great Mother. You gave your word that she would not leave."
His amber eyes met mine, and I could see that however calm and controlled the outside was, inside Rivik was fighting for control as much as I was.
"I know what I said. We now have half a cycle to-"
"Fourteen days. You bought fourteen days, and then what?
You hand her over? You let that animal drag her to Broken Ridge so his wolves can…
" I couldn't finish. The image alone made my vision blur red at the edges, made my hands curl into fists so tight my knuckles ached.
"You know what he'll do to her. You heard what he said. "
"I heard every word. Do you think I stood there and felt nothing? Do you think I don't know exactly what Karik intends for her?"
"Then how could you—"
"Because if I had refused him, he would have challenged me on the spot.
" Rivik pulled free of my grip. “Yes, I heard every word.
I was standing ten paces from him when he said it.
I was standing there with my wolf spirit trying to tear itself out of my body, and I smiled and I nodded and I gave him my word, because the alternative was watching him kill half my pack before the sun went down. "
"Then you should have let me—"
"Let you what?" He stepped toward me, and the mask slipped.
His eyes blazed gold and he shook his head.
"Let you shift? Let you charge twenty wolves in battle formation?
You're strong, Daska. You're the strongest fighter I have.
But you are one bear against twenty wolves, and even you cannot survive those odds.
And while you were dying heroically in the dirt, Karik's remaining wolves would have gone straight through our line and taken her anyway.
Along with every other female in this camp. "
“We would have stopped them,” I growled. Rivik gave a bitter laugh.
“Yes. We would have fought, and yes, we probably would have won.
Probably. And how many of ours would have died for that probably, Daska?
Five? Ten? Sila, who has three children under eight?
Torin, whose mate is carrying? Vishak, who can barely see out of his left eye since the Greywash skirmish?
" He swallowed and took a deep breath. "I made the calculation.
That is what an alpha does. I made the calculation, and the calculation was that I could not risk my people's lives on a fight that Karik wanted me to start. "
"So instead you risk her."
"I risk nothing if I can find another way."
"What other way?" I threw my arms wide, and the gesture felt too big, too wild, the bear leaking through into every movement. "You swore an oath. Before the Great Mother. You told Karik she would be here. You cannot break that oath without losing everything, and you cannot keep it without—"
"I know." The two words were barely audible. "I know, Daska."
I wanted to hit something. I wanted to tear this ridge apart with my bare hands, rip the stone from the earth and hurl it into the valley until the mountains themselves understood what was at stake.
The bear was so close now that I could taste copper at the back of my throat, could feel the phantom weight of a larger body pressing outward against the boundaries of my skin.
Instead, I stood there. Shaking. Trying to breathe.
"She is our fated mate," I said, and my voice came out broken in a way I hadn't intended. "Yours and mine. The Great Mother chose her for us, and from where I stand, it looks like you've handed our mate to a monster and called it leadership."
The word hung between us. Our mate. I saw the flinch, the barely perceptible crack in his jaw, and I didn't care.
I was past caring about his feelings, past caring about the careful, diplomatic dance we'd been doing around this for weeks.
Ellie was in danger. Real, immediate, fourteen-days-away danger, and I was done pretending that any of this was acceptable.
Rivik turned away from me and stared out over the valley.
The last of the daylight was bleeding out of the sky, leaving everything grey and bruised.
Below us, the camp moved with restless energy.
From here I could see Ryke, cool and calm as always, organising the last of the repairs, posting guards, and generally keeping an eye on things.
He was a good Second. When we were young, I’d been jealous of him.
He and Rivik were blood brothers, and I was not even their kind, but Rivik had always had my unwavering loyalty and support even when Ryke challenged him.
But a bear could never be Second in a wolf pack.
"You think I don't know what she is to me?
" Rivik's voice was barely above a whisper.
"You think I haven't spent every night since she arrived lying awake with the bond screaming in my chest?
Every time she laughs, I hear it across the camp.
Every time she's frightened, I feel it like a knife between my ribs.
I cannot eat. I cannot think." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"You think this is easy for me? Do you understand what it cost me to stand there and call her a matter to be resolved? "
I couldn’t speak, couldn't think of what to say. I loved him, but right now, by the Great Mother, I wanted to tear him to pieces. The wind gusted hard across the ridge, carrying the first cold drops of rain, and I watched them hit the stone at our feet and darken it in scattered patterns.
Then he spoke, and his voice had changed. The rawness was still there, but underneath it was something else. Something careful.
"I did not say I would let him take her."
I stared at the back of his head. The rain was coming harder now, darkening the shoulders of his tunic, but neither of us moved.
"What?"
He turned. Slowly. And the expression on his face was not the shattered, desperate thing I'd expected. It was sharp. Focused.
“I told Karik they could return in half a moon cycle to claim her. I also gave them my word that in that time, the travellers would not leave the valley. That is all I said. I did not at any point tell Karik that I would let him take Ellie.”
“You said he could-”
“Making another claim is the same as allowing him to take her. Karik has given us half a cycle to find a way to make his claim on her invalid. He may return, but by his own acceptance is the law, he will not be able to take her with him.”
I stared at him. The rain was falling steadily now, soaking through my tunic and plastering my hair against my neck, but I barely felt it. My mind was turning over his words, trying to find the shape of what he was telling me, and coming up short.
"How?" I asked. "Karik's claim is based on pack law. She's unclaimed. Unbonded. Unprotected. You said it yourself at the council, guest-right is thin. It barely held today, and it won't hold in fourteen days when he returns with twice as many wolves and the gathering council watching."
"Guest-right won't protect her," Rivik agreed. "You're right about that."
"Then what will?"
He held my gaze. The rain ran down his face in rivulets, catching in the short beard along his jaw, and in the failing light his eyes were more gold than grey. He looked exhausted.