14. Chapter 14
Chapter 14
Wulfric
All my protective instincts surge to the surface as Kieran comes to stand at my side.
Anders stares me down, claws out and fangs sharp.
I don’t want this, but this storm between us has been brewing for a long time. Anders has always coveted the title of alpha, and he’s made it plain that in his eyes, I am a piss-poor choice. Lyall rises and goes to his twin, murmuring to him, his eyes wide and pleading.
Anders shoves him away. “You will be the death of us, Wulfric. Our parents are watching us from Valhalla. The shame you bring their name… it must tear them apart.”
I tense my stomach muscles like I’m preparing for a punch. When Anders is pissed, every word cuts deeper than a knife. He’s right. I’m sure my parents are disappointed in me. I try, gods, I try to be the man, the son, the leader they would have wanted. And I’ll never know if it’s enough.
Like he’s sensed an opening, Anders strikes again. This time, he goes deep. “If I’d been on that beach when the hunters came, our father would still be here.”
I can feel the blood drain from my face, my hands curling into fists sharp with claws.
Anders’s voice shakes, his eyes wild with emotion. “I could have saved him. If he’d just let me go in your stead, but no. It had to be you, didn’t it? His precious heir! You’re the one who should have died that day, not him!” Spittle flies from his lips.
His furious roar drags me down to that damned beach where my world crumbled. Blood dyes the foaming waves red as they splatter over the rocks. The lifeless eyes of men and boys I know by name stare right through me as I lie face down on the bloody shore, too terrified to move. Warriors utter prayers to Odin through throats thick with blood. Others in the throes of death whimper and beg for their mothers, their loved ones, their children.
Arrows soar over my head, barely missing my skull. Weapons crack like thunder against shields. My people are dying or dead, and I can’t move. I can’t because if I move I know that I will be cut down and my life will be over. Just be still. Be quiet. Live. They can’t hurt me if they think I’m dead.
A huge black wolf charges through the clashing bodies. With a single pounce, he brings down a hunter and tears into his throat. When he looks at me, blood drips from his snout.
My father still lives. When he sees me, his fear and relief surge through the bond. He runs to me, shaking the ground.
And he doesn’t see the archer on the cliff above, not until the arrow has flown loose. With a roar, my father stumbles, biting at the arrow lodged in his shoulder.
Get up.
Get up.
Get up.
I can’t move. I’m too fucking scared. If I run fast enough, I can make it. I can save him.
Another arrow pierces my father, this time in his throat. He goes down, shaking the earth.
A hunter comes toward my father, stepping over the corpses of my slain kin, bedecked in armor with the Christian cross painted across the metal in blood. A silver dagger gleams in his hand. Slamming a boot down on my father’s skull, the hunter lifts his weapon and—
“No!” The roar tears from me. Stumbling back, I crash into the hearth, clutching the mantelpiece so my buckling knees don’t give in. “It wasn’t my fault. I tr-tried.” I’m panting but no matter how fast I breathe, I can’t get in enough air. My heart slams against my ribs, racing so fast I know it will rupture in my chest. I should be dead. Anders is right. I’m the one who should have died.
“I r-ran as fast as I could. I was almost there. I could have saved him. I—”
If I hadn’t been such a coward. If I’d just been stronger, braver…
Gasping, I press my face into the stone floor, unsure when I fell to my knees in the first place. Just lie down. Be still. Be quiet. They won’t hurt me if I’m dead. The screams and pleas of dying men tear at my brain. Red waves smash over the rocks. Arrows puncture the ground around me. I close my eyes and wait to die.
“But you didn’t. You didn’t save him. We lost him.” Anders’s voice shakes with grief and fury. “It should have been you. Why couldn’t it have been you?”
The sound of flesh hitting flesh and a pained grunt silence Anders’s tirade.
Gasping for air, I look up.
Kieran is inches from Anders, and from the angle of his clenched fist, I think he just punched my brother in the mouth. Anders’s split lip and blazing eyes confirm it.
“Shut the fuck up,” Kieran snarls, his body vibrating with fury. White fur sprouts on his arms, his fur cloak bristling like it’s about to come to life. “How about you look past your own fucking grief and understand that he’s hurting, too! He did the best he could.”
Anders’s chest rises and falls quickly, his hands in fists. If I don’t get up now, he’s going to hurt Kieran. “You weren’t there.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Kieran snaps, staring him down without a fear in the world, “but if I know anything about Wulfric, it’s that he would have given everything he had to save his father. He cares about this pack so deeply, he mated a man he barely even knew because he wants to be the best alpha he can be. Because he cares about you, you asshole, and your brothers. So if you really think you can do a better job than him, then how about you shut up and prove it?”
For a moment, I’m stunned out of my panic. I’ve never seen Kieran so furious, and it warms me that it’s on my behalf. My knees shake too badly to stand, but I need to go to him and make sure my brother doesn’t hurt him.
“That’s enough.” Helga gets between Anders and Kieran. “This Althing is concluded. Get out, all of you.”
“But, Alpha, someone stole my goat!” a man shouts.
“To Hel herself with your goat. Out!”
“Yas, queen,” Kieran whispers. I have no idea what that means, but he looks at Helga like she hung the moon.
Helga motions wildly for everyone to clear the room. “And you.” She rounds on Anders. “Your parents would be ashamed of this. You’re fighting among your brothers when you should be coming together.”
Anders flinches. “Apologies, Aunt.” But from the glare he gives me, I know this isn’t over. Good. I’ve had it up to here with Anders challenging my authority. If he thinks he’d be a better alpha, then he should prove it just like Kieran said.
The house empties except for my family. My mate kneels at my side, rubbing my shoulders. My breathing is choppy, and my head swims as spots dance in front of my eyes. If I close them, it feels like I’ll fall into nothingness.
I should have tried harder to save Father. I could have done more. All the guilt I thought I’d locked away for years now has returned with a vengeance, threatening to eat me alive.
“I’ll make you that tea, Wulfric,” Helga says, like she knows I will be in for an especially bad night. Her tea keeps the nightmares at bay and helps me sleep.
Lyall approaches and tousles my hair. “I’m proud to call you Alpha, brother. Anders is hurting, but he’s wrong.”
Gunnar nudges my boot with his foot. “We know you did the best you could. You fought to save him with everything you had, I’m sure of it.”
Bile rises in my throat. If they knew… oh gods. They would hate me. Anders is right. He’s right.
Kieran shakes his head, tucking his face between my neck and shoulder, nuzzling me like a wolf would. “I think he needs to be by himself, guys.”
“I’ll stop by in the morning,” Gunnar promises.
“Good evening,” Lyall says, offering one more smile.
“Wulfric?” Kieran asks, his voice soft in the silence. “Do you need something? What can I do?”
I can’t speak. It’s like I’m trapped on that beach, terrified to move even a single muscle.
“Hey.” Gentle hands frame my face, but I flinch out of his touch. I don’t deserve kindness nor understanding. I should be dead. “Wulfric.” Kieran’s voice is far away. I can’t even look at him. He deserves so much better than me. A sigh rattles from my chest. Closing my eyes, all I want is to curl in on myself and never wake up.
If I’d just been stronger, been a better warrior, a better son, I could have saved him.
I can’t take it. The pain. The guilt. Every time I think the wound has healed, something tears it open all over again and I bleed out. I need to escape. Yanking my furs over me, I let the shift drag me under. All my emotions are pushed to the back of my mind as I run, crashing through the front door and out into the cold. My mate calls after me, his bond compelling me to turn back, but I ignore it.
My paws carry me forward, leaping over fences and startling livestock until I’m surrounded by overgrown forest. I run until the breath tears from my aching lungs, until the demons from my past can no longer catch me. When my body is too sore to keep running, I collapse at the base of a tree.
In this form, my worst thoughts are only distant whispers, easily carried away by the wind.
Head on my paws, I close my eyes and finally know peace.
The moon rises and falls seven times. It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed away from the village. In the days after my father’s death and my escape from captivity, I stayed away for weeks at a time. Being a wolf was simply easier. I could be another person and not the coward who’d lain on the shore and watched as his enemy drove a blade into his father’s neck. Like a gods-damned coward.
I’m not Wulfric. All I am is a wolf, and all wolves have to do is eat, hunt, and sleep.
But every so often, a howl echoes over the trees, and notes of sorrow and loneliness make my heart break. I long to return my mate’s song, to reassure him that I will return, but I can’t bring myself to acknowledge him. I closed myself off from the bonds connecting me to my pack, needing privacy. I can’t hear them or sense them, nor can they do the same to me. I need to be alone.
I never wanted anyone to see me like that. Never wanted my people to see the real me, the scared boy who couldn’t save his father. But they did. They saw how deeply I am still scarred by his death. Kieran saw that.
A low whine escapes my throat, and I curl up more tightly into a ball on the forest floor.
How can I ever face him again? I can never be the mate, the man, he deserves.
Best to simply stay as a wolf and let Wulfric the man die.
Anders would be a better leader. He would have saved our father.
It’s better if I disappear.
The sun rises on another day alone in the woods. My mouth waters for the reindeer I killed the other day, so I rise, shake off my pelt, and set off at a trot into the woods. Twigs snap behind me and the winds blow familiar scents to my nose.
Oh no.
Spinning around, I bare my fangs as Lyall and Gunnar emerge from the trees. Lyall, a white wolf, whines, lowering his head submissively while still wagging his foolish tail. Gunnar, a mottled gray wolf, growls at me.
“Go away,” I tell them, turning my back and walking away.
“That’s enough of this nonsense, Wulfric,” Gunnar says, loping up beside me. “ Get off your hairy asshole and come back to the village.”
“Gunnar, take it easy,” Lyall scolds, nipping at his brother’s flank.
Gunnar snaps at Lyall in retaliation. “ When has easy ever been good enough? Did you lot let me take it easy after I lost Leif or my boy? No. If I had been allowed to ‘take it easy,’ I wouldn’t still be alive.”
“Wulfric, come back to the village. We’re worried about you.”
“I know!” Lyall’s ears perk up. “How about we go for a swim? That always makes you feel better.”
Gunnar rolls his lips back from his fangs. “No, let’s take him hunting, work out all that negative energy!”
Lyall nips at his ass again. “Swimming!”
“Hunting!” Gunnar pounces on him and the two engage in a fierce sparring match.
Gods, give me strength. They are like oil and water, Gunnar’s hotheaded impulsiveness a contrast to Lyall’s even-tempered, soft-spoken nature.
Satisfied, I lope away into the trees. I have my peace and quiet back… for fifteen minutes, until they catch up to me.
They don’t approach me, but it’s easy to see them through the trees, stalking me like prey. Every time I think I’ve shaken them, Gunnar’s dark coat stands out against the snow or Lyall’s tail wags above a bush. I’m forced to change direction multiple times to try and evade them until I realize what they’re doing as the path becomes more and more familiar.
The trees thin the closer we get to the village and smoke rises over the woods. If I go east, I could be there in moments. I could see Kieran. I have no doubt he’s angry and worries for me. Instead, I go west when I spot the glimmer of Gunnar’s eyes from beneath a cluster of trees near the village pathway.
My feet lead me onward, my brothers hot on my trail. I know where they’re guiding me. It’s somewhere I haven’t been in a long time. The burial mound looks like an ordinary hill from this distance. Towering stones erected to form the shape of a ship encircle it. I don’t know why they’ve led me here, but I suspect it's in some misguided attempt to help me. The fools. A plague on the pair of them.
Still, it’s been some time since I paid my respects, so I seek the entrance to the barrow. Inside, Gunnar and Lyall wait for me as men. They must have come from the other side of the hill while I hesitated. They’ve already lit the torches, illuminating the chamber within. Stone slags conceal the ancient remains of the alphas and their mates who came before me, but I find my father’s and mother’s remains easily. Even in death, my heart knows my pack.
Many of our ancestors’ remains were desecrated when the hunters burned our childhood home. After we burned my father on the pyre we gathered his ashes and bones, dug up the graves that hadn’t been destroyed, and brought their remains to their new resting place.
Offerings lie upon their coffin: arrows, my father’s sword, my mother’s shield and her favorite steed’s saddle. If I’d known I was coming, I’d have brought something for them. I wish to this day I’d had the chance to get to know my mother, but she died giving birth to me. Our father and Helga raised us.
Gunnar steps away from Lyall and me and crosses over to the coffin where his chosen mate lies buried with their son. They were both killed in the hunter attack. Gunnar kneels by the coffin and hangs his head. I look away, unsettled by the scent of his pain.
Lyall stares down at the coffin, sighing softly. “Father was a great man, Wulfric. But I think you forget he had his imperfections.”
Gunnar growls, “Like trusting Soren.”
Lyall rounds on him. “Do not speak his name! Soren didn’t betray us!”
I haven’t heard Lyall speak that traitor’s name in years and yet the anguish in his voice is still as heavy as it was all those years ago.
After Father took him in, Soren grew up alongside us, Lyall’s constant companion. When Soren confessed himself that he’d known about the hunters’ plans, it had shocked us all.
Gunnar says, “He confessed so himself, Lyall. He gave up our location to the hunters. He chose his father and his hunters over us.”
Lyall shakes his head furiously. “He lied to protect me, so the rest of the pack wouldn’t think I was in on the attack! You all wanted someone to blame for father’s death, so you took it out on him! You never even questioned the things he said.”
Mayhap he’s right. I don’t know. The days after the attack are such a blur in my memory.
Gunnar gives us an icy look over his shoulder. “Still you defend that traitorous craven!”
Lyall winces, grinding his teeth. I can see he longs to protect Soren, still, after all this time. As much as it irritates me, I can understand. It was clear to all of us that he loved Soren. I’d thought Soren loved him, too, but it was all a lie. He’d used us for protection, then stabbed us in the back when the hunters came to save him. When Soren was exiled, Lyall disappeared into the woods for days and didn’t return. When he did, he smiled less and the light in his eyes had ceased to shine.
Clearing his throat, Lyall carries on. “I’m only saying that Wulfric bears too much responsibility for Father’s demise. Our father knew what he was doing. He was a man, a warrior. He knew the costs of war.”
Lowering myself to my belly, I rest my head on my parents’ coffin. Even if I were human, I could never find it in me to tell them my role in our father’s death. If they knew I’d given in to fear and watched our father die, they would hate me. I’ve lost both my parents. I cannot lose any more of my family, but I fear the guilt inside will fester until it eats me alive unless I tell them the truth. The fear of losing their love and respect wins out over my guilt, though. I stay silent.
“Kieran misses you deeply,” Lyall says.
A whine escapes me before I can choke it back. I miss him, too. It’s only been a handful of nights since I last saw him, but it feels like months since I held him in my arms and kissed him.
“Won’t you go back to him? It isn’t fair to make him worry.”
“I can’t face him,” I say through the bonds. “Not after showing such weakness.”
Gunnar scoffs. “He doesn’t give a shit about any of that, you pigheaded oaf. He misses you.”
Why would Kieran ever want a broken wolf with scars carved upon his heart and soul? No matter how much time passes, all it takes is a harsh word from my brother and I’m back on that beach, cowering in terror while my father dies in front of me.
Gunnar comes to kneel beside me and rests a hand on my head between my ears. “Our village needs their Alpha. Anders is getting more brazen with each day you’re gone. He’ll stage a coup. You’ve got to come back.”
“We need you, Wulfric. We need you to be strong for us.”
I tire of being strong, of fighting battles outside and within myself. All I want is the space to fall apart and the time to put myself back together again. Aren’t I allowed that much?
Panic erupts in my chest. No. Not again. I can’t go back to that beach. I can’t…
“What is that?” Lyall gasps, clutching his chest. “Is that… By the gods, something’s wrong!”
It’s not my panic, not my terror that’s coursing through my chest.
It’s Kieran’s fear, his pain that courses through me like the bite of a blade.
Something horrible is happening to him.
I’m up on my paws and tearing from the barrow. For the first time in days, I find my voice and hurl my head back to the skies.
A song of war pours from my throat and echoes into the vast open sky above.