Chapter Twenty-Nine
Calista
Thornwild? I’d expected Nightreef to emerge from the shadows, scent on my trail.
My guard was already positioned in front of me when a shape stepped from the firs ahead, tall and easy in his body with a long knife at his side and another across his back.
My entire body tensed. The male’s long black hair was braided tight down his shoulders and eyes like green glass set in a fox’s face locked on mine.
He wore the hunter’s leather, but the way the world leaned around him said he was something more.
Trystan… Thornwild’s Alpha.
“Calista of Hollowcrest Isle and Frostcrag’s famous shadow. We meet again.” His gaze slid over the wolf mask. “I heard my hunter died on the ridge. Unlucky for him. Fortunately for me, the law allows a Court to send a second in his place.” His smile did not reach his eyes. “So I came myself.”
“How fortunate for us,” Everest snarled.
“The bride is even prettier up close.” Trystan’s grin turned wicked. My pulse went hard.
“You’re certain the law allows this?” I hissed at my guard.
“I’m afraid so,” he murmured. Everest’s stance changed by a breath. He kept the helm on and the distance between us and the Alpha hunter lengthy. “You are a long way from your thorns, Trystan.”
“I am right where I like to be.” He drew the long knife slowly, almost lazily. “Our great king and I do not share a taste for rules. But I do love a test.”
“Are you so desperate for a queen?” Everest’s gaze turned lethal. “After the last failed attempt, are you having trouble with the females back in Thornwild?”
He sneered, baring his teeth. “I have my fun at Court, but a Moon crown… now that is infinitely more interesting.” His eyes brightened. “Show me what Frostcrag thinks is worth a throne.”
The Alpha came at me fast. I barely heard Everest’s warning before he was on me. Trystan moved as if we were already in a dance he had set to music hours before.
I slid left and brought one crescent up to catch his blade. Then I aimed the rope to ensnare him. He eased aside, let it skim past, and smiled like I’d amused him.
“Well done,” he murmured. “Again.”
Everest circled to my right, the space he chose forcing Trystan to split his attention.
The Alpha noticed. “Ah. The shadow.”
Trystan feinted for my shoulder, then changed angles mid-cut. I dropped under his arm and slashed for his thigh. He turned his leg out, and my blade kissed leather just missing the skin.
“Careful,” Everest warned.
“Talking while you work?” Trystan laughed.
He pressed a sudden rush that made the world narrow. Our blades clashed and rang as I staggered back. Moons curses, he was strong. He hooked my ankle with his boot, and I fell to one knee.
“Calista…” Everest hissed.
Trystan’s rope came out in a blink, flicking for my wrist. I yanked back and the loop skimmed my skin, just missing. Everest stepped in again, not striking, only taking up space so the Alpha’s throw had nowhere to land.
Trystan’s eyes slanted to the helm. “Touchy, aren’t you, Black Wolf.” His hand darted out, blade nicking my sleeve, drawing a line of heat along my upper arm. But no blood.
I hissed all the same.
Trystan smirked. “You know, if I wanted the moonbraid, I could take it now.”
“You could try,” Everest countered.
Trystan’s smile only sharpened. “Later.” He glanced at my stance and adjusted his own like he was matching me step for step. “You fight well for a Hollow, but that cut at your thigh is slowing you down. It’ll cost you in the end.”
Rage flared low in my belly. I launched myself at him, rope and crescents together. He batted my blade aside, caught the ring on his knife, then slid away as if he had only been waiting to see me choose to use it.
“Enough with the games, Trystan,” Everest growled.
The Alpha’s gaze flicked to him. “You know, you are taller up close than I remember.”
“And you are exactly as loud,” Everest returned.
Trystan’s eyes gleamed. “When you return home with your tail between your legs and a bride prize short, tell the Savage King we’re finally even.”
He came low and fast, rope snapping for my wrist again.
Everest moved at the same time, shouldering the line just enough that it hissed through the empty air.
Trystan’s knife flicked across my arm, a test he pulled a hair short.
Then his thick fingers curled around my forearm in a punishing grip.
My pulse spiked, a gasp erupting from my clenched lips.
Something in Everest broke at the sound, and the answering one that broke free from his gritted teeth wasn’t Fae.
It was a deep, guttural growl that vibrated across his massive chest. He hit Trystan with his whole body, not a strike, just a violent shove that cracked the Alpha into the rock.
Trystan dropped his knife, the blade hitting the stone with a high, starved screech.
“What happened to the law?” Picking up the fallen blade, Trystan laughed, breathless, as if this all amused him. “No striking unless—”
“Your blade made contact with her flesh,” Everest growled. His voice was raked raw. “You drew first blood.”
Trystan’s smile thinned as he glanced at the barely there cut. “Questionable.” He lunged for me again, quick as a whip.
Everest flowed in front of me. He did not swing first, but the moment Trystan’s blade tipped toward my skin, the Black Wolf answered with violence.
He locked Trystan’s knife hand, turned his wrist, and drove the heel of his palm into the joint.
The sound of bones popping echoed across the thickening air.
Trystan grunted, pain bright at last. He came at him with his free hand and head-butted the mask. Iron rang but Everest did not step back. He didn’t even flinch.
Neither of them did.
For three breaths the two of them were all muscle and grit.
No pretty moves. No show. Trystan tried to wrench free, and Everest refused to let him.
The Wolf’s restraint was frayed to threads.
I didn’t know how it was possible, but I felt it like heat, the push of a beast hunting the edge of the skin.
His breath went rough, and the hard line of his shoulders bulged.
“Everest,” I barked. “Hold.”
He inhaled once, sharply, then exhaled slower, following my breath like it was a map home. He snapped Trystan’s rope away, then slammed him into the rock again and again until the Alpha’s knife fell from his numb fingers. The last hit dropped Trystan to one knee.
The ruler of Thornwild laughed up at us, chest heaving. “Oh, I like you.” He shook out his hand, turning the broken wrist like it was nothing but a splinter. “You pass.”
“Pass what?” I spat.
“The test of my curiosity.” Trystan rose, amusement still playing on his face.
“I wanted to see if Frostcrag’s bride runs with a spine.
” His eyes cut to Everest’s helm. “And if the king’s shadow still has teeth.
” He bent, retrieved his knife, and backed away without turning.
“It seems as if you both do.” He grinned, cocky for a male with a broken wrist. “We will play again near the fields.”
Trystan vanished into fir and fog with the kind of confidence that had unease blossoming low in my belly.
Silence invaded the rocks, the only sound the sea and the blood in my ears.
Everest stood still for a long breath, chest rising and falling quickly.
I watched the wild Wolvryn in him press at the edges and then slide back, slow as a door shut against the wind.
His hands shook once then he stilled them with practiced restraint.
“Are you all right?” His voice was rough. He turned to me, nothing of Trystan in his gaze now, only me.
“Just a scratch.” I looked down at the red line across my arm.
Everest crossed to me in two steps and took my elbow with rough hands that were suddenly gentle. He checked the cut, thumb light at the edges, mouth set. “He touched you.”
“But he didn’t catch me.”
“I know.” His jaw flexed. “But still.”
Everest’s gaze dropped to my arm again, to the deepening red line. I’d told myself it was nothing, but as the cold air hit it, the skin split at the edge. A single bead of blood welled up, bright as a berry against the pale of me.
Everest went still. Predator-still. “It’s bleeding.” The way he said it made my skin prickle.
“It’s nothing,” I murmured, because I needed to say something. Needed to keep this from turning into whatever I saw building in his eyes. I’d seen it before with the wound at my thigh, but now…
He dragged his thumb lightly along the air beside it, careful not to smear, careful not to hurt. The cut answered with a bright smudge of red. “There.”
My breath caught, more from the way he watched it than the blood itself. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done last time.”
Before I could pull back, he bent his head, close enough that I felt his breath through the metal, warm and controlled. Then he pushed back the wolf mask, so it sat atop a wild tangle of hair.
And then his tongue swept the cut.