Chapter Thirty
Calista
I jerked so hard I nearly fell backward, yanking my arm to my chest as if he’d bitten me. My eyes went wide. Heat flashed through me, sudden and humiliating, and the wound throbbed with a new, electrified awareness.
“What in the moon’s name are you doing?”
Everest straightened at once, hands up, as if he’d startled a wild creature. “It’s common among Wolvryn.”
I stared at him like he’d grown a second mask. “You licked me,” I squealed because I couldn’t seem to find a better sentence.
His gaze narrowed a fraction, not quite offended, simply measuring. “Wolvryn saliva carries healing elra. We do it for our young, our wounded. For our Court.”
“I’m not your Court,” I snapped, even as my pulse hammered against my ribs.
“No.” His answer came too quickly. Too easily. “Not yet, but you will be when you win.”
That should have eased something. It didn’t. Because he was still watching me like he wanted more of something, and he was trying very hard not to take it.
I curled my fingers over my arm. “I don’t have the soul of a Wolvryn, remember? I’m hollow.” My words hissed out sharper than necessary. “And I’ve never seen anyone do that. We don’t…” I swallowed. “We don’t lick each other like that.”
His eyes softened only a hair as if the admission landed. “I know.”
Of course he did. He’d been watching me for days. Watching what I flinched from. What I pretended not to need.
He took a step back into the shadow of the firs, giving me space, and that shouldn’t have felt like relief, but it did. Then he spoke again, quieter now. “It will heal faster if you let me finish.”
I glared up at him. “Finish?”
A low sound rumbled in his chest, almost a laugh, maybe a growl. “It was only one pass with my tongue,” he said. “You moved.”
My cheeks heated.
He made a small, impatient motion with his hand, then stilled it, forcing himself into calm. “Calista,” he whispered, “It’s a cut. You are exhausted. If it festers, you’ll slow. If you slow down, you could die. Let me do what my kind does and then we can keep moving.”
I swallowed. My throat felt tight. “And if I refuse?”
His eyes held mine, unblinking. “Then I will give you cloth and salve like I did with your thigh and pretend I don’t want to bare my fangs at the next thing that draws your blood.” His declaration was so honest that my fingers loosened around my wrist before I could stop them.
“Why didn’t you try to lick my thigh?”
A feral gleam flashed across the bright blue. Instantly, I regretted the question. “The area… is a bit more intimate. Wouldn’t you say?”
That damnable heat raged up my neck, settling across my cheeks. I would say if I could get my brain to form a cohesive sentence.
“Fine,” I finally muttered, once I’d regained control of my senses. I extended my arm like I was offering it to a blade. “But if you make it strange, I will throw you off the cliff.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe you.” His gaze flicked to my mouth. Just once. Quick. Hot. “And besides, you’ve already made it strange.”
I glared harder, but I didn’t take it back.
He came in slowly, like he was approaching a skittish animal, kneeling on the ground in front of me. His hand cupped beneath my wrist without fully closing, holding me steady while still giving me the choice to pull away. The control in that, the restraint, tightened something in my chest.
The first touch was careful, almost clinical. A brief, warm drag of tongue that made me flinch on instinct. Then heat pooled low in my belly, drifting lower still between my legs.
Goddess, there was something about the sight of the great Black Wolf on his knees before me…
“Breathe.” He was so close the word brushed my skin.
I exhaled, shakily.
His mouth returned to the cut, slower this time. Not rushed. A measured, deliberate lick that pulled a sound out of me before I could swallow it back. My stomach dipped, another wave of heat pooling low and unwelcome, and I hated that my body leaned a fraction closer.
Gods, that tongue. I wanted it everywhere.
He stilled at the noise, or hells maybe he heard the completely inappropriate thought, and his head lifted a fraction. My heart slammed against my ribs. “Do you want me to stop?” His voice was rough and quiet, and moons, it only heightened whatever this was.
How could that one question hit harder than the lick? I should have said yes.
Instead, my throat worked once. “No.”
Something flashed in his eyes. Hunger, barely leashed. He lowered his mouth again, and this time, his tongue wasn’t clinical at all. It was possessive yet controlled. He licked the wound as if the act itself mattered, as if he was making a point to his Wolvryn and to me both.
This is mine to protect, mine to claim.
My entire body threatened to crumble, and he must have felt it because his hand ghosted at the small of my back just firm enough to steady me.
I braced my free hand against his shoulder, pretending it was fatigue, pretending the way my pulse fluttered had nothing to do with the warmth of his mouth on my skin and everything to do with exhaustion.
But we both knew the truth.
When he finally pulled back, his thumb brushed the edge of the cut once as gentle as snow. The ache had dulled, and the skin looked cleaner. The bleeding had stopped completely.
He lowered the mask back into place, concealing those full, teasing lips I had not noticed.
I stared at my arm like it had betrayed me. Then back at him. “Well,” I said hoarsely, because I couldn’t seem to find my sharpness again. “That’s… disgusting.”
He huffed out a rough laugh. “But effective.”
I lifted my chin. “Don’t make a habit of it.”
“I won’t,” he replied. Then his voice got quieter, like he couldn’t help himself. “Unless you make it a habit of bleeding.”
My stomach flipped. “Even if I do…” I whispered because if I didn’t say it, I might do something worse, “you shouldn’t do that again.”
“I know.” His voice was jagged, scraped raw. “I know.”
This thing between us had to stop.
The rules were iron and the Hunt was law. If I chose the Moon crown, I married the man Everest was pledged to. If I chose to walk away, my family, my Court would lose everything, while he returned to the king’s side. Either way, there was no future here. There could be no present.
He didn’t move away. Not fully at first. Then, finally, he reached into his belt kit. He wrapped the cut with a clean strip and tied it neat, fingers steady now only because he was forcing them to be.
When he looked up again, he was closer than he should have been, eyes locked on mine like he couldn’t find the strength to look anywhere else.
The mask turned his breath into a hush that touched my cheek. I could feel the beast in him still pacing. Waiting. Wanting.
“I’m fine.” I needed him to hear it for some reason.
He nodded once, a hard jerk that looked like control snapping into place. “We have to move.” He glanced around the small copse of trees on the cliffside. “Trystan will circle back once that wrist heals.”
“How long will that take?” All Wolvryn had enhanced healing, another blessing I’d been deprived of.
“For an Alpha, not long enough.” I could practically see the frown beneath the mask. “No more tar or resin to track, and no more Thornwild hands on you.”
“Agreed.”
We marched down the cliffside and took the shadowed line under the firs below. The trees thinned for a stretch, opening up the coastline. Out beyond the choppy waves, dark shapes rode the gray water, too low and long to be rock.
Ships.
Not fishing skiffs. These sat heavier, their silhouettes blunt as fists and their sails dark against the stormy sky. They moved with purpose, hugging the coast the way a predator followed a scent.
“Frost take me.” Everest stopped so abruptly I nearly walked right into him. His head lifted, listening.
Then, far to the north, a thin bloom of flame flared on a cliff a few miles further. A signal fire. Another answered it a heartbeat later. Then another, a staggered chain of warnings crawling along the ridgeline.
My mouth went dry. “Those aren’t Hunt signals, are they?”
“No,” Everest growled. “Those are watchfires.”
A fourth fire sparked near a distant tower, bright and urgent. The wind carried it to us like a message.
Everest’s hand clenched once at his side. “Damned raiders are testing Frostcrag tonight,” he murmured, more to himself than to me. “The Conclave is watching the Hunt. The best blades are here, chasing a bride instead of guarding the north.”
The words landed wrong in my chest. “You mean while everyone is distracted…”
“Someone is testing our borders,” he finished, eyes hard on the ships. “Or worse.”
“You think this was planned?”
His head dipped. “Someone knows exactly where our attention is.”
“Tarrik?” The question tumbled out.
A breath, then he cocked his head, eyes intent on mine. “Maybe.”
“We should do something.” I eyed the dark vessels, shrouded in the mists, heading north. “We should warn them…”
“Frostcrag will handle Tarrik.”
An irrational flicker of fear kindled low in my belly. “And if they can’t?”
“They will. That bastard—” He cut himself off.
“What?”
For a beat, Everest didn’t answer. He stared at the distant smoke until his eyes went strange, unfocused, as if he was seeing a different shore.
A different night. Then he exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled.
“Remember I told you that Tarrik led the Blackwake, the strongest pack of the southern raiders?”
“Yes.”
His gaze flicked to me, then away again, like he didn’t want me to see what lived behind his eyes.
“Tarrik isn’t simply some southern brute who learned to row a ship and swing an axe.
” Everest’s mouth tightened. “He’s disciplined and patient.
He doesn’t raid for sport. He raids to weaken, to test. To send messages. ”
A gust of wind shoved cold spray into my face. I blinked it away. “To the king?”
His eyes returned to the smoke. “Who else?”
My stomach dipped. “Why?”
His throat bobbed, and the next words came out clipped, like he was cutting them free with a blade. “Because once, Tarrik wore Frostcrag colors.”
I stared at him. “He was one of yours.”
“He was ours,” Everest corrected. “He trained in our yards, bled in our snow, and ate at our fires. We grew up side by side.”
The world tilted slightly beneath my boots. All the raids, the burned nets, the stolen goods, the dead… It all began with Frostcrag. “And now he’s the Blackwake,” I murmured, like saying it softer might make it less true.
His hand flexed, then stilled. “Now he sails with reef tar and ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
He did not answer right away. His stare went past the horizon, past the smoke, past the sea. When he spoke again, his voice dropped. “Savage had an older brother once.”
I froze.
“Caelen,” he whispered.
His eyes flicked to mine, sharp. “He disappeared in a raid three years ago. Frostcrag answered a southern distress call. It was a trap. The fog was so thick you could taste it. The damned ships moved like shadows, screams echoing from the decks.”
The sea roared below us as if in confirmation.
“And Tarrik was there?”
Everest’s jaw worked. “Tarrik was there, leading our Wolvryn. He let Caelen vanish into that fog. That piece of filth pulled back while Caelen and his wolves pushed forward, abandoning him in the assault.”
My chest tightened. I would never forgive someone who let Suri die to save their own skin. “I’m sorry.”
Everest’s gaze dropped to my cloak again. “Tarrik survived. That is what I know. While Caelen never returned, and that is what matters.”
“But I don’t understand. Why the raids?”
“Only the gods know. But I assume Tarrik raids Frostcrag as punishment for his banishment.”
“Because Savage banished him as punishment for Caelen?”
He nodded. “That and because Frostcrag stands in the way of what he wants.”
“Which is?”
The Black Wolf looked at me then, really looked, and there was something in his expression that felt like a warning and a vow at the same time.
“He wants Frostcrag weak, and he wants the Conclave distracted. He wants our borders thin. He wants our king pulled away from his realm and locked in ritual and law while ships creep closer on dark water.”
The thin smoke line on the horizon thickened, just slightly, like someone had fed the fire.
“You are familiar with the curse of the original Wolvryn?”
I nodded. Everyone knew the story of the curse, even us Hollows.
“In the north, we believe it’s a curse while in the south the story is different. They want to believe it’s a blessing. That discrepancy alone is enough to draw the line between us. To ignite a war…”
My pulse kicked.
He reached out, not touching me, but close enough that I felt the heat of him through the cold air. “If it wasn’t Nightreef that marked you with the tar back there, then it’s Tarrik’s scent that was on you,” he said softly. “And that means the Blackwake are nearer than they should be.”
On land? In the Hunt itself?
“So Frostcrag and Savage could be in real danger?” My voice came out smaller than I meant it to.
“You could be in danger.” Everest’s eyes went harder. “Frostcrag will survive as it always does.”
The tide crashed again.
And for the first time, the Hunt felt like more than a trial. It felt like a trap.
The wind, cold and clean, found us again as we continued on. Hair lashed across my face stinging, and my heart did something worse.
Everest kept walking, but there was a tightness to him now, like he was holding his own ribs together. The wind made everything louder: the sea, my pulse, the scrape of our boots through the needles.
“Everest,” I whispered. “Do you need to go to the king? To warn him?”
He didn’t slow. “We keep moving. I’ll keep you safe. The kingdom will keep for another day.”
“I know.” My throat tightened. I should have said something about strategy or the crown, or even the plan. Instead, something honest slipped loose. “I’m lucky to have you at my back.”
His steps stuttered, the smallest break in that relentless forward motion. He turned just enough that the edge of his mask caught the light, and I felt his attention hit me like a hand.
“I probably should have said that sooner…” I forced myself to keep going because stopping would only make it worse.
For a beat he didn’t speak. When he finally did, his voice was rough in a way that made my chest ache. “You’ll always have me at your back.”
“That sounds like a promise,” I whispered.
“It is.” He stepped closer, just close enough that his shoulder brushed mine again, sheltering me from the wind.
My heart thudded, stupid and full. I hated it. I needed it.
And out on the water, the dark ships slid closer, as if the world itself had heard our vows and was deciding to test them.