Chapter Twelve The Feral Alpha’s Warning #2
Varric’s face finally changed.
Not enough.
Enough.
“Planted,” he said.
Willa almost admired the speed.
“By whom?” Hessa asked.
“Whoever staged this.”
“On your man?”
“If Derren is my man today.”
Derren’s head jerked.
Betrayal had a smell.
Sharp. Human. Wolf. All the same.
Willa inhaled it and understood suddenly why Varric was more frightening than Oren.
Oren used people and expected obedience.
Varric used people and expected to discard them before they noticed they had been held.
Derren noticed now.
Torren noticed him noticing.
So did Varric.
The air changed.
Varric’s eyes cooled.
Derren was no longer useful alive.
Willa felt the realization and moved.
Not toward Derren.
Toward the shrine wall.
“Crossbow!”
The shout left her before the thought finished.
Torren moved on the same breath.
Not to cover her.
To the right target.
A gray-cloaked figure above the shrine wall lifted a small bow from behind wet stone.
Not aimed at Torren.
Not aimed at Willa.
Aimed at Derren.
Torren threw his knife.
The blade struck the crossbowman’s wrist.
The bolt fired wild, snapping into Mara’s awning rope instead of Derren’s throat.
The awning collapsed.
Mara swore with feeling.
Noll shoved Jory down and covered him despite still holding him, which was a feat of devotion and geometry.
Hessa drew her knife.
Red Creek wolves lunged for Derren.
The crossbowman tried to drop behind the wall.
Willa ran.
Not because it was wise.
Because she was close, because the fallen awning rope was at her feet, and because the crossbowman was about to become another convenient dead man.
She grabbed the rope and pulled.
The collapsed awning, still attached to its frame on one side, jerked across the muddy ground and tangled around the crossbowman’s legs as he dropped from the wall.
He hit the mud hard.
Mara shouted, “That awning cost money!”
“Bill Stonewatch!” Willa yelled.
She did not know why she yelled that.
It felt right.
The market roared.
Torren reached the crossbowman before he could rise.
This time, he had no knife.
He did not need one.
He caught the man by the back of the neck and slammed him facedown into the mud hard enough to make every wolf nearby understand restraint had limits and this was somehow still within them.
“Alive,” Willa shouted.
Torren’s head turned.
His eyes were black.
His teeth were showing.
For one heartbeat, the market saw the feral alpha.
Really saw him.
The rumor.
The nightmare.
The wolf who had crawled out of a massacre with blood in his mouth and three days missing from his own memory.
Willa did not walk toward him.
She did not soothe.
She did not become a leash.
She pointed at the crossbowman.
“He tried to kill the witness. Make him say who sent him.”
Torren’s eyes held hers.
The mark blazed.
Then he smiled.
Terrible.
Proud.
Exact.
He looked down at the man under his hand.
“Speak.”
The man gagged on mud.
“Speak badly, then.”
Red Creek took the crossbowman too.
Alive.
Varric’s face had gone still again, but the damage had entered the air. Too many people had seen the shot. Too many had seen Torren stop it. Too many had seen Willa call it before the bolt struck.
Varric turned slightly, positioning himself before the shrine wall as if distance could restore neutrality.
“This proves my point,” he said.
Hessa laughed.
“You are committed. I admire that in enemies.”
Varric’s gaze moved to her.
“Two attempts at murder in open market prove disorder.”
“By your men,” Mara snapped, hauling her ruined awning aside.
“Men wearing gray,” Varric said. “Gray is not ownership.”
“Convenient for a Stonewatch alpha,” Willa said.
His eyes came to her.
There was no warmth in them now.
Good.
The reasonable mask remained, but she had reached the thing under it.
“Willa Renn,” he said softly.
“Marked mate of Pike Hollow,” Torren said from behind the captured crossbowman.
Varric did not look at Torren.
“You are quick to see traps.”
“People keep building them badly.”
“Or perhaps you know where to look because Pike Hollow came prepared for theater.”
Kalen said, “Yes. Convenient that she saw the bow before anyone else.”
Selka turned on him.
“Convenient that you keep finding the wrong side of every sentence.”
Varric lifted a hand.
Kalen stopped.
Interesting.
Varric commanded Marr silence more effectively than Oren commanded Marek courage.
“Let us not turn quick thinking into accusation,” Varric said.
“You just tried,” Willa replied.
His mouth curved.
“I try many things.”
There he was.
Honest for one blink.
Then gone.
Orla raised her voice. “Red Creek records: Derren, known Stonewatch wagon man, captured alive carrying ocher cloth, dead mud, and Redjaw token. Red Creek records: unknown gray-cloaked crossbowman attempted to kill Derren and was stopped by Alpha Pike. Red Creek records: Willa Renn of Pike Hollow identified the attack before the bolt struck.”
“Marked mate,” Hessa said.
Orla nodded.
“Willa Renn, marked mate of Pike Hollow.”
The title moved through Northroad.
Not soft.
Not private.
A public fact with mud on its boots.
Varric’s smile thinned.
“And Stonewatch records that Northroad has become untenable without oversight.”
There.
The line he had come to say.
Perhaps he had expected to say it over Derren’s dead body.
Perhaps over stolen evidence.
Perhaps after Torren killed someone in rage.
He said it anyway.
Because Varric did not need a clean win.
He only needed enough fear to sell order.
“Oversight by whom?” Willa asked.