Chapter Fourteen Willa’s Blood
Redjaw came out of the roads like the roads had grown teeth.
They were not a pack.
Willa understood that before the first body hit the mud.
Packs moved with one breath, even bad ones. Frostmere moved like ceremony. Pike Hollow moved like winter survival and old trust. Stonewatch moved like guarded roads, arranged lines, watchers placed where people forgot to look.
Redjaw moved like hunger given legs.
Wolves poured from the west track, the north ridge, the south posts. Some in human shape, some shifted, some half-mad between the two. Ragged cloaks. Bone tokens. Old scars. Road knives. Rusted hooks. Teeth bared in faces that looked less like warriors than debts come to collect.
Northroad broke.
Traders screamed. Horses reared. Wagons lurched as people tried to flee and found every road already filling.
Frostmere riders pulled tight around Oren and Davra.
Stonewatch men formed a line too quickly for innocence and too slowly for control.
Red Creek wolves dragged Derren and the crossbowman toward the shrine wall.
Bluebank wolves pulled the rescued chest under Mara’s wagon.
Hessa shouted something Willa could not hear.
Noll still had Jory.
Marek stood frozen in the open.
Selka saw him at the same time Willa did.
“Move,” Selka screamed.
Marek did not.
Of course he did not.
A Redjaw wolf launched from between two wagons, jaws open for his throat.
Torren moved.
Not toward Marek.
Toward the wolf.
Black violence crossed the road in a human body.
He hit the Redjaw attacker mid-leap and drove him sideways into the wagon wheel so hard the wood cracked. The wolf dropped, shifted badly, and came up snarling with one arm hanging wrong.
Torren struck once.
The attacker went down.
Alive or dead, Willa could not tell.
There was no time.
A second Redjaw came for the Bluebank chest.
Willa grabbed the first weapon her hand found.
Spoon board again.
Apparently, this was becoming a relationship.
She swung it into the attacker’s knees.
The Redjaw woman stumbled, not falling, and turned with a grin that showed two missing teeth and one silver one.
“Marked blood,” the woman said.
Willa’s skin chilled.
The Redjaw woman lunged.
Willa brought the board up.
The knife struck wood, bit through, and stopped one handspan from Willa’s face.
Mara Tebb came from the side with the cast-iron pan.
“I am tired,” Mara snarled, and hit the woman in the ear.
The attacker dropped.
Mara looked at the spoon board.
“You owe me for that too.”
“I am beginning to suspect your business model is violence.”
“Diversification.”
Then Torren roared.
The sound struck Northroad harder than the horns had.
Every wolf felt it.
Some froze.
Some fled.
Some answered.
Willa turned.
Redjaw had split into three lines. Not as random as they first seemed. One line pressed Frostmere. One line pressed Stonewatch. One line drove toward Pike Hollow’s cluster, where the rescued chest, Jory, Hessa, and Willa stood.
Not hunger only.
Direction beneath hunger.
“They want the records,” Willa shouted.
Hessa, bloody-handed and knife-bright, yelled back, “They want everything.”
A Redjaw man with a bone mask over half his face vaulted a low cart and landed near the chest. Bluebank’s Nera Saff stabbed him in the thigh before he could reach it. He backhanded her into the mud.
Willa ran toward Nera.
Torren felt it and turned.
Too far.
Too many bodies between them.
The mark flared.
Not fear, Willa thought.
Lie.
Fear, yes.
But motion too.
She slid in the mud beside Nera as the masked man raised his knife.
Willa grabbed Nera’s dropped blade and thrust upward.
She did not do it well.
She did it hard.
The blade sank into the man’s side.
He howled and kicked her.
Pain burst white through Willa’s ribs.
She hit the ground, breath gone.
The mark exploded.
Torren’s rage slammed into her so hard the world doubled.
“No,” she gasped.
Not to the attacker.
To Torren.
Too late.
The black wolf hit the masked man like night given body.
Torren had shifted.
Huge. Black. Teeth at the man’s throat.
Northroad saw.
Varric saw.
Davra saw.
Everyone saw the feral alpha over a bleeding man with his marked mate in the mud.
The trap opened under them.
Willa could feel it.
The waiting.
The way the crowd’s terror sharpened toward one question:
Would he tear out the throat?
The masked man laughed.
Blood bubbled on his lips.
“There,” he rasped. “There he is.”
Torren’s jaws hovered at his throat.
Willa could not breathe.
Pain clamped around her ribs. Mud filled one sleeve. The mark burned so hot she thought it might split her skin open again.
She did not say his name.
She did not plead.
She shoved herself onto one elbow, looked at the masked man, and forced air into her lungs.
“He wants witness,” she said.
Torren’s wolf froze.
The masked man’s eyes flicked to her.
Fear.
Real fear now.
Good.
Willa tasted blood in her mouth and smiled badly.
“Give him one.”
Torren’s jaws opened wider.
Then closed—not on the throat.
On the man’s wrist.
Bone cracked.
The knife fell.
The masked man screamed.
Torren released him and put one massive paw on his chest, pinning him alive to the mud.
Exact.
Terrible.
Perfect.
Northroad inhaled.
Willa tried to stand and failed.
Torren’s head snapped toward her.
No, she thought.
Not now.
His wolf looked at the attacker under his paw.
Looked at Willa.
Looked at the Redjaw pressing through the market.
For one heartbeat, she felt the agony of the choice.
Mate bleeding.
Witness under paw.
Pack under attack.
Every story waiting.
Then Noll was there.
“I have him,” Noll said, and drove his boot onto the masked man’s broken wrist with calm finality. “Go.”
Torren came to Willa.
Not shifted back.
Wolf body low, huge head near her face, breath hot and frantic.
Willa put one muddy hand against his muzzle.
“Ribs,” she said.
His growl shook through her palm.
“Not cut.”
He sniffed anyway, nose moving over her shoulder, side, waist, searching for blood.
There was some.
Not from the kick.
Her forearm had opened where the first knife had sliced past the spoon board.
She had not felt it until he found it.
Torren’s wolf went still.
Too still.
“Small,” Willa lied.
The cut was not small.
It was not fatal either.
Important distinction.
The black wolf’s eyes lifted to hers.
Rage. Fear. Love. Violence.
All of it too close to separate.
“With,” she whispered.
His body trembled once.
Then he turned, placed himself between her and the fight, and roared again.
Not lost.
Commanding.
Pike Hollow answered.
Hessa dragged Jory behind the wheel of Mara’s wagon and put a knife in his uninjured hand.
“Stab only if they lean conveniently.”
“I can do convenient,” Jory said weakly.
Noll lifted the masked witness by the back of the neck and threw him toward Red Creek custody as if he were unloading firewood.
Brann and the Red Creek wolves tightened around the Bluebank chest.
Mara used her pan with professional commitment.
Willa pushed herself upright using the ruined spoon board.
Her arm bled down to her fingers.
Her ribs screamed.
Her wolf wanted out.
Not yet.
She would shift badly with the rib pain. She knew enough now to know that.
She needed feet. Hands. Eyes.
Across the road, Frostmere was failing beautifully.
Oren’s riders held formation around him and Davra, but Redjaw did not care about their polish. A ragged wolf darted under a horse’s chest and ripped open the animal’s belly. The horse screamed and went down. Frostmere’s line buckled.
Marek was no longer behind Oren.
Willa found him near Selka.
He had finally moved.
Not well.
Not gracefully.
But he had put himself between Selka and a Redjaw woman with a hook blade.
Selka held a dropped spear two-handed, face white, eyes furious.
“Do not stand in front of me,” she snapped.
Marek flinched.
Then, astonishingly, stepped beside her.
The hook-blade woman lunged.
Selka drove the spear into her shoulder.
Marek struck the woman’s wrist with his knife.
The hook fell.
Selka looked briefly shocked that coordination had occurred.
Marek looked more shocked.
Then another Redjaw hit him from the side and knocked him into the mud.
Selka swore and kicked the attacker in the face.
Willa did not have time to appreciate it fully.
Stonewatch was worse.
Varric’s men were too divided. Some fought Redjaw. Some tried to protect Varric. Some tried to secure Derren. One tried to kill Derren again and was stopped by Orla hitting him in the nose with her writing board.
Orla, Willa decided, deserved a statue.
Varric drew his sword at last.
He was good with it.
Very good.
Annoyingly good.
He cut down one Redjaw wolf, hamstrung another, and shouted orders that actually worked when his men obeyed them. That was the worst part. He was not a coward. He was not useless. He could create order from danger.
That was why people would want to believe him.
Then the west road howled again.
Louder.
Deeper.
The Redjaw attackers answered by breaking formation.
Not retreat.
Opening.
A man walked through the gap.
Human shape.
Tall and gaunt under a cloak patched with fur and bone. His hair hung in gray ropes. One side of his face was scarred from temple to jaw, the skin pulled tight so his smile seemed permanent and wrong. Around his neck hung a chain of tokens: bone, metal, teeth, old coins, broken seals.
Hessa made a sound Willa had never heard from her before.
Torren, still wolf, went stone-still.
The mark went cold.
The gaunt man lifted both hands.
“Pike Hollow,” he called.
His voice was ruined but strong.
“Still warm after all these years.”
Hessa whispered, “No.”
Willa looked at her.
Hessa’s face had gone gray.
“Who is he?”
Hessa’s mouth moved.
No sound came out.
The man smiled wider.
His eyes found Torren’s wolf.
“Little Pike.”
The mark lurched.
Torren knew him.
Or the wolf did.
Maybe both.
Willa pushed herself fully upright despite her ribs.
Blood dripped from her arm onto the mud.
The gaunt man’s gaze snapped to it.
His nostrils flared.
“Marked blood,” he said, delighted.
Torren snarled.
The sound was not command this time.
It was old.
The man laughed.