Chapter Twenty The Pack That Fights Back #3
“Improvement everywhere. Disturbing.”
Hessa entered behind her.
Her eyes were red.
Her spine was straight.
She carried Edran Pike’s copy.
“Can I come in, or are you two making vows no one wants to hear?”
Willa looked at Torren.
Torren looked at Hessa.
“Come in.”
Hessa did.
She stood awkwardly near the hearth, which was unusual enough that Willa almost smiled and did not because ribs.
Torren sat up fully.
“Aunt.”
Hessa lifted one hand.
“If you say something kind, do it quickly.”
His mouth almost moved.
Then his face sobered.
“You saved me.”
Hessa’s expression cracked.
“Torren.”
“Not from the massacre.”
She looked down.
“No.”
“After.”
Her hand tightened around the oilcloth.
“Barely.”
He stood, ignoring Riksa’s hiss about stitches.
“Barely is not nothing.”
Hessa closed her eyes.
The line struck her the way it had struck all of them at one time or another: small enough to carry, large enough to survive by.
Torren crossed to her.
For a moment, Hessa looked as if she might retreat.
Then Torren put his arms around her.
Carefully, because of his shoulder.
Firmly, because some things needed no permission when they had been waiting too many years.
Hessa made a sound into his chest.
Not dignified.
Not Hessa-like.
Entirely Hessa.
Willa looked away.
Riksa did too, though she pretended to examine a clean bandage.
Hessa gripped Torren’s back with both hands.
“You were my boy,” she said, voice muffled.
“I know.”
“You still are.”
Torren’s eyes closed.
“I know.”
This time, Willa thought, he did.
The pack outside did not cheer.
But when Torren and Hessa stepped out later, Edran’s record in Hessa’s hand and Willa standing only because Torren, Riksa, and spite supported the idea, Pike Hollow gathered around the hearth.
Not all of them fit inside.
They crowded doorways, steps, yard, windows.
Hessa read the record one more time.
Then Torren spoke.
“Redjaw named us debt. Frostmere named us dangerous. Stonewatch named us disorder. Marr named women trade. The north has used Pike Hollow as warning for twelve years.”
His voice filled the hall and yard.
Willa stood beside him.
Not leaning.
Well, perhaps a little.
Riksa stood close enough to catch her and far enough to pretend she would not.
Torren continued, “No more.”
A low sound moved through the pack.
“We do not deny what was done. Edran Pike paid Redjaw and failed. We do not hide that. We do not let Redjaw turn failure into debt. We do not let Frostmere turn locked records into authority. We do not let Stonewatch sell order built from the fires it helped feed.”
Hessa’s eyes burned.
Noll stood like a wall.
Jory sat on a bench, pale and grinning.
Bram had both hands over his mouth because Etta had clearly ordered silence.
Torren looked at Willa.
Her mark warmed.
Then he looked back at the pack.
“And we do not let anyone name our mates, widows, children, wounded, or witnesses as weakness.”
Willa’s throat tightened.
“We fight back,” Torren said.
The sound that answered was not cheer.
It was deeper.
Wolves striking fists to tables. Feet to floor. Hands to doorframes. A pack making itself heard without wasting sound.
Pike Hollow fought back.
Not by becoming clean.
By refusing to be named dirty by cleaner liars.
Later, after the hall had fed everyone again and the first patrols left for the outer roads, Willa found herself back on the pallet because Riksa had won, as usual.
Torren sat beside her.
His hand rested near hers.
Outside, snowmelt dripped from the roof though spring had already come. Somewhere beyond the yard, Rauk waited in chains. Beyond that, Varric revised his road compact. Frostmere counted damage. Marr weighed survival. Redjaw scattered with its debt-holder broken but not its hunger gone.
The series of roads ahead seemed endless.
Willa was too tired to care about all of them at once.
She cared about the hand beside hers.
She moved her fingers.
Torren took them.
“Found me,” she murmured.
His eyes shifted to her.
“What?”
“You found me in snow.”
His face softened.
“Yes.”
“Marked me.”
“Yes.”
“Fought for me.”
His thumb brushed carefully over her knuckles.
“Beside you.”
She smiled.
“Better.”
He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her forehead, then to the edge of the mark, so gently it hurt more than the wound for reasons Riksa could not treat.
“Rest,” he said.
“Bossy.”
“Yes.”
“Not wall?”
“No.”
“Shelter?”
“Yes.”
Willa let her eyes close.
The mark held.
The pack held.
The truth held, not because it was clean, but because too many hands now carried it for one house to bury.
And as Willa drifted into sleep beneath Pike Hollow’s hearth smoke, with Torren’s hand around hers and the sound of wolves preparing for the next fight beyond the door, she knew the north had changed.
Not enough.
Not yet.
But enough that every old power would feel the ground shift beneath its road.
Willa Renn had been rejected.
The feral alpha had found her.
The feral alpha had marked her.
The feral alpha had fought for her.
And now Pike Hollow would fight back.
TO BE CONTINUED IN THE FERAL ALPHA’S FOUND MATE BOOK FOUR