25. Aitor
Aitor
Three days out from camp and the trail was getting warmer.
Not metaphor — literal heat. Zviad crouched at the base of a beech tree where the bark had been scraped raw at shoulder height, pressed two fingers to the exposed wood, and said, "Six hours. Maybe less." His silver thread pulsed through the bond with cold certainty. No doubt. Zviad didn't do doubt.
I stood behind him counting the ways this could end. Four ways. Maybe five if you included the one where Costel had doubled back and was watching us right now from the ridge above, that missing-finger hand steady on a bow, deciding which of us to drop first.
"Six hours puts him past the Sorin crossing," Toma said. His iron thread ran steady and grim. "If he makes the crossing before nightfall, he reaches Mircea's forward line."
"Then we don't let him make the crossing." Simple. Obvious. I said it because someone had to say the obvious thing, and obvious things were my job — the bright clear truth that nobody else wanted to put words to. "We run him down before he gets there."
Toma turned. Looked at me. Something moving behind his face that wasn't command and wasn't strategy — something that lived in the space between Costel taught me to fight and Costel got our people killed.
"And when we catch him?" Toma asked.
There it was. The question I'd been dodging for three days.
"We'll figure that out when we catch him," I said.
Suzana's amber thread warmed against my chest — a pulse of I hear you deflecting that I pretended not to notice. She was four miles behind us with the wounded, but the bond didn't care about distance.
Zviad stood from his crouch. "The trail splits ahead — he's been alternating between wolf and human form. Short bursts of speed, then walking. Conserving." A pause. "He's not panicking."
"Costel doesn't panic," Toma said. Flat. The words cost him.
"No," I agreed. "He doesn't panic. He plans. Which means wherever he's going, he's going on purpose. Which means?—"
"He's expected," Zviad finished. "Mircea knows he's coming."
"We go faster," I said. "Full wolf, sprint pace. Zviad on point with the scent. Toma on his flank. I run wide — berserker range, in case he's laid something on the trail."
Toma nodded. No argument. Three days ago he'd have adjusted my positioning. But out here, on the hunt, my instincts carried weight that his rank didn't override.
We shifted. The change took me like it always did — a violence I'd stopped fearing.
My wolf hit the ground already running, already reaching for the red thing in my chest and holding it — not releasing.
Controlled burn. Suzana's tether from four miles back, thin as spider silk but strong enough to keep the fire from becoming a wildfire.
Costel's scent threaded through the undergrowth. Smoke and leather and that bitter herbal compound he used on his joints. A familiar scent. A trusted scent, once.
We ran.
I tried not to think about what happened at the end of this trail. But the mind goes where it wants — to the thing I was afraid of.
Not the fight. I was afraid of what I'd do when I looked Costel in the face and had to decide whether he lived or died.
The berserker was simple — it wanted the kill.
Simple answer. My father's answer. The Marin answer — solve the problem by eliminating it.
My father, who I'd spent my entire life refusing to become and who lived inside me anyway, curled around the base of my wolf like a second skeleton I couldn't cut free.
Suzana's thread tugged. Gentle. Distant. I feel you spiraling.
I steadied.
Zviad's thread pulsed — trail freshening. Three hours now. He's slowing.
The Sorin crossing was still two miles ahead when Zviad pulled up sharp and shifted back to human form, one hand raised. Stop.
"What?" I breathed.
"Blood," he said. "His blood. Not much — a cut, maybe a stumble. But he's hurt."
"Or he's leaving a trail on purpose. Baiting."
"That's paranoid," I said.
"That's Costel," Zviad corrected.
"We assume it's real," Toma said. "If he's hurt, he's slower. If it's a trap, we're three bonded wolves against one man with a limp. Either way, we push."
"Hold on." I raised a hand. "If he's hurt and slowing, we catch him inside the hour. Which means we need to decide now what catching him looks like."
Toma said nothing. His iron thread humming with something I couldn't name — not indecision, but a held breath.
"He knows everything," Zviad said. "Our new positions. Coalition names. The bond frequency. If Mircea gets that intelligence intact?—"
"I know what's at stake," Toma said. Sharp. Then: "Sorry."
"Dead men can't talk," I said. Testing the words.
Like ash. Like my father's voice coming out of my throat.
"No," I said immediately. "No, that's — no. That's not the answer."
"It might have to be," Zviad said. Still factual.
"And every day he's dead is a day we don't know what Mircea knows." I was pacing. "Costel's been in Mircea's orbit for — what? Days? Weeks? He knows things. Kill him and we lose all of that."
"That's the strategic argument," Toma said. His voice had gone strange. "What's the real one?"
I stopped pacing. Felt his iron thread testing mine. Why do you really want him alive?
"Because I don't want to be the kind of man who makes that easy," I said.
No deflection. No joke. "Because killing Costel is simple and clean and my wolf wants it and that's exactly why I don't trust it.
Because my father killed men for less and called it leadership and I spent my childhood learning what that kind of easy does to a man's soul. "
"Aitor." Toma's voice. The iron thread warm now. "Your father is not in this decision."
"He's in every decision. He's in the part of me that says just end it and the part that says you'll enjoy it. Both of those are him. And I refuse — I refuse to let him be the one who chooses."
Toma pulled his jaw tight. Then: "We take him alive. If we can."
"If we can," I repeated. The caveat mattering.
"Move," Zviad said. Already scenting the air. "He's close. Less than two hours. The blood trail gets heavier — he's limping now."
We shifted again and ran.
The light was failing when Zviad's thread screamed close. We slowed. Human form. Silent approach, the way Costel himself had taught — feet placed on stone, not soil.
Through the trees, a clearing. Small — twenty feet across, hemmed by rock on three sides where an old quarry had been cut into the hillside. Defensible.
Costel sat against the quarry wall with his left hand pressed against his right side. Blood on his fingers — dark blood, old and fresh mixed. His face was grey. He looked old. That hit me harder than I expected.
His wolf wasn't close to the surface. I could tell from his eyes: all human.
"Costel." Toma's voice carried into the clearing. The old man's head came up.
No surprise on his face. He'd known we were coming.
"Took you long enough," Costel said. "I left a trail a blind pup could follow."
"You're hurt," Zviad said.
"Arrow. During the retreat." Costel shifted against the rock — winced. "Your people aren't bad shots when they're panicking."
"Our people." Toma stepped into the clearing. "They were your people too."
"They were the blood's people. The line's. And the line—" He coughed. Wet. Bad sound. "The line deserved better than a girl and a mating bond determining its future."
"Don't," I said. "Don't make your pitch. We're not here for your philosophy."
"The charmer," Costel said. "Come to talk me to death?"
"Come to take you back." I stopped ten feet from him. "Alive. On your feet or on a stretcher, your choice."
"Back to what? A cell? A trial? You think Toma can sit in judgment of the man who taught him to wipe his own ass in the field?"
"I think the people Costel got killed — their families get a voice. I think the wolves who lost pack-mates in that ambush get to look you in the face and hear you explain why their dead were an acceptable cost."
Something shifted in Costel's expression. Recognition, maybe. That the dead had names.
"You don't understand what Mircea is," Costel said. Lower now. "I didn't sell us for nothing. Mircea offered terms. Aldea survival. The bloodline continued. Legitimate succession without the abomination of a four-bond controlling the seat."
"The terms of a man who sent forty wolves to kill us in our sleep," Toma said.
"Mircea's terms included me dead, Costel." Toma's voice cracked on the name. "You know that. His terms required my corpse. And Suzana's. And theirs."
Costel said nothing. His hand pressed against his ribs. Twenty years of loyalty and twenty years of betrayal warring behind his face.
"Come back," I said. Softer now. Not gentle — but something real. "Come back and answer for it. Face the people you hurt. That's harder than dying out here with an arrow wound you won't treat. And you know it."
"You're offering me mercy."
"I'm offering you a choice that isn't mine to make for you." I crouched. Put myself at his eye level. "You can fight us. You'll lose. Or you can come back. Talk. Tell us what Mircea's planning. And then the dead men's families pass judgment."
"That's not mercy. That's a slower death."
"Maybe. But it's an honest one. And you owe honesty. You owe it to Toma. You owe it to the six wolves who didn't wake up."
Zviad moved. Silent, peripheral — closing the fourth side of the clearing.
Costel looked at Toma. Across the clearing, across the distance between them — not six feet but twenty years.
"I didn't want this," Costel said. And for the first time his voice broke on something real. "The ambush was supposed to be clean. Mircea's wolves were supposed to take you alive. The terms?—"
"Were a lie," Toma said. "Mircea lied to you. And you believed him because believing him was easier than accepting that the world had changed."
Costel closed his eyes. The fight leaving a body that didn't have enough left to fuel it.
"I'll come," he said. "Not because your charmer convinced me. Because I'm dying anyway and I'd rather do it looking at wolves I knew than alone in this pit."
Not the capitulation I wanted. Just a tired man choosing the company of enemies over the solitude of his own decisions.
I'd take it.
"Zviad. Check his wound. See if we can move him."
Zviad crossed the clearing. "Deep. But not arterial. He'll make the walk if we bind it and go slow."
Toma hadn't moved. I went to him.
"You okay?" Stupid question. Asked it anyway.
"No. But I will be." His jaw working. "Thank you. For choosing this."
"Choosing what?"
"The harder thing." His eyes on me. "Killing him would have been easier. On all of us."
"Easier isn't the point."
"No. It isn't."
I put my hand on his shoulder. Squeezed once. The copper thread between us flared — warm, grounding.
Suzana's amber thread pulsed from miles behind us. I feel you. Both of you. What happened?
Coming home, I sent. Bringing him with us.
We moved out. Slow — Costel's pace, not ours. Zviad on one side. Toma ahead, leading without looking at the man behind him because looking would cost him something he needed for the walk.
I took the rear. Guarding. The berserker quiet now — held by the decision I'd made, the line I'd drawn between myself and the ghost of my father's easy violence.
Four wolves and a traitor, heading back toward something that wasn't justice yet — just a choice to let it be hard instead of letting it be fast.
Mercy on trial. The verdict still being written. But written by us — not by the dead men in my blood. By us.