Chapter 17
Leif bounds off at such a velocity that the air snatches off my hood and almost knocks me off his back. I lean forward, curling in on myself, and strangle his bobbing neck.
Though the wind shrieks in my ears, and the frozen earth cracks beneath Leif’s paws, neither overpowers the vicious snarls and deafening roar that tear up the night.
I swivel my head, and time stands still.
The forest is aglow with flames that lick up the firs’ trunks, spreading to their branches, catching on every verdant needle and cylindrical cone.
Beyond the fire, white and gold collide with amber and black as my fellow combatants hurl themselves at the intruders.
The dragon shrieks, disgorging a blaze that flings a leaping wolf into a tree. The bark bursts from the trunk in ember-bright shards.
Terror pierces my chest, scattering the beats of my heart.
“Nordin!” I shriek.
I take a headcount of the wolves running with me—six. One stayed behind with Nordin.
Maybe it wasn’t my wolf who spilled down the trunk…
I hate how fervently I pray it’s another shifter.
But what if it is Nordin? If the dragon fire incinerates all his fur…
I banish the thought.
The Myrknótt moon is full. It’ll keep his precious fur safe.
It has to.
The dragon shrieks and beats its wings as though to take off. Except it can’t. The black membrane flaps like the ruined sails of a storm-battered drakkar. As the beast teeters, the fallen wolf rises.
I want to beg Leif to slow down, to wait for Nordin and his partner to catch up. I must speak my wish out loud, because my ride skids to a brutal stop, skating forward before pouncing back. My pulse slams in time with his claws.
“Zas, was it?” The voice whips my attention forward, to the vampyr standing mere feet away.
Leif rears back some more, his gaze flicking from side to side.
“Easy there, wolfie. I come in peace.” Kjell raises his palms as though to show he carries no silver blade.
Given his speed, if he has any stashed in his pockets, he could have it in hand before my next breath.
Saga snarls. When she darts forward, Leif bodychecks her aside, jostling me so hard that I lose my grip on his fur and tumble. My hip smacks into something so hard, I see stars. At least it’s my hip and not my head.
Knees click.
My attention swivels upward and locks on ruby eyes.
Kjell crouches, scrutinizing me with such interest that I scramble backward. I expect to knock into a wall of fur, but for some reason my guardians have stepped farther back.
Claws scrape on the ice and snap fallen cones.
I hear Saga bark and snarl and…yelp. Why does she yelp? Did the dragon catch up to us? Has the beast’s fire caught on her fur?
I dart a glance over my shoulder to find her fur flame-free but not fang-free. Leif’s clamped his jaw around her neck. The more she shoves against him, the more he muscles her backward.
My gaze crosses Tyron’s at the very instant something prods my gloved hand. I jerk my stare back to the vampyr, who hovers over me, fingers pinching the leather that cloaks my fingers. He’s so close that I could headbutt him, but headbutting would probably win me fangs through the throat.
I yank my hands out of his reach and slide them beneath me. “Don’t touch me.”
My fingers close around a loose rock. Though only a gold talon through the heart can truly harm a vampyr, I’m all out of those at the moment, so I settle for the rock.
“You take your job of observer mighty seriously, don’t you?” I somehow manage to spit out.
“Very. Now be accommodating and take your gloves off for me.”
“Are hands some vampyric kink?”
He snorts. “No, darling. Unless those hands are being used on certain parts of my body.” He adds a saucy wink that unsettles me more than his desire to see me ungloved.
“Explain why you want a glimpse of mine”—my pulse is so harried, the opal pendant shivers in the hollow of my throat—“and I might show them to you.”
“Because my dragon caught your scent, and he doesn’t think you smell like a shifter. If I were allowed, I’d taste your blood, but Taeric would string me up by the balls, so that leaves your hands.”
His eyebrows knot, and then he’s inhaling an almost violent breath, one that could’ve lifted fresh blood from a wound had I been bleeding.
“Valthaeryon… Nooo!” he chokes out. And then he clinches my neck and straightens, his movements so brusque I flap like the rag doll Mor stitched for me when I was a child and that I carried everywhere. “I will murder them. Every last one of them.”
His fingers tighten, and I gag.
“I will drain them of blood, then hack their scalps into scraps and carve out their hearts with my silver blade.”
Behind me, Saga releases a vicious snarl that promises just as much torture.
Kjell parts his lips, revealing a set of fangs sharper than the tools I use for smithing. “And I will start with you.”
As he tilts his head, I swing my rock into his jawbone, in that sweet spot beside the ear, the one that can send even grown shifters to the floor. With a hard blink, Kjell sways, the noose of his fingers loosening.
I bash my rock into his temple next, then dip my chin in the crease between his thumb and forefinger. With a jerk of my head, I spring myself free. He staggers back.
I surge to my feet, primed to swing again, when a blur of white and garnet streaks past me, snarling like a murderous troll escaped from Jotunheimr, and pounces on my aggressor.
A hand brushes my shoulder. I whirl and raise my rock. Vanoo catches my swinging arm and holds it in a vise until my makeshift weapon slips from my trembling fingers.
“Shh, Zas. It’s all right. Shh.” His brown skin is glossed with blood and streaked with ash.
Whose blood?
His?
Nordin’s?
The dragon’s?
Do dragons bleed red like humans?
My heart stutters when I spot barren patches on his scalp. “Your hair!”
“Will grow back with a little full moon therapy.” He offers me a comforting smile.
“Where’s—where’s Nordin?” I croak.
Vanoo nods at the wolf who tore past me. The one who’s wrenching his head from side to side before spitting out a chunk of flesh that used to be attached to Kjell’s neck. My stomach heaves. I spin away from Vanoo and throw up.
As heat scurries along my lash line, I remind myself that Kjell wanted to drain me and the rest of my clan. That Nordin asked him to leave, but he didn’t.
The scout deserved this fate. Still, I cannot help but think: What have I done?
“Your truce…” I ball my knuckles and press them against my trembling lips, sullying my ragged gloves with the acrid taste of my guilt. “What have I done?” I repeat, this time out loud.
Vanoo presses a soothing hand between my shoulder blades and rubs. “They attacked first. They broke the truce. We didn’t.”
“Except it’s my fault they attacked,” I hiss. “My fault.”
“Blaka’s not dead, Zas,” Vanoo says gently. Like I deserve any gentleness. “Though he might be, once Ulf gets wind of the attack…”
Vanoo’s wrong. It isn’t the vampyr that Ulf will murder; it’s me, the girl who brought all of this down on the pack.
“And his dragon?” The word Kjell spoke right before swearing to raze my clan comes back to me: Valthaeryon. Was that the beast’s name? A Hasam?rin curse?
Vanoo slides his lips. “He didn’t make it.” He says this in a way that makes me think he regrets felling the majestic creature.
I peer through the fringe of charred firs at the inert lump beyond. Why does my heart ache at the sight? The dragon burnt Vanoo’s hair!
Did it attack first, though?
What does it matter? It’s dead. Gone. It can no longer harm another one of my people.
If I had any doubt that the creature’s soul has passed on to the next realm, it flees at the sight of the snuffed conflagration.
How come I recall learning that when a dragon dies, so do all its fires, but for some reason I couldn’t recall the part about their sense of smell being so keen that they could scent blood from miles away? Did the elders breeze over that lesson after Mor yelled at them not to speak of valkyries?
An exultant howl shatters the night. It soars against my ribs and resonates inside my blood as though I hadn’t only been raised by wolves, but was one.
Are the others now aware that I’m not a deficient shifter? If they don’t yet, they’ll surely ask questions. Will they exile me, put me to death, or trade me to the Hasam?rin King to avoid war? What if they hand me over to Havrik to make me another pack’s problem?
As the questions stack up, Nordin lowers his head and turns toward me. When his tongue sweeps over his blood-slicked muzzle, bile surges behind my teeth.
“Don’t worry,” Vanoo tells me. “The curse won’t affect him.”
“The curse?” I glance up at the shifter. “What curse?”
Saga muscles her way past Vanoo and stamps her muzzle against my cheek, then against my throat before nesting her face in the crook of my shoulder.
Like earlier, I hug her tight. “I’m sorry for everything I put you through tonight, Saga.”
She pulls back, but only to give my cheek a lick. I don’t deserve that kiss. I don’t deserve any form of affection.
When Leif plods closer, she snaps at him and growls. He halts, draws back.
“What’s happening?” I ask, as she trots toward her brother and the motionless vampyr.
“Leif thought Kjell was infected, but his vines are only tattoos,” Vanoo explains, since he’s the only one in skin. “That’s why he held Saga back. He was protecting her.”
My mind snags on the first part and not on Leif’s altruistic motive—even though I’m deeply grateful that he kept Saga safe. “Infected?”
“Yes. By the curse.”
“What curse?”
“The curse of—”
Nordin barks, which snaps Vanoo’s lips shut.
“What curse?” I ask as a hot breath warms my nape. I glance sideways to find Nordin’s head right there. He must’ve wiped his muzzle on the snow because it’s no longer marbled red.