Kneel
? Ivy ?
The fortress changes again, not for the capital this time but for blood.
I feel it before Nora reaches me. The shift moves through the stone beneath my feet and through the infirmary walls, carried by the sudden snap of voices beyond the door.
Boots strike the corridor faster than before, and a bell begins low in one of the towers.
It isn’t frantic or ceremonial. It’s a warning.
My wrist burns warm beneath my sleeve. The mark feels as though it’s turned toward something coming.
Nora looks up from the basin where she’s been washing her hands. Her face changes before her voice does.
“Give me a second,” she says.
“I heard eastern gate.”
“So did I.”
Another shout cuts through the corridor outside. The words are muffled by stone and distance, but I hear enough to understand that a wounded rider has reached the eastern gate and more are coming behind him.
The word eastern sends the ledgers flashing through my mind. Missing salve. Missing honey. Cloth marked wrong. Routes changed by hands that didn’t want anyone asking why wounded wolves were left without what they needed.
“Nora.”
She’s already moving. Her whole body changes when wounded enters the room. Her hands become quicker, her eyes sharper, and the briskness in her voice stops sounding like irritation. She grabs a leather roll from the counter, snaps it open, and checks the instruments with practiced touches.
“I can help,” I say.
“I know.” She reaches for a satchel. “Your mark’s been unsettled all morning, so be honest with me. Cold? Dizzy?”
“No.”
“Need a second?”
“No. I need to move.”
Her mouth tightens, but she nods.
The infirmary door opens before she can say anything else. A guard stands there, pale under the torchlight.
“Healer. Alpha says if she’s steady and chooses to help, bring her to the lower hall.”
Nora turns slowly toward me. Roman left the decision with me. I make it before fear can.
He’s left the answer with me. The guard blinks.
Nora adds another roll of bandages to the satchel. “Tell him we’re coming.” The guard leaves quickly.
I reach for the edge of the table when the room tilts for half a second. It isn’t enough to make me stumble, but Nora notices anyway.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re fine enough,” she says.
“That’s not an insult. It’s a medical category I’m inventing because you won’t stay here, and I don’t have time to argue.”
A startled breath catches in my throat, almost a laugh.
Nora presses a small packet into my hand. “Eat this on the way. Your body burns through strength when the mark acts up, and I’d rather it have something to use.”
It’s dried fruit and oats pressed together, tasting like dust, honey, and medical bullying. I eat it anyway.
She hands me a cup next. “Water.”
I drink, and she slings the satchel over her shoulder.
“Stay where I can reach you,” she says. “If the mark starts pulling fear through you, tell me before you fall.”
“I’ll tell you.”
“Good.” Her gaze holds mine. “If you need to stop, say so, and we stop.”
The words stay with me as she turns into the corridor, and I follow.
The hall outside the infirmary has become a river of movement.
Guards pass us with packs, cloaks, and blades.
Servants carry buckets and boiled cloth.
A boy no older than sixteen runs by with a crate of empty bottles, his face white and determined.
Two capital attendants flatten themselves against the wall, horrified by the sudden ugliness of a working fortress preparing for wounded.
One of them looks at me. Her gaze drops to the dark wool at my wrists and then to the mark beneath my sleeve before she quickly looks away.
Blood changes what matters in a room. You either move, or you become something other people have to move around.
Nora moves quickly, but she doesn’t leave me behind. My skirt brushes my ankles as we hurry down the corridor. The stone is cold through my slippers, and somewhere below us, a horse screams. My breath catches. Nora glances back. “With me?”
“Yes.”
“Is the fear yours?”
I open my mouth, then stop.
The fear inside me is thin and sharp, but beneath it moves something heavier, an animal dread full of smoke, blood, and the need to run even when there’s nowhere safe to go.
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
Nora’s face hardens, not at me, but at the answer. “Then we take one breath.”
“We can’t slow down.”
“We can for one breath.”
I do what she says. The fear doesn’t leave, but it loosens enough that I can walk without feeling like I’ll come apart.
The lower hall has been cleared by the time we reach it. Benches have been dragged aside, tables line one wall, and buckets steam near the hearths. Guards stand at the doors with hands near their weapons, watching every entrance as though danger might wear a familiar face.
Roman stands in the center of it all.
He isn’t the careful man who asked before touching my wrist or the restrained uncle who let me dismiss a prince. This is the War Alpha, dressed in black with his scar pale against one side of his face. His voice stays low enough that no one needs to hear it twice.
“Eastern gate stays open only for our riders. No capital men beyond this hall without my order. Dane, I want names of every survivor before sunset if they can speak. Carr, double the south wall. If the village was hit before dawn, whoever did it may expect us to empty the fortress.”
His orders move through the room without wasted motion. Every person near him becomes more useful because he gives them something exact to do. Then his gaze finds me. The mark warms.
I expect him to tell me to stay back. Instead, he looks at Nora.
“Status?”
“Steady enough for now,” she says. “The mark is active.”
Roman turns back to me. “Ivy?”
The lower hall smells like smoke, wet wool, metal, and fear.
Blood has been smeared across the floor near the entrance, as though someone tried to wipe it away and only spread it thinner.
My stomach rolls, but Eastmere is real. The missing supplies are real.
The ledgers weren’t ink games while people beyond these walls bled for things that should’ve reached them.
“I can help with names,” I say. My voice is rough, but it holds. “Supplies. Missing people. What came from which village and what shipments should’ve reached them.”
Dane looks up from the map table.
Roman nods once. “With Nora near enough to monitor you.”
“Yes.”
“And if you need to stop?”
“I’ll say so.”
His eyes hold mine for another second, then he turns toward the doors.
They burst open a moment later, and cold storms into the hall with the blood.
Two guards carry a man between them. His boots drag against the stone, his cloak is stiff with ice, and blood has soaked through the side of his coat before freezing dark at the edges. Another rider stumbles behind him with one hand pressed to his shoulder. Nora’s already moving.
“Table with the best light,” she calls. “Cut the coat, don’t pull it. Pressure on the side wound. Boiled water here.”
The hall obeys her because she knows what she’s doing.
I stand still for one second too long, watching the first rider groan as they lower him onto the table. His eyes roll beneath half-closed lids, unfocused and wild.
“Name?” Roman asks.
The man’s mouth moves, but no sound comes out.
The second rider answers with his jaw locked. “Garrick Vale. Eastmere.” I know that name.
My mind catches the ledger page before fear can drown it.
Eastmere received one winter allotment of wound salve two months ago.
Then a second shipment was requested and never confirmed.
One transfer carried Holt’s authorization.
One delay sat at the eastern toll point without any clear reason behind it.
“Eastmere was on the missing salve list,” I say.
Dane’s head snaps toward me. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I move to the table and pull the copied ledger closer. “Two requests. One was filled properly. The second is marked transferred, but there’s no village receipt.”
Dane scans the page while I point to the entry.
“Salve, honey, clean cloth, and fever tincture,” I say. “The patrol route changed the next week, on the same road.”
“Damn it,” Dane says quietly.
Across the hall, Nora glances over at me. I lift my fingers once so she can see they’re steady enough, and she gives a small nod before returning to Garrick.
The second rider watches me through fever-bright eyes.
“They knew,” he says.
The words cut through the room.
Roman turns toward him, all unnecessary movement stripped away. “Who knew?”
The rider swallows. Blood slips between his fingers. “Whoever came. They knew where the storehouse was weak. Which houses had children. Where the healer kept supplies.” His voice fractures. “Except there weren’t supplies. Not enough. We had rags.” My fingers go cold.
The rider keeps talking as though stopping would make him see the village again. “They came before dawn. Smoke first, then wolves. Not rogues. Trained. Faces covered. They cut the bell rope before we could call the ridge.”
Roman’s voice becomes very quiet. “How many?”
“Fifteen. Maybe twenty. More in the trees.”
Dane swears beneath his breath. The rider’s eyes lose focus. “They took Mara’s boy. And the two healer girls. Said blood answers better when it’s young.”
A sick silence settles over the hall.
Nora’s face goes pale in a way I’ve never seen. Roman’s expression empties, as though every unnecessary part of him has been locked away.
“Names,” he says.
The rider blinks at him. Roman steps closer. “Give me names.”
The man’s breath catches. “Tobin. He’s six. Lysa and Brenna from the healer house. Twelve and fourteen. Old Harl too, but he was bleeding when I left.”
I reach for a clean page, and my hand shakes harder now.
Names matter because they mean someone is missing, not simply gone. Tobin. Lysa. Brenna. Harl.
My handwriting isn’t pretty, but it’s readable.
“What else?” Roman asks.
The rider looks at him, and something inside him breaks open. “My mate. I left my mate.”
His knees buckle. Two guards catch him before he hits the floor. Fear surges through the hall.
One moment I’m standing beside the ledger table. The next, the air is full of wolves trying not to shift, trying not to run, trying not to imagine children dragged from burning houses. Fear presses beneath my ribs and into my throat until my own breath catches.
Then someone near the doors growls. Every head turns.
A young wolf stands by the entrance with both hands clenched at his sides. He’s one of the guards who helped carry Garrick in. Blood covers one sleeve, and his eyes shine too bright, gold pressing through the brown.
“I should go,” he says.
Carr steps toward him. “Ansel.”
“I should go now.”
“Stand down.”
“They took children.”
“We know.”
“They took children while we guarded stone.” His voice breaks around the words. “We’re standing here.”
His claws slide out. The sound is small, but the reaction isn’t.
Two wolves nearby tense. Another answers with a growl he clearly doesn’t mean to make. Fear catches on fear and begins to move through the hall faster than anyone can command it away.
Roman turns toward Ansel, and his Alpha power rises so fast the air tightens around us. There are too many frightened wolves in the room, though, too many hearts already pounding toward panic. Dane moves first.
Ansel snarls, not at Dane, but at the world. “I’m going.”
“No,” Carr says.
“Move.”
The word cracks with wolf. Cold sweat breaks along the back of my neck. The fear around me grows too large to keep outside my skin, carrying grief, rage, and the terrible helplessness of men trained to fight who’ve been given the wrong battlefield. Ansel shoves Carr.
He doesn’t hurt him, but he shoves hard enough to turn a room full of frightened wolves into a disaster waiting for one more breath. Several wolves surge. Roman’s command gathers.
I move before I can talk myself out of it.
My pulse hammers so hard that the edges of my vision blur as I step from the ledger table into the open space near the doors. Nora says my name. Roman says it too, sharper this time, but I keep walking until Ansel’s bright eyes find mine.
He’s bigger than I am, armed and half-shifted at the hands, his breath coming rough. I’m afraid of him, but his fear is louder than mine.
“Ansel,” I say.
His head jerks.
“I can’t stay here,” he rasps.
“I know.”
The answer surprises both of us.
“You want to run because standing still feels like leaving them there,” I say. “You think moving now will make you less helpless.”
His claws flex against his palms.
A tear slips down his soot-streaked face and freezes near his jaw. “They took Tobin.”
The name hits the room again. Tobin is six years old, and somewhere beyond the walls, a child has been taken from a burning village. I take another step forward.
“Then don’t waste yourself before Roman can aim you,” I say. “You’re not leaving them by taking one breath. You’re making sure you’re alive when we bring them home.”
Ansel’s breath shudders. The mark at my wrist burns warm, then hotter. I feel Nora at my back, tense and ready, but she doesn’t stop me.
Ansel takes one staggering step toward the door. Dane moves. Roman’s command rises. Mine reaches first.
“Kneel.”
The word leaves me whole. It isn’t loud, and it isn’t a shout. It lands low and deep, warm and unyielding, carrying something I don’t understand but can’t take back.
Ansel drops to one knee with a harsh breath, not like a man crushed beneath force, but like someone whose body has finally been given permission to stop fighting itself.
His claws retract against the stone. His head bows, and then the first full sob tears out of him.
The sound changes the room. Wolves around us exhale one by one, as though they’d forgotten breathing was still possible.
My ears ring. My knees weaken. Heat spills from the mark into my arm, then turns cold so quickly that I gasp.
Roman’s suddenly closer, not touching me, but ready.
Nora’s voice cuts through the silence. “Give her space.” No one argues.
Ansel remains on one knee before me, shaking and breathing, alive inside his own skin again. He lifts his face slowly, his eyes wet and wide.
“Luna,” he whispers.
The word moves through the hall in a low, shaken murmur.
My vision tilts. Roman’s face sharpens, then blurs at the edges. A drop of blood falls from my nose and lands on the back of my hand.
Nora swears under her breath as she catches my arm.
The mark burns once more beneath my sleeve.
Then the lower hall fills with the sound of wolves saying the word again.
“Luna.”