The North Sees Her #3
Her voice is strained, but she doesn’t command me or plead for Jace. She only calls me back to myself.
Fear moves through the bond, followed by the steadier warmth I’ve learned belongs to her when she chooses to remain even while she’s afraid. I can’t hear her thoughts, but I remember her beside the dying fire last night, asking me to come back when the fight ended.
Winning and surviving have to be the same thing today.
My jaws loosen.
Jace remains completely still.
I hold him for another breath, long enough for every wolf in the court to understand that his life remains in my mouth because I have chosen not to take it.
Then I release him and step back.
Jace lifts his head, and a growl begins in his chest.
I bare my teeth.
He lowers his head again.
Rowan enters the Circle with four guards carrying restraint chains. “Shift back.”
Jace doesn’t obey at first. His gaze moves toward Grant beneath the canopy, but Grant remains still, surrounded by his crown guards and unwilling to step forward for the man who has just broken the law in front of every pack that matters.
“Shift,” Rowan says again. “You yielded and attacked after the bell. The Circle no longer protects you from restraint.”
Jace’s ears flatten.
The shift back begins slowly. Black fur recedes as his body folds into its human shape until he lies bare and bloodied on the frozen ground. A guard throws a cloak across him before two others lock the restraint chain around his wrists.
I force my own shift.
Changing back is worse. The wound pulls through muscle and skin as my body narrows, and my breath stops halfway through the transformation. For one terrible moment, I can’t find another.
My knees strike the ground.
Nora and Ivy reach me almost together.
A guard drops a heavy cloak over my shoulders while Nora tears open what remains of my shirt. Ivy kneels at my other side and presses both hands against the wound as blood spreads between her fingers.
“Look at me,” she says.
I lift my head.
“Breathe.”
I drag air into my lungs, though it catches beneath my ribs.
Nora examines the torn bandage and the opened wound, her face tightening with every second. “We need to move him.”
“I’m awake,” I manage.
“That isn’t the standard I’m using.”
Rowan steps between Jace and the watching court.
“The challenge ended when Jace Maddox yielded,” he says. “His attack afterward violated the Circle, the lawful submission, and the protection granted to both men when the bell rang.”
Jace tries to rise, but the guards force him back to his knees.
“Until the inquiry into Eastmere, Vance, and King Grant’s conduct is resolved, Jace Maddox will remain under council guard. He’ll issue no military command, contact no Northern patrol, and leave confinement only by council order.”
Jace looks toward Grant again.
Grant doesn’t rise or speak, and the silence gives Jace the only answer he’s going to receive.
The guards pull him to his feet. He walks out under his own power because pride won’t let them carry him, but the chain remains locked around his wrists and guards stay close on either side.
When the doors close behind him, Rowan turns toward me.
“War Alpha Maddox retains command of the North.”
Carr lowers her blade first. Dane follows, then the Eastmere riders and the clerks who worked the relief ledgers. Several wolves remain standing.
Evan lowers himself to one knee near the front of the eastern bench. I know him from the map-room reports and the messages about his sister, but he doesn’t look at me.
He looks toward Ivy.
“Ivy,” he says.
Her name carries across the Circle.
An Eastmere rider follows him, then another. A patrol captain from the western road bows his head, and soon wolves who guarded the medicine wagons, held the farms while Eastmere remained closed, and watched Ivy take command of the map room are kneeling before her.
Her name moves through the court.
Ivy is still beside me with my blood across both hands. For a moment, the weight of every watching wolf settles over her shoulders, then she rises and steps close enough for the people kneeling to see her clearly.
“Please get up,” she says, waiting until the court quiets. “Birch Hollow still needs food, Eastmere is still closed, and the western farms need patrols before dark. You don’t owe me a kneel. You owe your people the work we haven’t finished.”
Evan looks up, and Ivy holds his gaze until he rises.
The others follow.
Warmth settles beneath my vow mark as Nora pulls one of my arms over her shoulders. Ivy moves beneath the other before my legs can give them a reason to carry me.
“You’re going back to the infirmary,” Ivy says.
“I know.”
“The wound is open again.”
“I know that too.”
Her face remains pale, and the blood drying across her hands is mine. “You came back.”
I tighten my hand around hers. “I said I would.”
The wolves rise around us as Ivy and Nora lead me from the Circle.
They haven’t made Ivy anything today. She was already the woman who kept the North alive while its Alpha could barely remain standing.
They have only stopped pretending she is someone beside me instead of a leader standing in her own right.