Chapter Nine Wolf Run as Mates #3
Willa touched the mark.
Still warm under the chill.
Still hers.
“Together.”
Torren held out his hand.
She took it.
The run back to Red Creek was not playful.
Not anymore.
But beneath the alarm, beneath Marek’s name, beneath the road opening another mouth, Willa could still feel what they had made in the wet pine hollow.
Not escape.
Not denial.
Strength returned to the body.
Beside, tested in motion.
They reached Red Creek muddy, rain-soaked, marked and mated and no longer knife-still.
Hessa took one look at them and said, “Fern?”
Willa stopped.
Torren stared.
Hessa’s mouth twitched.
“Never mind.”
Riksa appeared behind her.
“If either of you tracked wet leaves into my sickroom, I will remove them from you.”
“The leaves?” Willa asked.
“Do not test me.”
Miri stood near the table where Arlen slept again.
Her face was pale.
Orla held the latest written statement, ink still wet.
Selka stood by the hearth with both hands clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone white.
Willa knew before anyone spoke.
Marek’s name had struck more than her.
It had struck Selka through a completed bond that had never learned how to feel like home.
Torren stepped beside Willa.
“What exactly did he say?”
Orla looked at the page.
“Arlen woke. Miri asked who had taken him. He said: ‘Not Pike. False Pike. Frost-Marr-Stone road.’ Then he said, ‘Marek Vale knows the lower gate.’”
Silence.
Hessa’s face hardened.
Selka closed her eyes.
Willa felt Torren’s rage move dark and quiet through the mark.
Exact, she thought.
He looked at her.
Yes, his eyes said.
Or maybe the bond.
Maybe both.
Miri gripped the back of a chair.
“Does that mean Marek took him?”
“No,” Willa said.
Everyone looked at her.
She did not know why she was certain until the words formed.
“It means Arlen thinks Marek knows something about the lower gate. Not that he did this.”
Hessa nodded slowly.
“Accuracy.”
Torren’s jaw flexed.
“Marek brought ledger pages.”
“Yes,” Willa said.
“Torn pages.”
“Yes.”
“Not everything.”
The mark chilled.
“No.”
Selka opened her eyes.
Her voice was thin but steady.
“Marek knows where Davra keeps the complete records.”
Hessa turned toward her.
“You are sure?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Selka swallowed.
“Because he showed me once. Before the rite. He was drunk and angry and wanted me to understand he was not as useless as everyone thought.”
Willa’s chest tightened.
Torren looked toward the shuttered windows, toward Frostmere beyond rain and road.
“Then we need Marek.”
The sentence felt like mud under clean water.
No one liked it.
No one disputed it.
Selka’s completed bond, sour and unwanted, had just become a path.
Willa reached for the chair beside her and sat before her knees could choose drama.
Torren’s hand came to her shoulder.
Present.
Not asking if she was fragile.
There.
“Old?” he asked quietly.
Willa looked up at him.
Marek’s name no longer pulled through a bond.
But it still existed in memory.
In snow.
In public rejection.
In all the ways harm could be over and not over.
“Old,” she said.
His hand tightened once.
“Beside.”
She covered his hand with hers.
“Beside.”
Hessa looked at Selka.
“Can you get a message to him?”
Selka laughed once without humor.
“Through Frostmere? No.”
“Through the bond?”
Selka went very still.
The room quieted.
Riksa said, “Careful.”
Hessa did not soften.
“I am being careful. I am asking whether a sour completed bond can carry a hook.”
Selka’s face had gone pale again.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Willa stood.
“No.”
Hessa’s eyes went to her.
“Willa.”
“No.”
The mark flared with Torren’s attention.
She looked at Selka.
“Not unless she chooses it without us pushing her toward the sore place because it is useful.”
Hessa’s mouth tightened.
For a moment, Willa thought they would fight.
Then Hessa nodded once.
“Good.”
Willa blinked.
Hessa looked at Selka.
“Do you choose it?”
Selka stared at them.
The room held.
Not kindly.
Honestly.
Selka’s throat moved.
“I do not know.”
Riksa said, “Then not tonight.”
Orla nodded. “Red Creek records that no message is sent through bond under pressure tonight.”
Selka’s face changed.
Something loosened. Not relief entirely. Something like disbelief at being allowed uncertainty.
“Thank you,” she said.
Hessa looked uncomfortable.
“Do not make it tender.”
Willa almost smiled.
Torren’s hand remained on her shoulder.
The road had not stopped.
Marek’s name waited.
The lower gate waited.
Redjaw coins waited.
But for one moment, in Red Creek’s witness hall, a woman with a sour bond was allowed to say she did not know.
Willa thought that mattered.
She thought, perhaps, it mattered as much as any rubbing or coin.
Outside, rain struck the roof.
Inside, Arlen breathed.
And Willa, still muddy from running beside her mate, understood the next fight had already found its shape.
Not just proving Pike Hollow innocent.
Not just proving Frostmere guilty.
They had to find the truth without turning one another into tools sharp enough to cut themselves open.
She looked at Torren.
He looked back.
The mark beat once between them.
With.
Beside.
Exact.