Chapter Three #4
Dierk nodded, and Adelmar nodded after him.
“So this is where our plan starts,” the Feuermeister said.
“We hide him. No one else knows about him besides the five of us—me, you, Matthis, Gerhard, and Greta. And we train him. Elske, you and I will train his magic. Gerhard will make sure he’s ready for an actual duel, not a tavern brawl.
He’ll need a crash course on pack politics and everything that’s in the shadows.
Matthis, that’s on you.” He inhaled. “A challenge may be issued only on a full moon, with the trial taking place on the following full moon. We have one soon, but it’s too early.
That gives us a little over two cycles, about ten weeks, to get him ready. ”
“Vargan will accept the challenge when it’s issued,” Matthis said flatly.
“He’ll use it to show his strength against an outsider.
But he’ll try to kill you before the fight, and he’ll come at you with everything he has.
You’ll have a target on your back.” He looked around the room.
“We may not be able to hide whose side we’re on before the end of it.
If that happens, we need contingencies in place. ”
For a moment, no one spoke. The truth in Matthis’s words hung heavy in the room, but no one argued. The path was already chosen. What mattered now was where to start. “He can stay in my chambers,” Adelmar offered, “but we need a place to train.”
One step at a time, I thought, snuffing the last of the little fiery leaves on my fingers. “I’ll take him to my cabin.” I said it quietly, and then louder, because the quiet made it sound too small. “It’s warded with old iron runes. They hold against scent and spell, and no one knows it’s mine.”
A chorus of objections rose, but I cut them off with one lift of my hand.
“It needs to be done. It’s the only reasonable place, and you all know it.
We can rotate so our absences are less suspicious.
In a month, when we issue the challenge, we’ll reassess.
I hate not having the whole map right now, but there are still too many unknowns. ”
Dierk stopped his pacing long enough to look at me. His eyes were low and hot, and for the first time, the calculation in them wasn’t only hunger. “I’ll be ready.”
It wasn’t a promise of gentleness. It wasn’t even a promise of mercy. But it was the only thing that mattered in the room: he would try. We all would. And that was the slimmest, most dangerous thread we had to hang our future on.
“We run to the cabin after supper,” I told him.
He dipped his head in one single nod, but the air shifted. His wolf stirred, hungry for the chase, for release. I caught the heat of it and pretended it didn’t reach me too.
I KNEW HIS WOLF WAS going to be massive and strong, but even the knowledge didn’t take away from the majesty of his wolf.
Adelmar’s tower bordered the walls, so it didn’t take us long to slip out through the servants’ gate, cut under the shadow of the ramparts, and keep to the dark where no lanterns burned.
We moved when the sentries’ heads turned, when laughter rose from the guardhouse–small cover, small chances.
Then the forest pressed close enough to swallow us, and we shifted.
Magnificent.
That was all I could think as the russet wolf took the ground.
He shook himself hard, coat rippling, then stretched long and low until his spine cracked softly and relief shivered through him.
The sound he made wasn’t a growl but something lower, freer.
He was huge, deep-chested, and thick through the shoulders, with paws that sank into the earth as if he owned it, and a ruff dark as old blood framing his jaw.
He paced, much as he had in the room, circling, waiting for me. But when I shifted, he stilled.
I was so much smaller than him, and still, there was no fear in me as I neared. My wolf had never been afraid of his. The combination of my heightened senses and his stronger scent, though–wild, dark, and heady–unsettled me. Not being able to name the feeling it evoked was possibly even worse.
So I ran.
The forest’s embrace was a balm to my spirit, cold autumn air clearing my head of the tower’s magic, the day’s residue, and of him.
We ran together, swallowed by trees and night.
His stride was longer, his pace almost reckless at times, but even when he outran me, he came back, brushing close as if unwilling to let me fall behind.
My wolf strained to keep up, the air cold in my lungs, the heavy thud of his steps always pulling me forward.
We threaded ravines and needled through spruce, skimmed a stream where moonlight shattered in the water, then climbed until the trees thinned and the path I knew by heart bent toward safety.
We vaulted a fallen tree. His wolf brushed mine midair, nothing but a graze, but enough to make me bristle.
Then the cabin rose dark under the trees.
The wards shimmered faintly, iron runes scars burned into the wood.
He slowed, steps heavy now, golden eyes set on the threshold.
I shifted.
He didn’t.
“I need you to shift,” I told him. “I have to accompany you inside, or the wards will bite. Not lethal, but unpleasant.”
He was a man in the next heartbeat.
“Come.” I offered him my hand.
He took it.
Warm. Big. Rough.
His hand engulfed mine, and my wolf lowered her head slightly in something very close to acknowledgment.
Or maybe recognition. Of what, I didn’t know and didn’t have time to linger on.
He held on as I opened the door and stepped over the threshold.
The wards pulsed faintly as he followed, the air humming against my skin in warning.
We stepped in, and I left his hand to close the door. With a quirk of my wrist, the candles and the fireplace sprang to life.
The cabin was small. One room with a bed in a corner that seemed too close now, the air steeped in cedar and smoke.
It had always been my refuge and secret, a place where the ugliness of my family wouldn’t touch me.
It had always fit me. Now it felt too tight, as though he filled much of it with his presence alone.
He prowled the space with the same restless energy I’d seen in the tower, but here, in the low light, he looked less like a caged animal and more like a wolf testing new ground.
He touched nothing, but his eyes landed everywhere–on the hearth, on the shelf with jars of dried herbs and books. On the bed.
“You live here?” His tone made it sound more accusation than question.
“Of course not,” I answered. My wolf paced, suddenly uneasy but unwilling to retreat. “But I come here as often as I can. It’s quiet. Safe. No one knows about this place.”
He nodded, settling against the far wall, eyes cutting to mine as gold caught the firelight. For a moment, neither of us spoke, but his wolf pressed forward, curious. Mine held steady. Finally, he dropped onto the bench by the hearth, elbows on his knees. “You’ve never been afraid of me.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “I should, shouldn’t I? You’re twice my size. Your arm is bigger than my head, and you’re not exactly well-mannered.”
“And yet you decked me and choked me.”
“You were bound by wolfsbane and nearly bled out.”
“I don’t smell your fear. You might be worried about me, but you’ve never been scared.”
“My wolf seems to trust you, and I trust her.” Fire flickered between my fingers as his gaze dipped to the flame.
He leaned forward as if scenting the heat.
Only the hush of the cabin was around us as my wolf turned toward his.
I let tiny flames flicker higher from my hand before closing my fist around them, then letting them go up again.
His golden gaze never strayed from it. “You trust it,” he murmured, tracking the tiny flames.
“Why didn’t you ever learn?” The question broke out before I could stop it. “Fire is in our blood.”
His shoulders lifted in something too rough to be a shrug.
“I told you, I didn’t have anyone to teach me and when I grew up, I wasn’t fool enough to join a band of rogues.
When fire takes over...” His jaw clenched, gold eyes flashing.
“Bad things happen. Word would spread. I don’t care for the attention. Easier to leave it sleeping.”
I huffed, my wolf’s hackles lifting. “Easier isn’t stronger.”
He glanced at me, a sparkle flashing in the gold. “Careful, Princess. Fire doesn’t make me stronger. It makes me into a blind weapon that doesn’t choose what it strikes.”
“That’s why we’re here. To show you how to aim the blade.”
His smirk lingered, but the gold burned darker, heavier, and when he spoke again, his voice was rougher. “I’ve buried enough to know what fire–what I–can do. Wolves. People. Doesn’t matter.” His jaw locked, a muscle ticking.
My wolf pricked her ears forward instead of snarling, curious where she should have been cautious.
There was sadness beneath that rage. Under the hardness of his stance, weariness lingered.
“I can’t care about what you’ve done,” I said, holding his gaze instead of looking away, even when the weight of it was a hot rock pressing on my chest. “I care what you’ll do with the weeks we have. ”
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Then his wolf edged forward in the silence of the cabin, close enough to feel, close enough to recognize.
Mine answered. Just a little, just a low hum of awareness sliding between us like smoke.
When I blinked, it wasn’t only his wolf watching me. It was him. Elbows on his knees, hands loose and unguarded between them, fingers flexing once, then once again. I folded my hands to keep from fidgeting, but the awareness remained, my wolf right behind my ribs, listening harder than she should.
He leaned back. “You’re putting way too much faith in me. I could bolt the second you leave this cabin.”
Instead of answering, I crossed to the shelf and opened the cabinet: dry bread, dried meat, a flask of water.
I set them on the table between us. “You keep saying that, but the truth is, Dierk the Stray, that you could have already. When Greta freed you. When Adelmar took off your chains. At any point while we were running here.” I shrugged as I pushed the food toward him.
“So, keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better. But we both know you’re in. ”
His menacing gaze, as wild as his growl, flicked to the door before sliding back to me.
“Rest,” I told him, letting fire dance once at my palm before I snuffed it out. “Tomorrow, we start. My father and Skarr are leaving for a few days. That buys us time. We’ll use it well.”
The corner of his mouth twitched—not quite a smile, not quite a snarl. His wolf watched mine again, and mine, traitor that she was, didn’t look away.
I stood, heading for the door. “Good night, Dierk.”
“Good night, Princess.”