Chapter Five
DIERK
Soft fog had just started to lift. The forest was coming alive. I heard the scratching and skittering of a squirrel through leaves, the call of a bird.
I had run. Free, for once. Not because I was chased, wanted, or because I needed a new place to be. I ran for the pleasure of it.
I hunted. My belly was full, and there was more at the cabin. I did it for the sake of it.
All the while, I knew I had a roof over my head. A simple mission. Learn my fire. Take down the Alpha. Give the pack to the Princess. But the more I thought about the simplicity of it, the heavier it felt. Not a chain, but close enough. And that made me weary.
I’d lived my life in chaos. Such a straightforward path felt unnatural. That clarity stripped away all the noise I’d learned to survive in, leaving nothing but the burden.
With no chains, responsibility itself becomes shackles.
There were no excuses. There were no sidesteps waiting to be taken. It was just walking the line straight into the fire.
I washed in the freezing water of the stream nearby.
I’d washed last night after she’d left, but the smell of burned had lingered.
It was the only thing that remained from yesterday.
The cuts and bruises I’d taken with Adelmar were already gone.
But the stench had clung to me like the memory of the blaze.
The fire had owned me. After an entire morning spent trying to call it up and control it, temper and exhaustion had shoved me too far.
It had been easy to reach for it and let it go.
But it wasn’t me wielding the blaze: the blaze ruled me.
And I had almost burned the old male and the cabin to the ground.
Until she came along.
Such control. Such steadiness. Courage. Things worth respect, sure. Easy enough to admit now that my mind was clear.
But how had she managed to cut through when nothing else, when not even I, could?
Why had my wolf turned when she called? Stilled when she asked for it? That unsettled me. Wolves like mine didn’t submit. And we didn’t. We wouldn’t.
But she and her wolf had a sway over me that no one ever had before. Her voice sat easier in my head than my own. It made me want to keep listening. Made me want to understand.
Curiosity was a small, ugly thing to admit. I despised it.
With a snarl carrying more frustration than anger, I went back to the cabin.
The Princess arrived soon after, carrying provisions in a basket she left by the door. She wore green again, a shade much like her eyes. There was nothing of yesterday’s blaze in her scent. Only flowers and the forest at dawn.
My wolf let off a low chuff and sat, his attention fixed on her.
“I didn’t leave,” I growled.
She smiled, set two chipped cups that had survived the fire on the table, pulled a jar from the pantry, and warmed the water in the kettle with a flick of her hand. “You seem surprised.”
“No. Just not used to it.” I took the cup she passed me. The tea smelled good. “I told you I’d be ready. I gave you my word. For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth enough to me. Gerhard will come by later with some furniture and for some physical training.” She glanced around, lips quirking. “We can train with fire outside. Just in case.”
“Just in case.”
And I was back to training. Back to reaching for the fire. For the anger.
It should have been a disaster.
It wasn’t.
She didn’t care about technique, posture, or even breathing. I’d fight that, and she seemed to know it. She cut it all down to the physical: body, heartbeat, touch. Things as real as her. She didn’t talk in metaphors or lofty words. Her voice stayed steady enough to hold on to.
She touched me.
Often.
I’d taken females before. Quick and rough, in dirty alleys behind a tavern. Out in the forest, when it was closer than a bed. There was never affection. Only need from both sides, and the need of both was always satisfied.
The way she touched me was different. Not violent, like in a fight. Not lusting. Not as a mother.
She touched me like I was someone worthy of her time. I knew she needed me. I knew she wasn’t doing it out of goodness. But she treated me like a male, not just strength to be used.
When I lost connection with myself, when I risked slipping into the fire, she’d place a hand on my chest. Use the pressure to remind me where to focus. When my rage shook too close to breaking, she would take my hand in hers and anchor me.
It made me weary as much as it made my wolf quiet.
He was always quiet with her. And with him not constantly raging, my thoughts finally had room to settle. Temper could be handled instead of obeyed.
She kept guiding me the entire morning until I no longer had to poke at my rage to reach the fire. Control was another matter. At least, now my wolf wasn’t fighting me for it.
We stopped for a light lunch, more cheese and cuts with bread, sitting on the grass.
“You eat like a wolf even when you’re not one,” she said, a smile hidden in her words.
“I’m always one.”
“You could at least try chewing like a male.”
I tore another piece of bread with my teeth, slower this time, watching her watch me. “Better?”
Her mouth curved. “Almost.”
I snorted. “You’d rather I peck like a bird?”
“Wouldn’t suit you,” she said, pouring water into her cup. The sound she made then–a soft, amused chuckle–caught me off guard. It flickered through me before I could stop it, as quick as it was unwanted.
I tore another bite of bread, just to have something to do.
A hare hopped around and disappeared into the forest. My wolf’s ears prickled at the chance of more food, but I kept my ass down. With her.
“When I was little, I tried to race a hare,” she said, her eyes looking in the same direction. “I lost so badly.”
“You were chasing for fun. The hare thought it was running for its life. That’s never a fair race.”
She shrugged, easy. “Losing just meant I got to run longer.”
I grunted and reached for more meat. Easier than answering. I didn’t know what to do with this. It had nothing to do with training. Nothing to do with fire or the plan. It was light and friendly. I’d never done friendly.
I was saved from this moment when I heard the heavy steps of a wolf, and the scent reached me. Something in that smell was familiar, but there was no taking any risk. I shifted in the next breath, my wolf planting himself in front of her.
No touching her. No one would. No one touches her.
The big, dark-brown wolf stepped from the forest into the clearing. Broad, scarred, strong magic rolling off him.
A valid opponent.
But he wouldn’t get to her.
A whiff of wind carried more of his scent.
The commander.
Safe.
Her hand brushed through our fur, steadying, a lilt of humor in her voice. “It’s Gerhard,” she said. “He told me he’d come in the early afternoon.”
I shifted back as the other male did. But my wolf was still uneasy, still too focused on her. And once again, I wondered why he acted this way.
ELSKE
Watching Dierk fight was both terrifying and impossible to look away from.
Gerhard needed to size him up before starting an actual drill. A wolves’ fight was something you couldn’t fully prepare for. It was raw, savage, fast as a struck match, and Dierk’s wolf looked set to win that part of it. His wolf didn’t need to know the moves. He just needed to be.
So they fought as males.
Gerhard wasted no motion, every movement purposeful, as if nothing, no time or effort, could be spared.
Small steps, a precise angle to take the weight, a hit that always found the weak line.
Dierk didn’t have those lessons. He had size and brutal momentum, but muscles and gravity made up for the lack of any technique only so much.
Gerhard’s discipline and experience let him flip Dierk, pin him long enough to teach the lesson.
There was a reason he was the Commander.
They kept going and going. At some point, I was pretty sure it stopped being all business and started sounding like something closer to a game.
The smack of flesh on flesh, the low grunts, the way both males kept testing each other with harder moves and then chuckling when the other took them.
They moved through parries and holds and rolls, and it looked like they were doing it more for the pleasure of it than for necessity.
I’d never admit I’d stayed because of that. Because of him.
Watching him was a temptation I had no business lingering on.
He was beautiful in a raw and dangerous way, hair plastered to his neck, muscles thick and working beneath sweat-sheened skin.
When I’d put a palm against his chest during our training, I’d felt the solid heat of his body under my skin.
The memory hit me now with the weight of a brand.
My wolf, who now loved nothing more than to stay there and watch him, was equally pleased to feel all of it, tail flicking in a way that might as well have been a grin.
I should not have let my thoughts go that direction, but with the full moon close...
Mother Moon called to the wolf. The nearer the full moon, the easier it was for instinct and hunger to loosen up.
To crawl their way up. If it got any worse, I would have to bind my scent again to make sure none of this nonsense bled into something anyone could read.
Any slip would invite questions that had no reason to be asked.
By the time they called it, the sun had dipped behind the trees, the forest filled with long, greedy shadows.
Both males were coated in sweat; both breathed hard.
Small cuts and grazes flecked their skin, some bleeding, some only raised and dark.
They wiped at their faces with the backs of their hands.
Neither laughed, but it wasn’t hard to see both had enjoyed the beat up. Males.
“I don’t get why I have to train like this when my wolf can take care of everything,” Dierk burred.