Chapter Seven
Dierk
The mood shifted after the battle. I was a no one, but the others?
The villagers had seen. They’d seen Gerhard cutting down the guards, seen Matthis holding the line, making sure the wounded were carried to safety.
The Commander and the First Prowler had spent most of the night among them.
They saw the Princess. If word reached the Alpha or one of his lapdogs, it would mean treason.
But, to my dismay, the villagers seemed complicit in keeping the secret.
Different reasons, I was told, all rooted in fear.
Exposing us meant drawing the Alpha’s eye upon themselves, and for peasants who’d escaped the pit once, silence was easier.
Safer. With their silence, they were siding with those who’d given them a crumb of hope.
Gerhard and Matthis filed identical reports after the accident was ‘investigated’: a riot resulting in mutual fatalities, with all collectors and villagers unaccounted for and presumed dead.
The Alpha didn’t care that the company was gone.
So long as everyone involved was dead, that was enough.
Losses weren’t for mourning, but for measuring.
One company for a poor village was a cheap price to pay to show all the others who was in charge.
The silence held. For now. But we were on thin ice, and every step creaked with warning.
Training went on, day after day. Matthis, Gerhard, and even Adelmar traded hours with me, each of them testing me harder, pushing me further. I was getting faster, my strength tempered. My fire and my wolf no longer fought for control.
For the first time in my life, I was in control. Not the wolf. Not the magic.
For the first time, there were others with me.
I wasn’t sure how any of it made me feel.
I’d never had a use for feelings other than rage.
But there was strength in those males. Honor.
There had been gratitude mixed with terror in the villagers’ eyes when I fought for them.
And no matter how much I denied it, no matter how often I reminded myself this was a means to an end, I was starting to feel. .. good.
Useful.
Like I had a purpose that was more than just surviving. Bigger than just me.
Then there was the Princess.
Elske.
She kept teaching me. Guiding me. Still, she didn’t touch me.
But I saw it for what it was now. Her scent had been all over me for hours after that night.
It had clung to me and burrowed deep until it filled my thoughts, my skin.
Her taste had sunk into me like a poison I craved more of.
No matter how many times I took release by myself that night, the need stayed.
Unsatisfied. It had remained so. She’d fit in my hands, under my palms, like she’d been made for me and I for her.
My body bent to shield her; hers rose to meet the beast that lived in me.
My wolf wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t stop pacing, sniffing for hers.
Of course, neither of us spoke of it. She was precise, professional, and unflinching when we trained.
But she avoided my gaze, her control brittle as glass.
Her hands trembled when I was near. Her fire shivered if I stood too close.I knew she wanted me just as much.
But I understood why she kept her distance.
I was a nobody. Even if I became Alpha, I’d still be a wolf from the gutter.
Her bloodline was pure and ancient. And we had a mission—a dangerous one.
Desire had no place in it.
But every word she spoke, every accidental brush of her skin, carried the echo of that night, of how much we’d wanted. How much we still did.
So I stood closer. Held her hand longer than training required. She was building walls; I was caught between wanting to tear them down and forget about it. About her. Mad because I couldn’t.
I wasn’t deluded; the other males knew. They could scent what burned between us. But none dared speak of it, whether from fear I’d tear their throats out or that she’d burn them to ash.
So the training went on. And every day, it got harder not to fall into her fire.
ELSKE
A FULL CYCLE HAD PASSED.
Tomorrow, as the sun slid down and the moon rose full to call us once again, Dierk would issue his challenge to my father, the Alpha of Dorwulf pack. A month had brushed past me, filled with the burning awareness of him and the stubborn pledge to ignore it.
The pull was harder than I’d thought it would be.
I felt branded for what had been, on paper, only a kiss.
Not a polite peck on the cheek, but still, only a kiss.
One that could have, would have, gone way further than that.
But only a kiss. Yet since then, even sitting near him and keeping my hands to myself had been maddening.
He found every chance to crash against the wall I kept so carefully between us, and I trembled under it with equal parts of annoyance, frustration, and want.
We were about to walk into an inferno. I wasn’t going to add personal entanglement to it—or that’s what I kept telling myself.
Because I suspected.
That maddening pull to him. The constant awareness of him and his absence. There was an explanation for it all. And it was terrifying. Because if I was right, then what? If he was that to me, then how could I keep on going with a level head? So no, it was better to keep it as light as possible.
Gerhard and Adelmar had sniffed the situation and had the sense not to comment on it.
Matthis tossed in some of his underhanded remarks, always veiled enough to be evasive, but barbed enough to get to us, which were met with either a snarl from Dierk or a flare of fire from me.
The male only shrugged it off with a chuckle.
And now, we were about to light the ember of something that might very well burn us.
There was no laughter at the table that night. No lightness. We decided to hold one last dinner before the challenge, and we sat together sharing stew, mead, and sweets while the forest outside turned cold and hard. None of us cared.
We agreed that Gerhard and Matthis would keep pretending loyalty to the Alpha in the next month.
It was both for their safety and so we wouldn’t lose our intelligence inside the den.
They didn’t like it, but they also saw the practical side of it.
“You need to come to me at the barracks, where I keep my office,” Gerhard said to Dierk, scraping the last of the meat from his plate with a piece of bread.
“I’ll take you in front of him. You say your piece, and you challenge with your blood. ”
“Then you get out of there fast,” Matthis added. “And come straight here.”
“I’ll lay delay wards,” Adelmar said. “They won’t stop them, but it will buy you some time if they go with an attack.”
Matthis nodded. “The Alpha will not be loud. When Vargan sees you, sees how strong you and your wolf are, he’ll try to end you quietly before the challenge.
He can’t lose face with this kingdom as rotten as it is.
He’ll try to make you disappear and sell the tale that you bowed out because you knew you’d lose. ”
“Where would they strike first?” Dierk asked, the first of the few words he’d said.
“Poison,” Matthis said. “Check your food and water. Only eat what your wolf can hunt. Maybe an ambush, with enough of them to overpower you. Less likely because you’re, well, like this,” he said, motioning with a hand to Dierk’s body, “but watch your back when you hunt.”
He nodded, and for the first time since dinner began, his golden eyes turned to me. “Where will you be?” I knew he meant at the challenge, and I put down the fork I was holding, linked my fingers in front of me.
Here we are. This was the part I hadn’t told anyone. The part I turned over in my head again and again, looking at every angle of it, only to come to the same decision. “I will stand with you.”
A chorus of shouts came from the males at the table. Everyone but him. Precisely why I hadn’t shared my plan before.
“It’ll be seen as treason,” Adelmar said, fussing at his now short beard the way he did when upset.
“We’re wolves. It’s our right to challenge the Alpha,” I argued.
Which only made Matthis chuckle. “Not this one. With this Alpha, it’s treason, and you’ll be on the hit list with your Stray.”
I let the comment about him being my stray wash over me as Gerhard looked at me in that quiet way he had.
We’d been through too much together for his trust to falter, though he hated my intentions.
That much was clear in the tension of his posture.
“What’s the reasoning behind it, my lady? ” he asked.
“He needs legitimacy,” I said. “As Matthis pointed out, a challenge now can be spun as rebellion, not a right. But if I stand with him, it gives political weight. I’m still the first daughter of the Alpha, no matter how much the court likes to forget it.”
“What if I fail?” Dierk muttered. There wasn’t a challenge in his voice, only a clinical question about odds and fallout. My answer was strong and didn’t leave any room for doubt, all the same. “You will not.”
His jaw clenched, and his eyes glowed. His gaze remained on me, steady and hot. There was an undercurrent to the way he was staring at me that terrified me. Pulled at me like the moon itself.
“But what if he does?” Gerhard echoed, snatching me out of the depths of that undercurrent.
“You must reckon with the possibility. No one has ever gotten to the challenge. If he does, then I have no idea what Vargan will do, the way he’ll cheat, to win.
Losing is a very real possibility at any point. ”