Chapter Nine
DIERK
The Alpha didn’t come at us anymore after that night.
He did worse.
He sent males in plain clothes, soldiers wearing stolen cloaks or what they took from the cut-downs, to raid outlying farms. Burn barns, murder shepherds, take females. The attacks looked like bandits, but Matthis and his Prowlers found out the truth of it.
He wanted to draw us out, have us possibly die while protecting the people. His people. His hands would be clean, and the challenge he had to face would go away.
And yet, trap or not, we did go, every time word came to us.
Matthis turned the raids into proof, collecting the weapons the Alpha’s men dropped, spreading word that even the outlaws served the throne now. He made sure every whisper brought doubt and anger.
Gerhard listened in council, nodding, agreeing, feeding the Alpha exactly what he wanted to hear while he quietly shifted his best soldiers to neutral ground.
More times than not the raids turned into meat grinder–either a sacrificial show of strength or an excuse to get rid of inconvenient wolves.
The Commander refused to let them be fed to the Alpha’s ego.
They were both playing with fire, one in the shadow, one beneath the banner, but the tighter the Alpha’s noose pulled around the people, the closer it drew around them.
Until it snapped shut.
Three days before the challenge.
It was Adelmar who ran it to us.
We were training, just my Princess and I, when he broke through the trees at a dead run, shifting before he’d even slowed, landing hard on his knees in the dirt. “He took Gerhard and Matthis. They’re to be executed,” he panted.
I felt Elske’s pain like a hand closing around my lungs. Her face went pale. Those men were brothers to her; they’d become brothers to me. But she squared her shoulders and stopped the tremor. “How?” she asked.
Adelmar stared at us. “I don’t know all of it, but I think he’s known for a while. He planted evidence that they were the leaders of the gangs that terrorize the outer limits. He heard a public confession in the square this morning from an officer who served under Gerhard.”
“He’s playing savior to the pack while he cuts down its defenders,” I said, the growl low in my throat.
“When?” Elske asked.
“Tonight, at sunset.” Adelmar’s voice was flat. “By hanging.”
Elske swayed. I caught her against my chest and pulled her close, trying to give her what strength I could.
They would be hanged. It was the most dishonorable death a wolf could imagine.
Warriors die on their feet, blade in hand and teeth bared, or after a life proven in battle.
Hanging was slow. It was humiliating. The wolf bound, unable to fight.
The man suffocated, tied like a hog, and left for the crows.
“Two days before the challenge,” Elske breathed.
Adelmar nodded, grave. “They hold them in the oubliette. The guards there answer to the Alpha only.”
“I’ll break them out,” I said, kissing her hair and turning toward the cabin to get ready.
Adelmar’s head shook. “It’s too heavily guarded. Even for you.”
“I will not leave them there,” I said. My words left no space for argument.
“Wait.” Elske closed her eyes and shook her head once, like she was trying to clear the image of them, caged and hurt, away from her mind, so she had the room to think, to plan.
Because there was no way she would let them die there.
I’d be sure of that even without our bond.
“Do the villagers believe the accusation?”
Adelmar shrugged. “What difference does it make?”
“It may make the whole difference,” she said.
WE TURNED INTO SOMETHING no one would look at twice.
An old male, crippled and bent, who disappeared in the crowd when we arrived.
Two servants with dirty hands and low eyes.
Elske’s apron and simple dress were in tatters, my boots scuffed and caked with mud.
We stood by the gallows, close enough to move. Cheap enough to be ignored.
They brought them out.
Gerhard and Matthis. Wolfsbane shackles were at their wrists as they tied them with ropes down to the heavy post in front of them to keep them from fleeing.
Chin up and a straight back—pride and stubborn defiance.
The crowd leaned in, looking for a spectacle; they found two males who would not scrounge for mercy.
Who would not apologize for doing what honor demanded.
Guards armed with fast fire and blades stood right behind them. Alpha’s guards. I knew because of the cruel grin on their faces, while those loyal to the Commander and the First Prowler stood, eyes wet, jaws tight.
The Alpha was there, high on his noble perch above the square, his son beside him, draped in furs as if he was more interested in the chill in the air than in the blood about to spill. Watching. Drinking. Waiting for entertainment.
Then came the shout. One Elske and I were waiting for. A young male who worked in the hold came running. Smoke clung to him as he pushed through the crowd with wild eyes. “Fire! The eastern wing’s aflame!”
Panic rippled across the dais as I hid a smile. Wherever Adelmar had disappeared to, I was sure he was smiling too. The eastern wing was the Alpha’s private chambers, and the fire would burn wherever and for however long the old wolf wanted to, regardless of any intervention.
The Alpha shot to his feet, shoving his son ahead of him, guards swarming. “Keep on,” he snarled to the hangman. “And leave the corpses where all can see. Let the pack remember what defiance costs.”
The cowards fled, their black furs snapping in the wind like retreating shadows.
Perfect.
At my side, Elske was burning. Her rage was fuel to mine, her steadiness a compass for me to follow. A sharp intake of breath was her only reaction when they passed the nooses around our brothers’ necks.
That was it.
That was when we would save them or die trying.
I spread a hand on the small of her back to feel her warmth. Realized that there were things I still hadn’t told her. Stupid things I wanted her to hear. And it only strengthened my resolve. To fight for another day with her. To make sure my brothers would see through yet another injustice.
“Now,” I heard her whisper.
She raised her fingers just so, right at her belly’s height.
And let a pin of heat build. Nothing but a narrow ribbon of flame, a blade of fire that hissed from her and through the rope and cut it clear.
It was not a flare for show. It was surgical.
The hemp smoked and flapped down on Gerhard and Mattis’s backs.
The hangman’s eye blinked at the smell and rubbed his face, trying to understand what was happening, but she didn’t give him any time to reason or react.
She threw a rolling cloud of hot, suffocating smoke right at his head.
He jerked back, hands shielding his eyes, coughing.
Around us, the crowd went silent with the first thread of comprehension.
Then whispers rose like a sparkle through dry leaves.
A woman’s hand flew to her mouth. Someone shouted.
The guards moved on instinct, scanning the crowd, trying to locate the source of the flare.
But the smoke hit first. It took their eyes and their orders and left them coughing, clutching their spikes, and fumbling with their fire with clumsy hands.
That was the cut I needed.
I hurled myself onto the plank.
Only a handful of bodies between me and Gerhard and Matthis.
The hangman, a few guards. The first tried to shout, but Elske’s smoke folded and flared into heat that wrapped around his head.
He staggered back, clawing at his cheeks, coughing and sputtering.
He fell from the dais into a crowd that was starting to stir.
The guards braced, ready to come at me, but Elske moved faster. She starved them and their fires of oxygen, and their flames guttered while they struggled to breathe.
It all had lasted no more than a few seconds, but it was all the window I needed. I shoved past and got to our males.
“You are both insane, and I love you,” Matthis said.
Gerhard growled, asked, “She by herself?”
“She’ll be alright.”
He nodded, put his shackled wrists up in a silent question.
How was I going to break him free? Iron.
And the thick leather liner was drenched in wolfsbane.
The stink hit hard, but I knew that was nothing compared to what it was doing to them.
I could see the poison’s white burn where it had chewed their wrists, exposing gleaming blood and raw flesh.
Behind me, the square was moving with more guards pushing through, faces urgent, but Elske and Adelmar, wherever he was, were a wall of thick smoke and heat and fire.
I couldn’t snap the cuffs open with my hands. But my wolf could. I bent over the chain and called my wolf up. My teeth elongated, my jaw strengthened, and I clamped my teeth on the links.
Wolfsbane burned like acid. Pain seared my mouth, hot, maddening.
The world pinpointed to blood, mine, slickening my tongue, and the thin, awful hiss where poison filled my mouth.
My wolf howled in pain, my brain whitened.
I felt Eslke’s distress as she sensed my pain.
But I kept biting. The link kinked with a sound like a bone breaking, then finally gave.
I spat metal and copper and took a breath that was half howl. Then I seized Matthis’s iron and tore at it with the same savage grip. It burned deeper, angrier, coals across my gums, gnawing my tongue.
But Matthis was free.
I shifted as his shackles touched the floor, lost in the pain, in the anger, in the terror for Elske.
For her, I let the wolf take over.
I knew where she was. No need to see her. I knew.
In the crowd.
People screaming. Pushing.
Chaos was all over.
Males armed with fire and steel were coming for me.
And without me, they would take her.
Kill her.
Worse.
I lunged.