Chapter 2 The First Hound
Ivo
My hounds had knelt for kings.
They had knelt for executioners, covenant keepers, and the dead thing beneath the Thorn Court that still called itself a god.
They had never knelt for an omega.
The woman stood inside their circle with blood on her raised hand and murder in her eyes. Her dark hair had half escaped its tie. Thorn scratches marked one cheek. The scent pouring from her should have made thought impossible.
Blackberries crushed beneath a boot. Rain sinking into starved earth. The metallic edge of lightning before it split a tree.
Pre-heat.
My curse recognized it before I did.
Pain drove through my jaw. My canines lengthened against my lower lip, and the old command tightened around my spine.
Take the quarry.
I closed both hands around the reins.
Beside me, Zephan’s horse struck the ground hard enough to expose white roots. Zephan leaned forward in the saddle, every line of him aimed at the woman.
Tomas did not move.
That worried me more.
“Up,” I ordered the hounds.
None obeyed.
The largest, Vuk, lowered his skull farther toward the mud.
The woman’s gaze moved from him to me. Not between all three riders. To me. She had already identified the command structure.
Registry training, perhaps. Military was less likely. She carried herself like someone who had learned tactics in rooms where no one admitted a war was taking place.
“Are they yours?” she asked.
Her voice was rough from running. It did not tremble.
“They belong to the Hunt.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Zephan made a low sound behind his teeth.
I kept my attention on her. “I command them.”
One corner of her mouth shifted. There was no humor in it. “Do you?”
The curse twisted.
I had endured its punishments for more than a century. Fire in the marrow. Memories stripped away one face at a time. The violent red emptiness that came when resistance lasted too long.
Her three words found a place it had never touched.
Shame.
“Vuk,” I said.
The hound’s blue ribs brightened, but he remained on his forelegs.
The woman’s fingers curled toward her palm. Blood slid across the heel of her hand. At the sight of it, her expression hardened as if even the wound had acted without permission.
“Call them off.”
“You appear to have done that yourself.”
“I told one to stop. I didn’t tell them to surround me.”
“They surround what the Hunt has chosen.”
“Then unchoose me.”
Zephan laughed once. Bitter orange sharpened the air.
The woman’s head turned a fraction toward him. “Something funny?”
“You crossed the boundary in pre-heat and woke a covenant older than your government. You think this is an administrative error?”
“Most atrocities are administrative once enough men sign them.”
Zephan’s smile vanished.
I should have dismounted. The Hunt pressed the action into me, built from a thousand completed pursuits.
Approach.
Subdue.
Present.
Claim.
Instead, I studied the ground.
She had entered from the east, but the hounds had first caught her trail to the north. Brown hair clung to a thorn at shoulder height. The scent carried beta suppressant, cheap soap, and no fear.
A planted trail.
Farther east, a second scent was fading beneath a ward. Omega. Young. Terrified.
The woman saw the moment I found it.
Her weight shifted to the balls of her feet.
Not fear for herself.
For the runner.
“Zephan,” I said.
“I smell her.”
The woman reached for the blade at her ankle.
“You will stay here,” I told him.
His head snapped toward me. “There is another quarry.”
“There is another omega.”
“The covenant does not distinguish.”
“I do.”
The Hunt drove a spike through the base of my skull.
For one breath, the forest went black.
When my sight returned, I tasted blood.
Tomas watched me from beneath the deep hood of his riding coat. Beeswax and extinguished candles ghosted beneath the woman’s storm scent. His gloved hand rested on the leather case at his hip, where he kept the instruments he used to cut curses apart and stitch us back together.
He made no move to help me.
Good.
Pain was information. I needed to know how hard the Hunt would fight for the second omega.
The answer appeared in the hounds.
Two raised their muzzles toward the east.
The bloodied woman stepped forward.
Vuk rose instantly.
Not at my command.
At her movement.
The truth settled cold inside me.
He was not kneeling in submission.
He was awaiting instruction.
“Don’t,” I said.
The warning was for her. Zephan heard it as a challenge.
His horse leapt from the path before I could catch the bridle. He ducked beneath a branch and drove east, following the second omega’s trail.
The woman snatched her ankle blade free.
“Bring him back.”
“Zephan does not answer to you.”
“Your hound does.”
She pointed the blade toward Vuk. “Stop the rider.”
The hound vanished.
Smoke collapsed into the space where he had been. A heartbeat later, something enormous struck Zephan’s horse beyond the thorns. The animal screamed. Zephan cursed as saddle leather tore.
The other hounds remained kneeling.
The woman’s eyes widened. She had given the order expecting resistance.
So had I.
I dismounted.
The ground accepted my boots with a pulse of old magic. The Huntmaster’s authority ran outward through root and grave soil, seeking every spectral beast within the boundary.
Vuk, return.
No response.
I pushed harder.
The curse opened its teeth inside me.
Vuk returned only when the woman whispered, “Enough.”
He flowed through the trees and resumed his place at her right side. A strip of Zephan’s black coat hung from his jaws.
Zephan followed on foot.
Blood marked his temple. His expression promised a reckoning, but he stopped beyond the circle of hounds.
The woman looked at the torn cloth. “I said stop him.”
Vuk’s empty face tilted.
“Not eat him.”
The hound dropped the fabric.
Tomas laughed.
The sound was quiet and brief, but I had not heard it in nine years.
The woman’s attention flicked to him. Tomas lowered his hood.
He looked harmless when he wanted to. Youngest of us. Soft mouth, tired brown eyes, dark hair tied neatly at his nape. The blood sigils hidden beneath his gloves were the only warning most people received, and by then he had usually touched them.
“They interpret commands according to their nature,” he said.
“Their nature appears excessive.”
“You crossed into the correct forest, then.”
“Tomas,” I said.
He inclined his head and fell silent.
The omega took our names in without offering hers.
Another sign of training.
I walked toward the hounds.
They tracked me but did not rise. The woman held her blade low, her elbow close to her ribs. Defensive posture. Efficient. She knew the silver edge would not kill us. She also knew where to place it to gain the seconds she would need.
The scar at her throat caught the blue light.
It was not the clean crescent of a rejected bond. The tissue had been opened by a blade, jagged and deliberate.
My rut stirred beneath the curse.
Not desire.
Recognition of damage. The alpha instinct to find a threat, close teeth around its throat, and leave it cooling on the ground.
The instinct did not ask whether she wanted vengeance.
That made it no better than the man who had marked her.
I stopped six paces away.
“Your other omega has reached a ward.”
Her blade did not lower. “How do you know?”
“Her scent disappeared.”
“That could mean someone caught her.”
“No one did.”
“You expect me to trust you?”
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
It surprised Zephan too. His stare pressed between my shoulder blades.
I had been Huntmaster long enough to know what captives preferred to hear. Assurances. Softened words. Protection offered in the same breath as a locked door.
This woman would recognize every lie.
“The younger omega is beyond our immediate reach,” I said. “The Hunt is fixed on you.”
“Why?”
“Your heat woke it.”
“Her scent was exposed before mine.”
I had noticed.
The curse had noticed too. It had followed the weaker call until her scent broke across the boundary. Then every hound in the Briarwood had turned west.
The Hunt had not chosen the nearest omega.
It had chosen the stronger command.
“You gave an order,” I said.
“After your beasts cornered me.”
“You ordered them before tonight.”
Her breathing changed.
There.
Not guilt. Memory.
She looked at Vuk.
“One hound found us near the drainage route,” she said. “It was going for her. I told it to halt.”
“And it did?”
“Long enough.”
“How long?”
“One breath.”
One breath was impossible.
I had seen alphas with covenant blood scream commands until their throats tore. The hounds obeyed only the Huntmaster, the horn, and the dead power beneath the Court.
Now Vuk stood guard at an omega’s side.
Zephan came closer. “She is altering the territory.”
“I haven’t altered anything,” she said.
“The eastern paths folded when you ran west. They hid the other omega from me.”
“Perhaps the forest dislikes you.”
“It was fond enough yesterday.”
“A great deal can happen in a day.”
His scent sharpened. Her body answered before her mind could prevent it. Her pupils widened. A flush moved beneath her skin.
Zephan noticed.
So did I.
“Back,” I ordered.
He stared at me.
“Your rut is rising. Move.”
“So is yours.”
“I am not the one scenting aggression into her heat.”
The woman’s blade came up. “My heat is not a discussion between you.”
I stepped back first.
Zephan’s jaw flexed.
Then he retreated to the trees.
The woman watched him go. She did not thank me.
Good.
I had done the minimum required not to make her body more dangerous to inhabit. Gratitude would have insulted us both.
The Hunt disagreed.
Its command surged through the boundary, stripping sound from the forest. Every hound lifted its skull. Blue fire blazed beneath their ribs.
Take her.
The force of it bent me forward.
Zephan caught a tree. Tomas hissed and pressed one gloved hand to his chest.
The woman staggered as if the command had entered her too.
Our eyes met.
For a moment, the choice before us became perfectly clear.
I could obey now, while enough of my mind remained to control the violence. Bind her hands. Carry her to the lodge. Lock every door before her heat broke open and the Hunt demanded worse.
Or I could resist until the curse hollowed me out and left only the thing built to chase her.
Neither choice preserved her freedom.
The hounds rose.
She lifted her bleeding hand.
“Stay.”
They froze halfway to their feet.
The command struck the forest like a chain drawn taut.
Pain ripped through my spine, but beneath it came something I had forgotten how to feel.
Silence.
For one clean heartbeat, the Hunt’s voice vanished.
The omega had not merely commanded my hounds.
She had commanded the curse.
I straightened slowly.
“What is your name?”
Suspicion narrowed her eyes. “Why?”
“Because before this night ends, I may have to choose whether to capture you or kneel beside them.”
Her scent sharpened with lightning.
“Mireya Sanz.”
Behind us, the horn sounded again.
This time, it was not calling the riders to the quarry.
It was calling us to war.