Chapter 10, Varg
Seventeen years
Wren
Silas’s footsteps echoed down the stone corridor, the heavy thrum of his Alpha presence finally fading until the room felt empty and cold.
My father didn’t let go of me immediately. His hands remained on my shoulders, his grip less like a guard’s and more like a man trying to steady himself against a landslide. He was still staring at the door Silas had walked through, his chest heaving with shallow, jagged breaths.
“He didn’t recognize the scent,” Arthur whispered, more to himself than to me. He stepped back, finally looking at my face. His eyes were searching for something, the baby he’d found in the rowan roots, or the stranger I was becoming. “But I do, Wren.”
My heart hammered against my ribs. “You just told him you didn’t.”
“I lied to my Alpha,” he snapped, his voice a low, terrifying hiss.
He reached out and grabbed the collar of the cloak Killian had draped over me, bunching the wool in his fist.
“Our Alpha has never been to the Dead Woods. He’s never stood on the deep-ice of the peaks. But I have. Seventeen years ago, I smelled that charcoal. I smelled that winter.”
He leaned in, his face inches from mine. For the first time, I didn’t see my father or the Beta of the High-Ridge. I saw a man who was utterly terrified.
“That is the scent of Varg, Wren. Not just any wolf. The Alpha of the Night-Stalkers. Why would he bow to you? Why would he let you live?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice trembling. “Selina pushed me, and he was just… there. He didn’t bow like I was a Queen, Father. He bowed like he was recognizing something.”
Arthur let go of the cloak as if it had burned him. He turned toward the narrow window, looking out over the village square where Killian was likely still being held back by the guards.
“The patrols won’t be enough,” Arthur said, his voice hollow. “If Silas finds out I lied about recognizing that smell… he won’t just kill you. He’ll execute our entire bloodline for treason.”
He turned back to me, his eyes hard and glassy.
“Go home. Take the back way through the grain-stores. Wash that scent off you until your skin bleeds. And stay away from Killian. His father is already looking for a reason to pack-bond him to Selina to ‘stabilize’ his bloodline after his defiance today.”
“Killian doesn’t want her,” I said, my voice small.
“Killian is a boy playing at being a man,” Arthur spat, the words dripping with bitter truth. “Silas is a king protecting a border. Don’t confuse the two. When the Alpha Command is backed by the survival of the pack, Killian will do as Silas tells him. In the end, he always will.”
He gestured toward the side exit, the small door used by servants and shadows. “Go. Now.”
I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. I slipped through the door, the cold air of the village hitting me, but it couldn’t touch the ice that was starting to form in my chest.
Arthur was wrong about one thing. Killian wouldn’t yield. But as I looked up at the High-Ridge spires, I wondered if “not yielding” would just get us both killed faster.