Chapter 25, The Crucible of Bone
Skarde
The tablet on the strategy table pulsed with a soft, steady green light. It was her rhythm. Wren.
I found myself watching it more than the reports on my screen. The tracking interface showed her heat signature moving through the third quadrant, the library tier. Every few seconds, the pulse would quicken, a map of her reactions as she saw the scale of the city for the first time.
I smelled her, the voice rumbled deep in the base of my skull. It was Varg, restless and pacing behind my ribs. At the border. Faint, like the first frost. Delicious.
I tightened my hand on the edge of the table. The High-Ridge called her a Null because they were too dull to sense her, but my wolf knew better. There was something in the absolute silence of her soul that made my own blood run hot with curiosity.
“She’s a ticking clock, Skarde.”
Torin’s voice snapped me back to the room. My Beta stood in the archway, his eyes drifting to the tablet I was fixated on.
“I know,” I said, my voice grating. “The anniversary of when she was found is in three months. She’ll be eighteen. If she’s going to shift, it will be then. But she’s spent her whole life being told she’s nothing. Her body isn’t prepared for the pull of the moon.”
“Then we have to go see Saga,” Torin said, his expression darkening.
We descended into the heart of the mountain, where the air grew thick with the smell of medicinal herbs and ozone.
Saga, our Lead Healer, was at her desk, the blue light of her monitor reflecting off her face.
She was an older wolf, her hair a shock of white that caught the overhead light like spun silver.
“The girl from the valley,” Saga said without looking up from her data. “Is it true? Does she really have no scent?”
“It’s there,” I corrected her, the memory of that faint, clean scent at the border hitting me again. “It’s just buried deep. You have to be close to catch it.”
Saga looked at me over the rim of her glasses, her gaze sharp enough to draw blood. “A first shift when you’ve been suppressed your whole life is dangerous, Skarde. Her bones will be stiff. If she transitions alone, the skeleton won’t want to break. It will be brutal.”
I felt a low growl start in my chest, but I silenced it.
“She needs an anchor,” Saga continued. “Someone to hold her mind and guide her through the transition so she doesn’t lose herself to the pain. She needs to meet with me immediately to begin the physical prep.”
I looked at the obsidian platform in the center of the room. I didn’t want her to be in pain. “What do you need from me?”
“She has no kin here,” Saga said simply. “You’re her Alpha now. You’re the only one she has any biological link to through the pack-bond. You’ll have to be the one to stay with her. You’ll have to be her tether when the blood starts to boil.”
The thought of that kind of connection, being inside her mind, feeling her skeleton shatter and reform while I held her steady, made my pulse jump. It was a responsibility I hadn’t expected. Yet, the thought of anyone else touching her mind made Varg snarl.
“Prepare the protocols,” I told Saga. “I want her to be healthy. I want her ready.”
“And the pack?” Torin asked from the doorway as we turned to leave. “They’re asking questions about the tithe.”
“She isn’t a tithe anymore,” I said, my eyes drifting back to the tablet as Wren’s signal stopped in the Great Library. “She’s a Night-Stalker. And they’ll accept her as part of this pack as soon as she survives the change.”
As I walked out, Varg fell silent, satisfied for the moment. But the clock was still ticking.