Chapter 17
SAPHIRA
Beau gestured to one of the females, who came forward, her meek manner and how quickly she obeyed her alpha a sharp reminder of what life at a pack was like for a female. A reminder of what my life had been like only months ago.
As we followed her through the grassy warren of pathways between the cabins, it hit me that whatever happened next, I didn’t want to go back to that life.
I didn’t want to return to my pack.
To a place where I would be expected to act like this female, kept weak and subservient, and not given a voice or a purpose beyond taking care of the males and the cubs.
Kaeleron strode up to walk beside me and the back of his hand brushed mine, a brief touch that I savoured as awareness of him rolled through me and I glanced at him, catching that look in his silver eyes that said he knew the path of my thoughts.
He knew how my life had been before he had bought me, how unsatisfied I had been and how oppressed I had felt, and maybe he didn’t want that for me either.
He had made me stronger after all.
Had set me free.
“When we have rested, we shall find a place to train and ensure you are ready for this fight,” he murmured low, as if he didn’t want the female to hear us.
But she did.
Her shoulders stiffened and she almost glanced back at us, her shock over what he had proposed obvious as she tried her best to pretend she hadn’t heard a male offering to train a female in the art of war.
We reached a small, rundown cabin at the very edge of the cluster in the clearing, close to the woods on the eastern side of it, and I smiled as she dutifully opened the door.
“It’s not much, I’m afraid.” Her sheepish smile and how she struggled to look at me made something in me ache.
I found myself poking my head into the cabin, taking stock of the tiny kitchen area to my right and the black wood-burning stove to my left, and the threadbare couch that faced it with a bed beyond it. Stairs on the right led upwards to a loft room.
“It’s great, thank you.” My smile widened and I placed my hand on her arm. “Much better than sleeping in the woods for another night.”
Not that I had any intention of staying the night.
She nodded and backed away from the door, giving us room to enter, her hands tucked in front of her hips. “I’ll bring some water and other things, and then I’ll come get you when it’s time for lunch. Or you could make your way back to the green. If you remember the way?”
“We’ll find our way back when we’re ready. Just the water and some other supplies if you can spare them.”
She gave another nod and hurried away.
“She acts like a servant,” Kaeleron muttered, his gaze dark on her retreating back.
It dropped to me. “Is this the life of a wolf female? I saw behaviour like it at the Hunt Pack too. Females serving the males, too afraid to stand up for themselves, or perhaps just too used to the treatment to see it for what it is. Fae females might not be as free to do as they please as males are, but they are given a certain amount of freedom and possess the ability to make decisions for themselves to a degree.”
“You have females serving in your castle,” Morden muttered as he stomped into the cabin.
As if Kaeleron had taken a shot at him personally.
“Those females choose to serve in the castle for a wage.” Kaeleron glowered at Morden as he crouched before the burner and unlatched the door. “The females I saw at the Hunt Pack… well, I do not think it is their choice to serve males in the manner those males expected and were carrying out.”
I didn’t want to ask what kind of things he had witnessed during his scouting missions to that pack, or how bad things had gotten there.
Flashes of Beltane erupted in my mind, but I shut them down, because everything that had happened at that feast and rite had been consensual.
I doubted the Hunt males were asking the females for their permission, not if they were following Lucas’s lead.
He had treated the female he had used that night abominably, casting her aside as soon as he was done with her, not caring that he had hurt her.
“We’re not all like that.” Morden finished building the fire, lit it and closed the door. He pushed to his feet. “Some packs are better.”
Kaeleron slid me a look. “Are the Harper Pack better?”
I wasn’t in the mood to fight with either of them, or have them fighting again, so I said, “Wolf packs need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Males have all the power. It’s wrong.
Females are quite capable of making their own choices, and they’re quite capable of things like repairing cabins, building, chopping trees for firewood, and fighting.
Wolf females don’t need males to do all that for them…
but I’m starting to think it’s not about what we’re capable of doing.
It’s about keeping us docile. Obedient. Gentle.
So we act like that female who brought us here.
Eager to do whatever her alpha asked of her. Eager to do whatever any male asks.”
Before Morden could argue, I strode to the wooden staircase and ascended it, wanting to see what was in the loft.
A double bed and little else.
I sat on the end of it, sinking into it a little but not caring. It felt good to have something so soft beneath my backside for a change and I flopped onto it, splaying my arms out beside me and staring at the pitched wooden ceiling as my mind whirled.
The Ryland Pack wasn’t going to help us.
Where did that leave us?
Blessed silence swirled around me as I considered our options.
Morden and Kaeleron weren’t arguing for once, and I was glad of it until I realised that Kaeleron could easily have him pinned with his shadows or have cast a spell or something to make a bubble around them so I wouldn’t hear them.
I didn’t care. Morden was a grown wolf. If he wanted to get into a fight with a male one hundred times more powerful and skilled than he was, that was on him.
Instead of worrying about them, I worried about my pack. My parents.
The three of us were strong together, with Kaeleron the clear outlier in our group, but the Hunt Pack were many and most of them were experienced fighters, and only myself and Morden could recognise our own pack members among the wolves gathered at their territory.
Which meant I really only had one path open to me.
The safest out of all the ones I had been debating over the last few days since Morden had escorted me from the Shadow Court, and one I had come close to settling on a few times since I had discovered Lucas’s plan.
I pushed to my feet and trudged back down the stairs, surprised to find Morden sitting on the couch and Kaeleron leaning against the door and neither of them with a new cut or bruise on them.
Maybe there was hope for them yet. I had left them alone for a whole fifteen minutes and they hadn’t tried to kill each other.
Kaeleron’s silver gaze instantly darted to me as I came into view, tracking me as I descended the last few steps and stopped on the bottom one.
“We’re going to pretend Morden has betrayed me.”
His visage darkened as those words left my lips, all calm fleeing in the face of his anger as he straightened. “No.”
Morden stood too. “Not a good idea.”
Well, at least they were united in one thing. It wouldn’t deter me. I had made up my mind, no matter how dangerous it was or how much I risked by going this route.
“It is.” I stepped down and crossed the room to them, until the heat of the fire curled around me to chase away the chill that was slowly settling inside me as I thought about what I was proposing.
“Lucas won’t be expecting it. You’ll take me to him and he’ll figure you’ve done your part, and I’ll act exactly how he would expect of me given the situation.
Dani will be safe. You can figure out a way to get her out of there and I’ll get Lucas alone and—”
“No, Saphi.” Kaeleron’s shadows twined around my legs.
“It is too dangerous. Allow me to bring men. I need to leave some to defend Falkyr, and most of my forces are spread out along the border to protect it from any seelie who use this opportunity to enter my court, but I could gather enough to take down this prick and his pack. We will attack when they least expect it, ensuring an easy win for us.”
“It’ll be a bloodbath.” I gently twined a shadow around my finger as they reached my thighs, toying with it and hoping he could feel it, that he knew I didn’t want to worry him like this, but it had to be this way.
“This is the only way of reaching my pack without getting half of them caught up in the crossfire and killed. Your men don’t know which people belong to my pack.
You don’t even know. You’ve seen them walking around outside the confines of the barn so you know they’re not all being kept in there.
How many of them might be killed by mistake if we use your men to launch an assault on the Hunt Pack? ”
The skin around his eyes darkened, veering towards black, as his silver irises brightened and gained a crimson corona.
I went to him, beckoned by the pain that surfaced in his eyes as he gazed at me, as he silently implored me to listen to him and do things his way.
Because he wanted to protect me.
Because he feared I would be the one killed if he didn’t do something.
I took hold of both of his hands.
“I know I’m new to this strategy and war stuff, but I considered all the options and this feels like the right one. My gut says this is the safest path. Lucas won’t be expecting it.”
He glared down at me, his lips darkening too now as his other side rose to the fore.
“Or he will be. He knows Morden. He knows the male cares about you and that he is your protector. There is a high chance that Lucas will be wary of you because of it, and he will assume Morden has told you and you are planning something.”
“It’s a risk I have to take.”