3. Runa
Runa
By the time we arrive at the gathering hall, the party is in full swing.
I’ve never been to the human territory, but the Regulators have told us that during their gatherings at the First Alchemist’s residence, the food is served after all the guests have arrived but never before the First Alchemist and his family sit down to dine.
Hungry werewolves who have been promised a peace treaty, an all-you-can-eat buffet, and a bottomless barrel of ale wait for nobody. Impatience is in our blood. It would be wrong to make the packs wait for the Alpha’s family.
The tables are full of meat. We had a good hunt. The wine flows; ale sloshes and spills over the edges of mugs.
“Fucking knew the man on the sled wasn’t him,” Soren says, then whistles. “That’s a big wolf.” Ash Fireborn broods over a mug of ale on the other side of the far table. Other than another man with him, who I assume is his relative since they look alike, nobody else sits near him.
Ash looks up. When we conversed outside, his dark sunglasses hid his eyes. Now I know why. I’d have made him out instantly. Flames burn inside his eyes. I can see them from across the room.
“By the Moon,” my sister says. “He’s feral.”
I smell her fear. We all do.
“He’s subdued,” our father says. “The Alpha hasn’t had an incident since…” Father leaves the rest unsaid.
“We should all clap for him,” Maren says.
Soren sighs. “Get a grip on all that sass and hand it over to your sister.”
“I think Runa has enough. Do you need sass, brother?”
“Children,” my father says through his teeth. “Try to behave.”
My father has worn a fur coat made from the hides of the Fireborn werewolves he skinned on the battlefield to the signing of the treaty that will end in his daughter’s marriage to his enemy. I don’t think he has the right to ask us to behave.
Soren bumps my elbow. “Don’t forget our dear mother.”
“Not tonight. I want to drink too.”
“Do as your brother asks,” my dad says as the Fireborn Alpha stares. Is he not going to come over here? Are we walking over to him? What’s the protocol? I don’t think anyone knows, or better yet, I don’t think we have one.
“Mother should be allowed to do whatever she wants,” Maren says.
“And ruin our chance at peace after all the work I put into this?” Soren says. “Not a chance. She behaves, or it’s the dungeons for a year.”
“Careful, son. You overstep.”
“You guys owe me.” I kiss my sister on the cheek. “Do your best, and I’ll see you in the morning.”
Maren cups her mouth and says in my ear, “What if he wants to bed me tonight?”
I return the whisper the same way because our hearing is great and most wolves can read lips. “There’s a protocol for that. He can’t bed you until the wedding, and it has to be during a full moon, during which you nest for him. It’s a whole event, and the pack participates in the mating ritual.”
“Oh no, we have to have an orgy?” Maren shouts.
People turn toward us. Our father’s cheeks color with embarrassment and anger.
“Shhh,” I whisper to Maren. “The people have their own nests, but it’s all part of the elemental mating ritual. It’s supposed to unite the pack and bless the females with fertile wombs during the mating.”
Maren stares. “How do you know so much about rituals?”
“I read those forbidden books, remember?” Regulators are studious people.
They love books and reading. They’re particularly interested in werewolves, and they go around our territories looking for any books that survived the fires and wars.
When they find them, they’re not allowed to take them out of our territories by themselves.
The humans send a military unit to guard the books all the way back to the capital, where they store them in their libraries for safekeeping. But it can take days, sometimes weeks, to get the unit out here to our remote castle.
The Regulator with us works in the lab and travels with my brother, and before the military unit gets here, I’m able to read any books he finds.
Werewolf heritage is fascinating. The moon rituals and the romance between couples in particular. The stories are so romantic. It’s like reading fairy tales. I love it.
My mother’s loud laughter saves me from having to greet the Fireborn Alpha.
I join my mother at the table, where she’s flirting with a Fireborn wolf about my age. My dad doesn’t care. He quit visiting our mother’s chambers many years ago.
The Fireborn Alpha approaches my sister, and the room goes quiet. He’s over a head taller than her, even though Maren is five eleven like me. Maren looks pale and sickly. She might faint. I swig from my mother’s glass, then elbow her so she’ll pay attention.
“What, what? Oh. About time,” she says.
The Alpha extends his hand for Maren to shake. She does, and everyone sees how she’s trembling. My poor sister.
“You are even more beautiful in person,” he says, then sniffs her hand before he lets go of it.
Off to a good start, we are. He finds Maren pretty. If he grows a beard, she’ll find him more handsome, and lo and behold, we’re saved.
Maren blushes. “Thank you. Are you finding everything to your liking?”
The Alpha glances in my direction, and my pulse picks up. He won’t say we’ve met, will he? My friends will tease me at first, but because of Maren, they know not to gossip about our bet. I lost the wager and have to do all their chores. That’s settled.
My dad sits where the Fireborn male sat. These are the territorial games alpha wolves play. Soren shakes his head and approaches the fire wolf. They’re about the same height.
My brother leans in and whispers something into Ash’s ear, to which the other male nods.
They make their way to the table. My father seems agitated that the Fireborn wolf isn’t sitting closer to him at the table, which wraps around the entire room.
Our guest sits away from my dad. He’s chosen to join my brother, who acts like he’s Maren’s escort.
From across the room, Maren waves.
I wave back just as Ash Fireborn looks at me and raises an eyebrow.
I’m not waving at you! I’m not sure if I’ll ever forgive myself for flirting with him.
“He’s handsome,” my mother says, offering me a glass of red wine.
I accept and drink, then put down the empty glass. “I suppose. Those red eyes are unnerving.”
“He can’t help it. There’s a fire burning inside him.”
“Do you think that’s true?”
“Mmhm,” she says between sips. “Should be put out, if you ask me.”
“Thankfully, nobody asked.” My mother has been against this marriage since she first heard of it. She’s sequestered herself in a tower and protested with starvation. It took my brother babysitting her for a month to convince her to eat. We thought we’d lose her.
The younger wolf overhears her and departs instantly.
Mother gives me the stink eye. “Did your father send you to chase away my suitors?”
“Father doesn’t care, remember?”
Mother huffs out a breath. “He should. I’m his wife.”
“We’ve gone over this, Mother. You’re making a fool of him, and when you do that, he ignores you.”
“You’re wrong. When I flirt with other men in public and in front of your father, it appears as if he sanctioned it, which in turn gives him more power, not less.”
“I’m sure he’d rather not have you do that.”
“Then maybe he can say that himself instead of ignoring me!”
“We’re at a gathering of werewolves with hyperdeveloped hearing,” I remind her.
She pours another glass of wine, drinks it, and chases it with beer. I’m in for it tonight.
An ice-cold breeze drifts across the room and raises my hackles. What in the world… Others must’ve felt it too, because conversations fade. It takes me a moment to conclude that the air elemental swept the room.
I don’t know him, but he’s here because we invited him. It’s unnerving, a casual reminder of the power that could take our breath away.
The hall falls completely silent.
My father stands and slams the mug on the table. Beer sloshes out. “Stormcrest werewolves!”
We answer in kind.
“We welcome the award-winning Peacebroker, Nestor Mondini, from the Human Alliance.” We clap for the tall, brown-haired man who stands and dips his head. He wears a green scarf over a white two-piece uniform. Peacebrokers are few and far between, and usually, they’ve got some werewolf ancestry.
“We also welcome the Alpha of the Skyrender pack, Blade Skyrender.”
Ah, there he is. The air elemental. We boo the clean-shaven, dark-haired man, whose jaw reshapes from man to wolf right in front of our eyes so that when he smiles, he shows us his werewolf teeth. Murmurs rise all around.
“Mom, have you seen such a thing before?”
“No,” she says.
“How can he do that?”
“Control over his shift. I’ll ask grandma.”
My great-grandmother is blind and partially deaf, but her wisdom ages untouched.
Thankfully. If she hasn’t heard of whatever the air elemental wolf did, he’s the first to be able to shift in that way.
We werewolves shape-shift between our humanoid and wolf forms. There’s no in between, unless you get stuck mid-shift, but then you die.
Werewolf parents teach babies to shift as soon as they can turn on their bellies on their own.
“And of course, the most important wolf in the house, the one none of us thought would ever grace our halls or homes…” My father pauses to place a hand on my sister’s head. Dutifully, Maren smiles. Poor thing.
“The Stormcrest pack and our family are honored to welcome Ash Fireborn, Alpha of the Fireborn pack and the indisputable force behind the deadly fire element.”
You could hear a pin drop.
Aren’t we going to boo him? I mean, we booed the other guy, and all my dad’s done is blow smoke up Ash’s fire ass. The air elemental is not the one who burned down everything, and he’s not the one taking my sister.
“Booo?” Ah, crap, that came out as a question. Let’s try again. I cup my mouth and let out a long-winded, loud booo that earns me a cutting glare from my father. The Skyrender Alpha leans back, appearing shocked. Two chairs away from him, Ash lifts the corners of his lips.
Is that a smile? He’s amused instead of angry. I was hoping for angry or, at the very least, disappointed.
Maren pinches her lips, suppressing laughter. Sadly, nobody joins me in booing, so I cross my arms over my chest, content to protest his presence by pouting.
“At least one of my daughters will give me grandkids,” my mother says.
She means Maren.
“We gather tonight to sign a historic treaty and solidify that treaty with a marriage,” my dad continues.
“Our sweet Maren has agreed to marry into the Fireborn pack.” My father pauses and looks to my mother for help.
She claps and hoots, signaling that the rest of the pack must do the same.
I follow suit. We must show a united front.
Maren smiles as if someone handed her a litter of puppies. Mugs and drinks slam the table. Half the booze is getting spilled as wolves cheer for the peace treaty. My mother hoots the loudest, as if she’s beyond happy.
My mother will end up alone in tears, sleeping in the corner of her room in her unvisited nest tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night Maren departs, when Mother is finally left with only me, the daughter she gets to keep in the Stormcrest territory forever.
Maren’s smile captivates her audience, and she makes eye contact with nearly everyone. Wolves salute her by lifting their mugs. Gently, she nods at them as her gaze sweeps the room…and stops. Her facade collapses. It’s brief, but I catch it.
I follow her gaze, sort through the possible suspects, and spot him. There! There in the back, near the exit, stands the Regulator, wearing a green scarf and a formal all-white uniform. He looks angry, which confirms my suspicions.
Secretly, my sister is seeing a man who is not her betrothed.
If Ash Fireborn finds out, he’ll break the treaty and turn the Stormcrest castle into the pit of hell.