by R. Lee Smith
Kruin turned his eye on Sakros next, who had been his father’s second in his time and, had Kruin been younger or less confident on the day of that chief’s passing, might have been lord in turn. He was old now, the oldest wolf in the pack, but still had stamina enough to run the hunt and match his young mate in her Heat.
Sakros met his gaze with a short laugh. “And no bitch was ever terrified by the sight of my unimposing loins, eh? Ah, my lord…” His smile faded. “Before winter’s end, my Gef will be heavy and I must hunt for her. When our cub comes, I must hunt for three. This I can do, and school the unblooded for their own hunts besides. Who here could boast the same? Eh?”
Sakros waited. No one spoke, although Burgash scratched at his chest in a particularly expressive manner.
“Perhaps I am too good a hunter, hm?” Sakros turned back to Kruin, chin up to expose his throat, smiling to take the bite from his words. “Because now you ask me to hunt for four? And for five, once Heather’s belly is made round? For humans have no Heat,” he went on, turning to include the listening wolves in his warning. “They breed like mice. Every turn of the moon brings a human bitch to season and they can easily whelp a pup a year. Every year. By the time my Gef’s coming cub is weaned, Heather might have three cubs at her heels and another below her heart! Oh no. To have many mates, many cubs—this is a young wolf’s conceit. This old wolf has a mate and no ambition, or energy, to chase after more. No, lord, I will not have her.”
Henkel, his first mate-bond only a few moons old, huffed an affirmative laugh. “I like her fine,” he said when Kruin looked at him. “As much as she is for liking. And I have great respect for her chief. Her chief-that-was,” he amended, tipping his head back in apology, “and her chief-that-is. But this young fool is not fool enough to take Heather for a mate. Even if I were the god of hunts and could bring a stag in each hand back to my den every day, what kind of mate could she be? She’s more like a cub than a bitch. Less even than that. She cannot hear the Endless. She will have to be taught everything. And she doesn’t want to learn.”
Alorak growled, staring off into the woods, impatient to be gone.
Kruin looked at his son. “And you?”
Alorak sneezed in the direction of the bitches’ den while his mate, Acala, stepped closer to his side. “Not even if she chose me,” he said contemptuously. “Not even if she begged. What would I do with her, apart from feed her?” Now he looked at Vru and sneezed again. “And feed the cubs that other fools put in her? For I would not. I would mount a wyvern before I breed myself to that useless creature.”
“You cannot find her so repellant as you pretend.”
“I do. What, you think because I would have had Taryn, that I would have that furless, squalling, water-blooded whelp? Taryn was fire,” Alorak said, his eyes flashing with echoes of that same fury and resentment that had once driven him to challenge. “That one? She is a fawn with her mouth full of milk. And she always will be.”
Many wolves retreated at these words, even those who had cast greedy glances at the humans in the past days. Alorak had no patience (and not much wit, as Kruin would only admit here in his own thoughts), but he was the only surviving son of the chief. If the gods struck Kruin down this moment, he would be chief and lord…if only long enough for Nakaroth to seize that authority from him, gods willing. His words, however tactless or even untrue, were strong. Those who hoped to be set high among their future chief’s council might mount the human if the opportunity presented and perhaps even feed her in secret, but they would not claim her. Or the cubs they set in her.
Vru crept closer.
Kruin ignored this obvious bid to be seen and turned his eye on Burgash instead. “You have watched over her much these past days. She seems at ease with you. Have you no affection for her?”
“Affection…” Burgash scratched a hand across his muzzle and spread his empty arms in a human gesture of emptiness and frustration. “My lord, what would you have me say?”
“Truth.”
“Truth? My lord, the truth is, she is no fierce bitch and never will be. She’s a fawn, as your son says. But what he says with scorn, I say with respect. She is a fawn who has come through horrors that could kill a wolf. It’s left her wounded, in her memory and in her heart if not her flesh. Affection? I suppose there is,” he said heavily, looking over at the empty space in the clearing where the human had slept and not up the slope at the mouth of the den where she slept now. “There is perhaps some low part of me that likes to coax a fearful thing to feed from my hand. There is perhaps a part, even lower, than feels tall when she curls up at my feet. Will I have her for my mate?” Burgash shook his head. “I have a mate. I have a cub. And I have neglected them to tame my wounded fawn for too long already. I will not have her.”
This hunt was lost. Kruin knew it and still turned to the only wolves of any rank who did not show throat to his son, the Aces who had run under Rhiannon-Ahm and knew how strong even the most unlikely human could be—Telash and Metaka.
They heard his question even if he did not ask aloud this time. After exchanging a sour glance and a few ear-flicks, Telash stepped forward and aimed an arm up the slope at a most particular cave. “My lord, there den three fine bitches. Among them, one I have hopes to win, now that certain—” He showed Nakaroth a hint of throat without taking his eyes from Kruin. “—wishful possibilities have blown away. I am loyal and not, I think, uncaring. If you command me to have Heather, I’ll take her. I’ll feed her. I’ll give her soft words and put cubs in her. I will try to make her happy. But winter is young and game is already scarce. I can feed one mate, not two. If you give me the human, you give me a female I must tame and tend and may never fully win. More than that, you take away my chance to woo the female I truly desire.”
Kruin acknowledged this without apology. “I do not say what I ask is no sacrifice. She is a burden in these days, but these days will not last. I see a strength in her. I see a courage. It is not my intent to give a good and loyal wolf a poor mate, but to give a brave bitch the best. Will no one have her?”
Some wolves dropped their eyes. Alorak rolled his. Burgash looked at his mate and his cub, his ears low and thoughts like a shadow in his stare.
“I will have her,” Vru announced, standing to his full height, towering over all.
Kruin ignored him, waiting.
Vru stepped boldly in front of him. “I say I will have her.”
“So be it,” said Kruin, moving around Vru to rake his gaze across his hunters, and then beyond them to the low wolves and even the Fringes. “She has been given to me as kin-tribute. I take her in, not as a mate but as a cub. I say she is Heather of High Pack, a chief’s daughter. The wolf who claims her will be fourth in this pack.”
Alorak stopped his pacing to look first at Kruin, then Nakaroth, then Sakros, and finally, uncertainly, at his hand, flexing the fingers one at a time. His ears lay flat.
“Now who will have her?” Kruin asked. “Bring me the meat of your hand and I will hear your claim.”
The Fringes scattered even before the steam of the offer had dispersed. Vru bolted after them, snarling as he ran. A handful of low wolves followed and, after some side-stares and shuffling, another handful followed those.
Alorak scraped a clawed foot across the stone, but did not quite dare to stand face-to-face with his chief. “You set that worthless human above me. Your only son.”
“She has proven herself to me,” Kruin replied, staring into the woods. “You have not. That I have sired you is my achievement perhaps, not yours…and no great claim at that. If you are so certain of your worth, stop insisting upon it and prove it, or find another chief to take your measure.”
Alorak stalked away, his mate trailing after with her ears low and tail tucked. His supporters followed, fewer now than they had been before Kruin offered them all a chance not merely to strengthen Alorak’s position, but to surpass it. Still, there were enough of them that there might be meat, although his
son in temper was no great hunter. He took after his sire there, as he did in so many ways. Too many. Would that he had more of Tam in him, her Dark Water wit and foresight to balance out High Pack’s strength…and weakness.
Dark Water wit.
“I would speak with my second,” Kruin announced.
Sakros quickly gathered the few remaining Fringes and low wolves and set off with them. The rest headed out on their own solitary paths. Soon, Kruin was left alone on the raised rock with only Nakaroth.
“I blame you for this,” Kruin said, turning on him. “If you had not come smiling down from your den with all your fine talk of mating to put their blood up—”
“I wanted her wooed,” Nakaroth growled. “Everyone knows she will never be a hunter and that claiming her would not bring her mate much honor. Only the Fringe-wolves would want her, to fuck their way into this pack. I wanted better for her. I wanted a wolf with no great ambition, but wit enough to know he would need to go slowly and speak gently to win his prize. It would have worked, if you hadn’t called upon all your highest to list the many ways she is unsuitable to be a mate to anyone and then bartered her away for high rank in the highest of all packs.”
Thus assuring only the most ambitious and aggressive wolves laid a claim. And who was there more ambitious or aggressive than Vru? In his effort to see Heather claimed before Vru could challenge over her (or worse, take her by force, claiming the cubs he put in her belly and the bitch who carried them only incidentally), had he delivered her into his hands? The thought was a fanged thing inside him and it came out biting in his voice.
“Perhaps you will think about this the next time you decide to play Man-games with my pack as your pieces,” Kruin snapped. “You should have told me your plan and asked my approval. Is this how a second stands for his chief? With secret plots?”
Nakaroth tipped his head back without hesitation, exposing his unprotected throat. “Forgive, my lord.”
Kruin sneezed full in his face.
Movement on the slope. Sleepy-eyed bitches emerged from their den, one by one. Mika led, so startled by the sight of Nakaroth in submission that she forgot herself and stared, then Laal and Samatan, politely averting their eyes, and Heather last of all, oblivious as she yawned herself down to the firepit. She was still wrapped in the fur she’d slept in. It made her look, if possible, even smaller and more vulnerable. The thought of his wolves squabbling over her was a sorry one, but worse by far was the thought of Vru breaking her beneath him, body and spirit, as he had broken Lura.
What Kruin had not himself broken.
So much of this was his own fault. He had called Vru from the Fringes for the sake of that very strength he now feared. He had accepted Vru’s claim on Lura, quieting his misgivings with the sure knowledge that she had chosen Vru also and if nothing else, she was free of the Fringes. And that, too, he regretted. No, he had no love for her and never had. He did not regret his decision to unmake their bond, but he should have set her aside, not cast her out, discarding her like gnawed bones for the Fringes to feed on. She did not deserve that. His land cared nothing for what its people deserved, but its cruelty at least bred strength; Kruin’s created only more suffering.
Kruin released his second from a submissive posture with a flick of his claws, then offered forgiveness in the form of a hand on Nakaroth’s shoulder.
“Your way had some wisdom,” he said, the closest he could come to an apology, here where others could witness. “But if I did not have wit enough to see it as you spoke it, yet I have wit enough to see plainly how this day will end. Hear me, wolf. Vru will bring down game. He may not be the only one, but he will challenge whatever rival dares to stand beside him, and I will not give Heather to that animal. If he brings me the head of a wyvern, a thousand heads, still I will not hear his claim.”
Nakaroth’s troubled gaze narrowed.
“He will be angry. Perhaps angry enough to challenge me. If so,” Kruin continued calmly, “he’ll kill me. I’ll wound him for you as best I’m able, but swear to me, you will not allow that beast to be named lord.”
Nakaroth lifted his chin, frowning.
“And do it quickly,” Kruin ordered, lowering his voice so it could not carry to the ears pricked and listening high on the slope. “Before Alorak does. Vru will kill him, too, whether or not he challenges, just to sever my line of sons. So do not hesitate. In the very moment I am fallen, you strike. Honorably, if you can. If not…tear his beast’s throat out. Accept your exile. Take your Nona and Heather to the Valley Lord and do not tell your stone-headed mate where you are going until you are there. Do you understand what I am telling you to do?”
“Yes.”
“And will you?”
“Yes,” said Nakaroth without hesitation. “My lord, you did not even have to ask.”
Kruin looked at Heather, now struggling to start a fire in anticipation of the birds Gef and Madira were away hunting. He hoped they caught as many as their hands could hold. Heather would not be eating at her own claiming feast. She would be hungry in her den tonight, whichever den that may be, or hungry as she struggled her way across the snow-deep Valley. As for Kruin, he would be sharing meat with the Black Wolf who ferried him across the River.
But Tam would be there waiting on the far shore, with little Cham beside her, perhaps grown now, if spirit-cubs grew in that other-life. And Graal and all his other mates and cubs whose names and faces were lost to his memory. His father, his mother…litter-mates he had surely had and could not recall. His kin, a thousand generations reaching back, who he had only heard as voices in the Endless would come to greet him, not as a chief, but as a mate, a father, a son, a friend. And that would be a fine thing.
If only it weren’t so soon.
Scratching at his aching heart, Kruin settled himself on the raised rock to wait.
24. The Morning After
Nona had been dreading the inevitable small talk on this, her first morning as Nakaroth’s mate and a true member of High Pack, but to her relief (and at first, it really was a relief), there was none. They walked without speaking, if unfortunately not in silence. Basharo was unusually fussy, which Nona supposed he had good reason to be, given that she’d never seen Ararro take him further from High Rock than the pond, and what was new was always a little scary. His distress bothered Nona, but no one else mentioned it, which made her think that it might be impolite somehow to draw attention to it, that it might make Ararro feel like she had to go back, and poor Ararro hadn’t gone any further from High Rock than the pond in months either.
So Nona did her best to ignore the yips and tears and whiny growls accompanying them through the woods, but although his little cries did tap into that instinctive aww-poor-thing vein inside her, it also kind of got on her nerves. That only made her feel guilty as well as irritated and concerned. He was just a baby and Ararro was doing the best she could. God knew, Ararro was a better mother than Nona’s ever was, or that Nona herself could ever be.
And before she could stop it, bam, there was the P-word, flashing pink and blue in her brain with little Basharo’s barks and wails to act as a warning siren.
Not a chance, of course. ‘Enduring magic’ aside, it had to be harder for a lycan and a human to make a baby. Not impossible, maybe, but definitely harder. And the odds were already against it. Nona’s mother had slept around like she was going for her Girl Scout Slut Badge, but had only ever gotten pregnant once, so there was probably some genetic thing wrong with Nona’s works and she was fine. Besides, you couldn’t get pregnant the first time, everyone knew that. Right? Maybe. Seventh grade biology class was a long time ago and she’d only gotten a C- anyway.
She glanced at Basharo and tried to picture him with midnight black fur instead of brown-and-yellow patches. Her stomach tightened. She told herself it was dread just so she could tell herself it was needless. She wasn’t pregnant. And she wasn’t going to get pregnant. Nakaroth had promised and over last night’s many athletic interlude
s, even when she’d forgotten, he hadn’t. He wouldn’t get her pregnant, unless he already had, which he hadn’t.
God, this walk was lasting forever.
It really was, wasn’t it? Maybe it was just the elastic nature of time that made her think so, but it felt like they’d been walking for an hour already. On every other morning, the lycan had emphasized how important it was to go out early and strike fast. Once the birds stopped shrilling out their daily demands for sex and threats of violence, they flew up over the forest canopy where they could not be hit. It was only for a short time at dawn and dusk did they make themselves targets at all, and if they didn’t get to the shooting soon, they were going to miss their chance entirely.
They had to know what they were doing, Nona told herself uncertainly. They were the hunters here. She was not going to be that newbie who lectured the masters on how to handle a slingshot.
Maybe they were just waiting until they reached the spot where Sangar could restock her medicinal supplies. No point in killing everything at the beginning of a long hike, just to have to carry it. The birds weren’t that big, but managing a half-dozen or so got to be pretty cumbersome. If they wanted to get wherever they were going before they started shooting, that was fine. Frankly, Nona was more than happy to see some new scenery, even if it meant slogging miles through the rocky forest just after dawn following a pretty sleepless night. She was so fine with it, in fact, that it took a while for her to notice how quiet the others were.
Gef and Madira, usually so encouraging, scarcely seemed to notice that Nona was even there, much less what she was aiming at or whether or not she hit it. Of course she didn’t hit it, she couldn’t hit anything, but they always at least tried to show her what she was doing wrong. Not today. Not only were they not interested in helping Nona hunt, they weren’t all that interested in their own hunts. They carried their slingshots, but rarely used them and missed every shot they fired.