The sound of booted feet on the stone floor alerted Astrid to Sabine’s entrance. She turned around and smiled reflexively, before remembering how Sabine had ditched her the night before last. It felt like a thousand years ago, and she had to force herself to still be upset about it.
Sabine held up a hand. “Before you say anything, I need to apologize. I shouldn’t have left you out there like that. I was overzealous and it made me inconsiderate. It wasn’t my intent to put you in danger.”
Astrid felt a rush of relief. She had so much else to deal with, the last thing she’d wanted was to have to hold a grudge against Sabine.
“Take me for a bath and all will be forgiven.”
Noona weaved between them as they headed out into the passageway. It was dark, but Astrid didn’t need to hold onto Sabine or the wall. She’d grown accustomed to listening to the sound of her footsteps and the way they echoed off the walls, using the sounds to help position herself.
“How have you been?” Sabine asked.
There was no guile in her voice, but Astrid knew what she was referring to and she felt guilty. Not long after they’d met, she and Sabine had commiserated over their infertility.
Unsure what to say, she decided to skirt the issue. “It’s been a crazy couple of days.”
“You will feel better in a day or two,” Sabine said. “It ends more quickly when you are apart from your mate.”
“You know about the thrall?” Even Erik hadn’t seemed to know much about it. Either that, or he hadn’t cared to explain it to her.
“Of course. My mother was the mate of an alpha—that’s not as common as you may think, by the way. Most wolf shifters are the byproduct of rogue males.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Take Beau, for example. His mother met a handsome stranger in a bar in Trois-Rivières. They had a one-night fling; she didn’t even know his name. Ten months later, she goes in to get her baby up from his nap and there’s a little diapered wolf pup in his crib!”
Sabine ended the story with laughter, but Astrid had trouble finding the humor in it. She felt awful for Beau’s poor mother, already coping with being a single parent, and then suddenly finding out that her child was a shifter.
“But my father, he was an alpha,” Sabine continued. “And my mother was his mate. My parents went through the thrall every year and there were always new pups. I was the oldest and I helped my mother to raise many of my brothers and sisters. Did you know that Sylvestre is my little brother?”
Astrid’s brows rose. “No, I didn’t. You guys don’t look anything alike.”
“I have my mother’s looks, he has our father’s.”
Pale blue light appeared up ahead, and Astrid could hear the sound of trickling water. She didn’t recognize the passageway they were in, but she usually went to the spring from Erik’s room and not her own.
“Did your mother ever, um, not get pregnant during the thrall?”
“I suppose once or twice, but it usually happened the following month. Why? Are you concerned that it will not take this time?”
“No,” Astrid said quickly. “I know that I can’t get pregnant, but Erik seems so sure that I will and it’s screwing with my head. I don’t know what to think.”
They were greeted with a draft of chilly air as they stepped into the spring room. It was a different pool than the one she and Erik frequented. It was much larger and the water was bright blue. It lay beyond a long stone walkway that wound between a maze of stalactites and stalagmites. She wondered if the other spring was Erik’s private bath and this one was more of a communal one.
“Aren’t you glad there may be a chance for you to become a mother?” Sabine asked.
Astrid averted her gaze, feigning interest in a patch of ice on the floor. “Are you kidding? That would be awful. Even if I put aside my reservations about raising a child in a cave, Erik would be dead last on the list of men that I’d want to father my children. Raising a child takes patience and compassion and…”
Her voice caught, and she stopped mid-rant. Sabine placed a hand on her shoulder.
“What is it?”
Astrid couldn’t bring herself to look up from the floor. “That’s what I keep telling myself over and over—how bad it would be to have a baby with Erik. And it would be, I know it would be because it’s so illogical. But…” She swiped at her eyes, leaving wet streaks on the back of her hand. “But even if it’s illogical, even if Erik would make a terrible father, and even if it means I’d be stuck here for good, I really, really want to be pregnant. How selfish is that?”
“My mother used to say that bringing a child into the world is always a selfish act,” Sabine said, her voice distant. “We condemn them to a life of pain and suffering, all so that we can lessen our own emptiness.”
“Your mom sounds like a hoot,” she said as she blinked away the rest of her tears. “It’s scary how badly I want Erik to be right. I thought I’d reconciled myself to not having kids a long time ago, and now here I am, clinging to this highly improbable possibility. I’ve been through this before and I know that when it doesn’t happen, I’m going to be crushed. And once Erik… He keeps saying I’m his mate and that I belong to him, but that’s not going to last, not if he really does want to be a father.”
She took a deep, cleansing breath. It felt good to get it all out. Most of what she was saying was things she hadn’t even realized she’d been feeling until she spoke them aloud.
Astrid grinned sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I’m blabbering away here and you probably just want to take a bath.”
Her smile faded as she looked up at Sabine. The she-wolf was staring at Astrid through humorless eyes. Her expression was blank enough to rival Erik’s at his worst.
“Are you in love with him?” Sabine asked.
Astrid’s mouth hung open as she recalled what Ila had told her during their first encounter.
‘Sabine is in love with Erik.’
It had seemed like idle gossip at the time, and she hadn’t been inclined to believe anything Ila had said. But the look Sabine was giving her set off a cacophony of alarms in Astrid’s head.
“No, of course not,” Astrid said, keeping her voice even. “And it wouldn’t matter if I did. It’s like everyone keeps saying, he’ll get tired of me and—”
“He cares about you,” Sabine interjected. She took a step forward, prompting Astrid to step back. “You’ve only been here a month and somehow you are more important to him than I ever was.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Astrid said firmly. “You’re his friend, he respects you. He treats me like I’m beneath him and is constantly disregarding me.”
Sabine continued to advance on Astrid. “You talk back to him and you make demands of him and he capitulates to you right and left.”
Astrid shook her head in disbelief. “Are you kidding me? I have to beg him just to feed me half the time.”
“I’ve watched the two of you together, listened to how he lets you get away with questioning him and arguing with him. I’ve listened to the sounds he makes when he fucks you.”
Up until that point, Astrid had held out hope that this was all some sort of power play on Sabine’s part. She thought that if she humbled herself enough, Sabine would be satisfied and back down. But as her heel seesawed on the edge of the pool, her blood ran cold.
“You’ve been spying on us?”
Sabine had already told her as much, but she needed to stall for as long as possible.
“I liked you, Astrid. I really did. If I hadn’t, I would have killed you the night you came here.” She shook her head and sighed. “He wouldn’t have cared then.”
“He’ll care now,” Astrid countered.
She gave a diffident shrug. “Perhaps.”
“If he finds out that—”
Sabine didn’t wait for her to finish. With a hard kick to the gut, she sent Astrid careening backwards into the pool. The second she hit the
water, she knew that this had all been calculated. The water was so cold that it almost seemed to burn. Sabine hadn’t brought her down here to bathe, she’d been planning on doing this from the start.
How had she not been able to see through Sabine’s façade? Had she been so desperate for friendship that she had overlooked obvious red flags?
Most definitely.
Astrid shot up to the surface and gasped for breath. She managed to grab onto the edge of the pool, but Sabine brought her booted heel down onto her head. Astrid plunged back into the water, crimson blood blossoming around her. The world spun, and for a moment she was unsure which way was up or down. Water entered her lungs and it felt like they’d been set aflame.
When she broke through the surface again, she began hacking up water and bile. Sabine still stood over her, and Astrid had the presence of mind to propel herself away from her before Sabine’s foot came down on her again.
Sabine lost her balance, only for a split-second, but as she was righting herself a blur of white slammed into her side. Astrid couldn’t afford to stop and watch what was happening. She rushed back to the edge and pulled herself up from the water.
The fur clothes she’d been wearing felt leaden as she tried and failed to stand. Noona rushed to her side, licking her face and whimpering. Astrid threw her arms around the dog and looked to where Sabine had fallen.
Sabine’s body was still twitching, though her eyes appeared lifeless. A thick stalagmite had impaled her back and jutted up through her chest.
Astrid’s first impulse was to thank Noona, but then she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She turned to see a lithe, platinum wolf staring at her coyly through its midnight eyes.
“I-Ila?” Astrid’s body was shaking uncontrollably.
After licking her paw a few times, Ila shifted into her human form. Steam rolled off her nude body and she wore a Cheshire grin on her dainty face.
“I told you,” she said in her singsong voice. “That one, she doesn’t make friends. Or rather, she didn’t.”
“You s-saved me,” Astrid stuttered. She wondered if she hadn’t drowned and this was all a vivid pre-death hallucination.
Ila had walked over to Sabine and was leaning over her corpse, still grinning. “I know, aren’t you surprised?”
Astrid began stripping off her clothes. As cold as the room was, she knew she’d be better off naked than coated in layers of drenched garments. Ila tossed a pelt at Astrid. It fell over her head, and when she pulled it off she could see that it was the pelt Sabine had been wearing around her waist. There was a small patch of dark blood on it, but it was otherwise pristine. She wrapped it around herself.
“How did you find me?”
Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Oh, I’ve been watching you since Erik left. I knew she was going to try to kill you.”
“She told you?” Astrid asked incredulously.
Ila snorted. “Of course not. I just figured that if I were going to kill you, now would be the perfect time. Erik is away and Sten would be too nervous to watch over you himself, what with you smelling so come-hither. So I waited outside your room. I knew she wouldn’t make her move there. I figured she’d lead you out of the back exit and bury you alive in the snow, but this was pretty clever, too. There’s a strong current under that pool, and even if it didn’t carry your body away, the water would wash away her scent long before—”
“Stop, stop, stop.” Astrid put her hands over her ears. She’d managed to survive by the skin of her teeth and the last thing she wanted to think about was her bloated corpse floating in the pool.
Astrid asked, “Why did you save me? Yesterday you practically said you wanted me dead.”
Ila’s cheery demeanor vanished. “I do want you dead. That’s why I had to stop her. Everyone knows I hate you. I’m the first person they’ll suspect.”
She offered Astrid a hand up. Astrid reluctantly accepted it. “Thanks, I guess?”
“You’re welcome,” Ila said.
They stood side by side, staring at Sabine’s corpse. Astrid felt oddly numb to the sight. She considered that she might be in shock, but decided it was more likely that she just didn’t care enough. She was alive, and that was all that mattered to her.
“How did you know she was going to kill me?” Astrid asked.
As stupid as she felt for not recognizing Sabine’s true nature, she had to remind herself that no one else had either, not even Erik.
“I told you before,” Ila said demurely. “I could see right through her.” She pointed at the stalagmite that had torn through Sabine’s chest and laughed. “Now we both can!”
They left Sabine’s body where it was and left to find Sten. Before they reached the main room, Astrid excused herself, saying that she needed to go to her room and put on warm clothes. Ila didn’t question her.
Astrid bypassed her room, deftly navigating the winding tunnels until she reached her destination. She pulled off Sabine’s pelt and tossed it onto the floor, then she slipped through the crevice and into Erik’s room. She crawled under the pelts.
She didn’t sleep. She couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, in his bed, cocooned in his scent, and willed time to go by faster and bring him back to her.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
The slow-locked mountain had a base too steep for even the most agile climber to scale, but it served its purpose just the same, shielding the deep canyon from the knifing wind. Dozens of campfires dotted the basin, spitting plumes of smoke into the crisp air.
On a bluff opposite the mountain, Erik and Sylvestre perched, observing the sight below with grim fascination. Though they were downwind, they kept low to the ground, staying in their smaller and more easily concealed human forms.
By Erik’s estimate, there were at least three hundred of them, and that wasn’t including the ones in the sprawling, hide-lined tents. There were enough of them to wipe out his pack three times over, though that shouldn’t have bothered him.
While he’d yet to face worse odds, he had, over the years, led his pack through many battles that they should not have won. This was achieved due to a combination of strong, decisive leadership and ruthless exploitation of his enemies’ weaknesses. He told himself that this time would be no different.
“They look settled here,” Sylvestre said. “Maybe we won’t have to worry about them. I mean, I know they’re at our borders, but we never come this far south anyway. We could stand to lose a few kilometers if it means we don’t have to deal with them.”
Erik listened as Sylvestre echoed his own initial thoughts. When the beta male was finished, Erik said, “You have overlooked something.”
Sylvestre stared at Erik, waiting for him to elaborate. His typically clean-shaven face had sprouted almost an inch worth of silver beard growth in the week since they left the den. Despite being rimmed with dark circles, his amber eyes were bright and alert.
After a full minute of silence, it dawned on Sylvestre that Erik was waiting for him to respond. His eyes widened marginally, and Erik understood why. Even he was surprised at his patience and his desire for Sylvestre to work out the answer on his own. It was, after all, the alpha’s nature to dictate firmly and expect his wolves to follow his logic unquestioningly.
Erik asked, “What do you smell?”
He watched as Sylvestre turned back towards the canyon. Sylvestre inclined his head and his nostrils flared. “Burning wood, leather…” he wrinkled his nose, “…wet bears. A few humans as well, females, probably—no, definitely—mates of some of the more dominant males.”
“And what don’t you smell?”
Sylvestre’s brows drew together in concentration, and then they rose as the answer hit him. “Food. There have to be hundreds of them and there are all those fires, but I don’t smell anything cooking.”
Erik nodded. “And that is why they will not stay here. This stretch of territory is the farthest from our den. The reason we don’t come out here is the same reason it has
remained uncontested since we acquired it from the Tigia pack six years ago. It’s a wasteland. There are no herds for fifty kilometers in any direction, and not enough game to sustain even a small pack.”
“They can’t stay here,” Sylvestre said, disappointment evident in his voice. “We’re going to have to fight them, aren’t we?”
“Even if we could return to the pack now and arrange a force to combat them, they won’t be here by the time we come back. And if, by chance they were, we wouldn’t be able to face them all, even with the element of surprise.”
“Then, what? We wait for them to come to us?”
Erik shook his head again. “If they come to us en masse, we will be able to hold out for a few weeks, perhaps a month, but our food stores are insufficient for a prolonged siege. And if we leave the den to confront them, no amount of strategy is going to overcome their sheer sizes and numbers.”
He let out a huff of frustration. “Okay, so we’re fucked then.”
“No,” Erik said, clicking his tongue. “You have thought about this for only a few moments and you are already concluding that we’re doomed? Keep thinking.”
Sylvestre looked as though he was going to protest, but quickly caught himself. This time, as he stared out over the swarm of bear shifters, he thought long and hard, giving the matter careful consideration.
Slowly, and with considerable uncertainty, he asked, “Do we try to negotiate with them?”
Erik tilted his head from side to side. “In a manner of speaking.” He decided that he’d had enough of this training exercise—or whatever it was—and was ready to divulge his plan. “We are going to walk down there and ask to be taken to their highest authority figure.”
Sylvestre’s mouth fell open. “Right now? Just the two of us?”
Erik placed a hand beneath his jawline and cracked his neck. “Any attempt to negotiate will expose our vulnerability. We need to let them know that we are aware of their presence in our territory and we want them gone. And if they don’t leave, it will be at their peril.”
Enslaved by the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 2) Page 22