by Rose, Aubrey
“For war.” Blaise warded off a flurry of blows from Erroll, managing to get hit only once. “If we have to fight, we need to be in top form.”
“Is that what Dad said? To train for war by smacking each other?”
“No. But he won’t let me into the council discussion, so this is the second best thing. Ya!”
“Great,” I said. “Well, you two have fun. Don’t kill each other.”
I walked past them as Erroll managed to land a kick into Blaise’s side. So Dad was already in the council meeting. And they hadn’t even woken me up to let me know where they were going. Awesome.
The morning air was chilly, especially once I made my way past the tree line and into the forest. I could see my breath, and I pulled my hoodie up over my hair. Ugh, my hair. Both of my braids had come undone, and they had made the sides of my hair even more curly and poofy. For a brief moment, I thought about going back to fix it before going to the council. But no. This was more important by far. With war on the horizon, how could I be worried about a bad hair day?
Making my way through the forest toward the longhouse, I began to smell the scents of the other pack members. My mom. My dad. Dee. Mara. The guards. And the strange scent of the messenger, still lingering in the air. I thought about veering off to go see him. Something in me wanted to talk with him again. Even though he scared me, I could sense that he needed something from me. Maybe it was just food, but maybe it was something more. And if I could only figure out a way to avoid war, then it would be good for him to trust me.
Coming around the last curve of the trail, I ducked under a branch that the wind had knocked over. My mother looked up expectantly.
“Kinaya,” she said, standing up. “Good morning.”
“What’s so good about it?” I grumped. “You didn’t even bother to wake me up to come with you this morning.”
“To—oh, Kinaya. No. We didn’t come back to the house.”
“What do you mean?”
As I got closer, I noticed dark circles under my mom’s eyes. She hugged me tighter than normal, and I hugged her back, sensing something was wrong.
“What is it, Mom?”
“We didn’t come back last night,” she said, and now I saw the traces of weariness in the corners of her eyes. “The council was up all night discussing alternatives.”
All night long? I suppressed the disappointment that reared up in me. How I would have longed to hear them talk! But I only pressed my lips together.
“What did you decide?” I asked.
My mom took a deep breath in. She pulled me down onto the longhouse steps. Behind her, the door was closed. The rest of the council members were inside, and I ached to go in and see what they were discussing.
“Kinaya, it looks like we may have to go.”
“Go?” I frowned. “Go where?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Dad said there isn’t anywhere around here we could go. This was the only territory—”
“We would have to go far. Over the mountains, maybe.”
“The Rocky Mountains?”
She nodded.
“But that’s, like, the other side of the country!”
“Kinaya, you’ll be off at school anyway. You want to go to college, don’t you?”
“Well, sure, but—”
“Now is the best time,” she said. She looked at me, and all I saw was the worry in her eyes. I swallowed the lump in my throat. When I’d woken up this morning, it had all seemed like a dream. Now, though, looking at my mom’s terrified face, I knew that it was all for real.
“What about war?”
“Some of the council members want to fight,” my mom said. She looked away when she said it.
“They want to go to war?”
“The majority of the families, yes,” she said softly.
“So you’re not leaving?”
“I— I feel that it’s best to leave. We don’t know the opposing side’s strength. All we know is that they would likely drive us from our home anyway, or kill us.”
“Then why do the other council members want to fight?”
“Because it’s their home.”
“What does Dad think?”
The way my mom looked at me, I knew the answer.
“He wants to fight?” My voice was a whisper.
“He doesn’t want to fight. Kinaya, none of us want to fight. He’ll try to negotiate if they will agree to negotiate. But sometimes we must do what needs to be done, regardless of what we want to do.”
“And Dee?”
“Dee agrees with your father,” my mom said. “I didn’t think she would, but she agrees that the pack should stay if possible.”
“What if the messenger is right? What if they kill everybody and take the women as slaves?”
“The women who stay here will fight alongside the men. Nobody will be taken as a slave.”
“What about the kids?”
“We’ve thought about it, and the best way is to have someone bring them all into town to stay for a while. They’ll be leaving today.”
“Today?”
“Kinaya, none of us has any idea when the Scarred Prince will attack. It could be today, for all we know. It could be in a week, or a month.”
I thought of the messenger. He’d said that he’d journeyed for three days. I hoped we had at least that much time, but I couldn’t tell my mom I’d talked with him. A day or two wouldn’t matter, anyway. The kids would be gone before the other pack arrived. That was the most important thing.
“But what if—” I thought of the worst case scenario. “What if we fight and lose?”
My mom didn’t say anything. She only pressed her lips together. Her scent, though, told me all I needed to know. I thought of all of the children, and how many of them would be orphans.
“Who else wants to leave?” I asked. “Who besides you?”
“Two of the other families,” she said, her voice clipped. “The Kents and the Forresters.”
“So everybody else will stay here and fight? What about Mara?” Mara had escaped from Trax’s pack long ago, before I was even born.
“Mara wants to fight. She says that she thinks we will lose.”
“Why does she want to stay, then?” I asked incredulously.
“She says…” My mom’s voice choked in her throat. “She says that if the pack is anything like it was when Trax was alpha, there will be no negotiations. They will come in and invade. But she doesn’t want to leave. She says that every one of them that we kill is worth the cost.”
Tears ran down my mom’s face, and I buried myself in her arms. Dread overcame me.
“I can’t let you both stay here,” my mom said through her tears. “I can’t. You and Blaise, you must go. Please.”
“But Dad—”
“Please.”
I closed my mouth. Fear clenched my chest tight. I had never seen my mom like this. So vulnerable. So scared. Her arms cradled my shoulders, and she rocked me as though I was a baby still.
“I will protect you,” she whispered. “You have to let me protect you.”
“Okay,” I said. At that moment, I would have agreed with anything she asked. But in my mind, I was already thinking of other possibilities.
Chapter Twelve
I told myself I wasn’t going to go back to see Alekk. But after my mom left to go home and sleep for a while, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see how the guards were treating him. They shouldn’t be starving a prisoner, no matter what pack he came from or what threats he made. Before, I might have told my dad about it and left it for him to work out. Today, though, I realized that he was working on more important matters.
This was one of the responsibilities Granny Dee had talked about. I had to take it on myself to make sure the prisoner wasn’t mistreated in our pack. It was part of my job as an alpha’s daughter. As a representative of the pack.
Steeling my shoulders, I walked over to the storage cabin. The sun w
as filtering through the tops of the fir trees, and the air was warmer. A beautiful day. If only it hadn’t been for the threat of war, I would have shifted. I loved running through the forest as a wolf on days like this. But today was not like any other day, and I had new responsibilities.
As I came closer to the storage cabin, worry set in. The guards weren’t standing outside. Then I smelled a familiar scent, mixed with the messenger’s own scent.
“Blaise!” I cried out, sprinting up to the cabin. No. Not my brother. My feet had never flown so fast over the forest floor. I could sense my body beginning to shift into wolf form, preparing for a fight.
I threw open the door, adrenaline making my heart jump. I expected to see that the prisoner had escaped. I expected to see Alekk beating my twin brother into a bloody mess. What I didn’t expect, what I had never expected, was what I saw then.
Blaise was standing over the prisoner, his knuckles bloody. Alekk groaned. His hands were still tied behind the pole. I stepped forward.
“Kinaya! What are you doing here?”
I stood agape at my brother.
“Blaise?”
Alekk’s head turned to try and look at me. Blaise reached out and slapped him hard, the crack of skin on skin reverberating through the room.
“Don’t even try to look at my sister, you dog.”
“Stop it!” I cried. I tried to breathe steadily, to make my heart slow down. I had no idea what to do. “Blaise, where are the guards?”
“I told them to leave,” Blaise said. His dark red hair hung in front of his eyes, and he threw his head back to clear his face.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? I’m interrogating the prisoner.”
He smiled, a thin smile that made the room feel ten degrees colder. My fear for him trickled away, replaced by anger.
“You shouldn’t hurt him,” I said uncertainly. I wondered how long this had been going on. Alekk said nothing. His face dripped blood from a cut above his eyebrow, and a dark bruise was spreading over one cheek.
“His pack has declared war on us,” Blaise said. “Or don’t you remember last night?”
“Then he’s a prisoner of war. And you can’t harm a prisoner of war for no reason.”
“I have plenty of reasons,” Blaise said. “First one being that he won’t tell me a damn thing. Talk, dog!” Blaise kicked Alekk’s leg, and received only a grunt in response.
“Stop it,” I said.
Blaise crouched down and grabbed Alekk by the chin, wrenching his head upward.
“Talk!” he yelled.
“Stop it!”
Blaise looked up at me. My heart was beating as fast as it had been when I had first come in. I couldn’t let him do this. I couldn’t.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll tell Dad,” I said.
That did it. Blaise immediately stood up, his fists clenched.
“He’s off figuring out how to fight a war,” he said. “You think he cares about one prisoner?”
“Yes. And if you don’t stop—”
“Fine. You know what? Fine.” Blaise stood up and spat on Alekk’s robes. “I’m going back to spar with Francis. When the Scarred Prince comes here with his pack, you’ll be happy that I’m ready.”
He brushed past me without looking at me and left the cabin.
I was shaking. Even with how rudely Alekk had spoken to me last night, I felt sorry for him. Nobody deserved to be tortured. And our pack was better than that. Or so I had thought.
I didn’t look at Alekk as I put two logs on the dying embers of the fire and kindled a small flame. All of my focus was on restarting the fire. I couldn’t handle anything else. By the time the flames were licking the sides of the wood, my heart had slowed down to normal and I was able to turn around and look at him.
What I saw made my chest tighten. There was a bruise over half of his face, spreading across his cheek and eyebone. The cut over his eye was dirty.
“Give me a second,” I said. “I’ll get something to clean you up.”
I rummaged through the shelves on the other side of the storage cabin. There were clean linens in a box and I tore off a few strips. The guards had left the plate of food next to an iron kettle of water by the fireplace. The food had dirt kicked over it. I pushed it aside, swallowing, then set the kettle above the growing fire.
“Can I have some of that water?”
I turned around, startled by his voice. It was raspy and low. He looked at me from under his cut eyebrow. The top of his shaved head was smeared with blood.
“I haven’t had anything to drink,” he said, explaining slowly. He coughed.
“Sure,” I said, trying not to be afraid. I poured a cup of water and knelt next to him. His body was huge, and although I knew he was tied up, I was still wary about my every move. I put the cup up to his lips carefully, letting him tilt it his way. Water spilled over his lips as he drank deeply. Finally the cup was empty. He coughed again.
“I’m sorry, Princess. For what I said last night. For scaring you.”
“You didn’t scare me.”
“I did.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat as he looked up at me with those fierce blue eyes. Turning away, I put my hand over the kettle, although I knew it wouldn’t be hot enough yet. My mind was racing. Could I possibly get any more information out of Alekk? I didn’t know what the best way was to approach him, but he seemed to be more open today.
“When will your pack come to get you?” I asked.
“You mean, when will they attack your pack?”
I nodded.
“They won’t leave you here for long, will they? They’ll come to rescue you,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too hard. With the bruises and cuts on his face, Alekk looked awful. I imagined one of our guards being hurt in the same way, and it made my eyes sting.
“I don’t know. They obviously didn’t tell me. They knew you would torture me to find out.”
I wanted to cry out that we didn’t do that kind of thing in our pack, but I couldn’t. Blaise had made it impossible for me to defend my pack’s actions.
“My brother was acting on his own,” I said. “If my dad knew—”
“I’m sure your dad doesn’t have any blood on his hands,” Alekk sneered. “Except, of course, for Trax.” His face contorted, and I frowned.
“I don’t know much about that,” I said. “It was a long time ago. Before I was born.”
“Yes, well.”
The water in the kettle was hot by now, and I poured some onto the linen scraps. Coming back to kneel beside Alekk, I tried to wash away the blood from his face. Lightly, I dabbed at the cut above his eye.
“You don’t have to be so gentle with me, Princess,” he said.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Are you playing good cop bad cop with your brother for me?”
“Excuse me?”
“He beats me up and then you fix me up?” Alekk asked. “It makes sense. To try and get more information out of a prisoner. It’s a common interrogation tactic.”
“I don’t know any tactics for interrogation,” I said. “But I know my dad wouldn’t want to abuse a prisoner.”
“Of course he wouldn’t.”
“He wouldn’t! You have no idea what my dad is like!”
“I know he’s capable of killing. He’s an alpha. He would do whatever it took to protect his pack.”
“Not torture,” I said firmly. Alekk only shrugged. I dabbed again at the cut above his eye. It was cleaned out. I could feel his gaze break against my skin as I worked my way down his cheek. Being so close to him made my body react strangely—it must have been the fear that he would find some way to get out of his ropes.
“You’re wrong about my dad. He would never—”
“My arms are deadened,” Alekk said. His voice rose only slightly, but in the small cabin it resounded off of the walls. “The blood has been cut off to my h
ands for the whole night. They’ve damaged me, maybe permanently given me nerve damage. Nobody except you has treated me like anything other than an animal to be put down.”
I swallowed. It was true; the ropes still cut into his wrists deeply. Maybe I could get the guards to… but no. It wouldn’t work. They wouldn’t help me at all. Hell, they’d left Alekk to be tortured by Blaise.
Whatever it took to protect his pack… I thought about what he had said. A plan was beginning to form in my mind. It was half-formed, certainly, but it was better than nothing.
“Alekk?”
“Yes, Kinaya?”
His lips only moved slightly to pronounce my name, but for a moment I couldn’t breathe. There was something about the way he spoke that was hypnotic. It sent my nerves trembling. I sat back and threw the bloody linen into the fireplace.
“If you answer my questions, I’ll untie your wrists,” I said. I couldn’t stop my voice from trembling.
“You’d untie a prisoner? Against your father’s wishes?”
“We can retie your hands in front of you so that your arms aren’t hurting so much,” I said.
Alekk shook his head.
“I have no information to give you.”
“You might. I have an idea, and I need you to tell me if it’ll work. I don’t know anything about your pack, you said it first. But you do. So answer my questions, and I’ll cut the ropes.”
His eyes searched mine, as though looking for the catch. There wasn’t any. I was desperate for an answer to war, and this was the best way I could think to get it. Besides, despite his size and strength, the prisoner was weak. He hadn’t eaten in days. And his arms were useless. With my knife, I felt certain that I could keep him at bay, even if he tried to escape. And the longhouse was right there; if I cried out, the other members of the pack would be there in seconds.
“Very well, Princess,” he said, slumping back against the pole. “Tell me what your idea is.”
I bit my lip, the plan coming together in my mind even as I spoke.
“I have a proposal.”