The Alpha's Concubine (Historical Shifter Romance)

by Claudia King

  "Some of us take many years to find our true calling. Perhaps with patience you will make a fine craftswoman yet."

  "Patience is not something I have! I do not mind practicing, but every time I break a tool or cut myself I have no choice but to wait and start over again. It feels nothing like the hunt did."

  Khelt sat down beside her, rubbing a hand over his chin. He seemed unusually anxious about something, as if torn on a decision that had been weighing on him for a long time. "If I could allow you to join the hunt again I would, but the hunters are all in agreement that you are not suited to it. It would do no good to force them."

  "I know," Netya sighed. "They say it is rarely a woman's calling anyway."

  Khelt nodded. "Most females stop hunting regularly once they are mated. You would have had no choice but to give it up once you bore my child in any case." He turned to her then, hesitating as the problem he seemed to be struggling with lingered on his lips.

  "What is it?" she said.

  "I have seen you still practicing with your spear. I do not think it is good to keep clinging to these hopes of hunting."

  "If I had something else to cling to I would," she replied.

  Khelt might have reprimanded her for being short with him, but the alpha seemed too preoccupied to notice. Finally, he gave voice to what he had been thinking. "Then there is one other role you might try. It is the last place I desire to put you, but it seems everyone believes it makes the most sense. Fern suggested it to me the day after you returned from the great hunt, and Caspian has talked of little else. He even managed to persuade the den mother to agree."

  Netya raised her eyebrows, a tingle of apprehension creeping up her spine. This was not something she had seriously considered, but there was only one possibility Khelt could be hinting at.

  "The seers have agreed to take you on as an apprentice, if you desire it," he said.

  "Adel agreed to this? But she..." Netya trailed off, not sure what to think. Was this another of the den mother's schemes?

  "It pains me to put you under her watch, but you will not have to deal with her often. Even among the seers I am told she keeps mostly to herself. One of the others would be your mentor. Perhaps Brae. She spoke well of you when you helped her in the preparations for the summer fires."

  Netya was unsure what to think. She knew nothing of healing or the ways of the spirits. But becoming a seer would afford her with status beyond that of even the hunters. Behind Adel, she might become one of the most senior females in the pack.

  "It is beyond me to learn the skills of a seer," she said.

  Khelt let out a long breath. He seemed to want nothing more than to dissuade her from such a path, but the alpha's heart and mind were clearly divided. In the end, honesty won out. "Everything Fern and Caspian tell me suggests you have the spark of a seer within you. I have seen your compassion, your sharpness of mind. It is a path few can take, but many wise seers start out as you are now. Adel will try to twist you to her own designs, but if you can endure her, you may find your calling."

  Netya nodded slowly. She still feared the den mother, but the fear reminded her of how she had felt approaching the ravine, charging into the hunt, with victory and danger looming just out of sight. It kindled in her the same excitement that had made her want to become a hunter. It was a journey into the unknown, a journey into fear and mystery, and a promise of the kind of power she had only ever glimpsed in others.

  "If I can endure Vaya, perhaps I can endure Adel," she said, with more confidence than she felt. Adel was the kind of woman who would not spare someone like Vaya a second glance. She was no simple bully.

  Khelt's smile was bittersweet as he took her hand and squeezed it. "I hope the wisdom of this decision does not prove to be misplaced. I will have Caspian tell Adel. She will decide when you are to begin your apprenticeship, and assign you a mentor."

  —25—

  Khelt and Adel's Tale

  Despite her concerns, Netya was eager to begin her apprenticeship, and once the news spread among the pack she became a popular topic of conversation again. Several of those who had shown reservations in accepting her questioned the wisdom of allowing an outsider to train as a seer, but for the most part she was greeted with congratulations, and sometimes even a hint of respect.

  Netya thanked Fern profusely for her efforts in convincing the alpha to let it happen, but Caspian once again proved elusive, and despite her best efforts it seemed impossible to track him down for more than a few moments outside of meal times.

  The customs of admitting a new apprentice into the ranks of the seers seemed lengthy and complex, apparently requiring much deliberation and communion with the spirits to determine when it would happen, and to whom Netya would be apprenticed. Several weeks passed as she waited anxiously, but with the promise of such a great undertaking on her horizon the days no longer felt quite so restless.

  As the weather improved Khelt announced that he planned on taking an expedition to visit the North People, bringing hides and furs to trade with their allies who relied more on farming than hunting to sustain themselves. It was to be a long trip, lasting at least a month, and anyone who wished to learn the language and ways of the Sun People was invited.

  As curious as Netya was to visit her own kind again, and to witness how those from other villages lived, her impending apprenticeship was too important to delay for so long. The last thing she wanted was to give Adel more reasons to dislike her, especially now. Her dismissal from the great hunt was still fresh in her memory, and she refused to let a second such opportunity slip through her fingers.

  The expedition said their goodbyes, and Khelt drew Netya into his arms before he left, telling her quietly how he would miss her company every night they were apart. His affection stirred a gentle warmness in her heart, and she clung on to him a little longer when he made to back away. He may not have treated her with the love she had witnessed between Hawk and his mate, but there were small moments like this that came close.

  Now that summer was on the horizon the pack often strayed farther afield in groups, and at any given time it was unlikely for more than half the pack to be at home. The quiet days meant that the absence of Khelt and his expedition did not leave the camp feeling much more empty than usual. Caspian dealt with any serious matters that required a leader's intervention, but, having vented their winter tensions a few months prior, the pack was mostly able to govern itself without issue.

  Life continued so routinely that, entirely by accident, Netya found herself walking into Khelt's den one evening without thinking. She expected the alpha would desire her, as he often did on warm, quiet nights, and it was not until she stepped through the drapes that she remembered he was gone.

  Instead she found Caspian sitting at the table near the fire, burning patterns into a flat piece of wood using a thin metal tool. He looked up in surprise as she entered, and Netya's skin immediately flushed as she realised her thoughtless mistake.

  "It isn't prudent to enter the alpha's den uninvited," he said, but his tone was playful rather than stern.

  "I am sorry," Netya replied, struggling to think of some way to save face. She did not want to appear empty-headed to Caspian. "The alpha often desires me on evenings like this. I thought..." What did she think? What was she implying she had come here to do?

  Caspian smiled and looked back to his wood burning. "Thankfully I have no need of a consort myself, though you flatter me. Do not worry about continuing with those duties while Khelt is away."

  "Of course," Netya said, lingering uncomfortably near the cave entrance. Now that she was here, she was reluctant to leave, and when Caspian made no move to dismiss her she crept over to look at what he was doing.

  The tool in his hand was a short, uneven metal rod set into a piece of wood to protect his skin from the heat when he warmed it in the fire. Using the tip, he was scorching dark burn lines into a flat piece of wood that was covered in rows of similar markings. Netya squinted at th
em curiously. What he was doing reminded her a little of the patterns people sometimes used to decorate walls or ornaments, but none of the marks Caspian was making looked like shapes she was familiar with. They were too small and simple to be animals or people, and they did not seem to flow in any particular pattern.

  "What are these?" she said after a moment as Caspian leaned over to re-heat his metal stylus in the fire.

  "These are the hunters of our pack," he said, gesturing to the marks one by one.

  "They do not look like hunters to me."

  "If I tried to make them all look like people or wolves, how would I tell them apart?" He pointed to one symbol at the end of a row that was slightly larger than the others, resembling four lines scored across one another. "This one is Hawk, and the rest next to him are all those who joined him on his first hunt last year. By putting their markings on this wood, I can look back and see who was on every past hunt."

  Netya smiled at the strange wood burning, a little amused by the idea. "You could just ask Hawk who he took."

  "I could, but do you remember every person who was on the hunt you joined?"

  "I suppose I do not. So you use these marks to remember?"

  Caspian nodded. "There is a man among the North People who does the same. He showed me this a few years ago, though he used dyes on a stretched animal hide to record which plants he had sown and where, and how well they grew."

  Netya settled herself tentatively on the second log seat next to Caspian, and leaned over to get a better look at his work. "Do you have a mark for every one of the hunters?"

  "I do. I try to make them in a way that reminds me of the person. I think you can recognise this one." He tapped his finger against a particularly jagged and uneven looking symbol that sat at the head of several rows.

  Netya smiled. "Vaya."

  "You can see she appears more as time goes on. This year she will be at the head of even more hunts."

  "Do I have a mark?"

  Caspian gave her a teasing look, and she felt her skin warm under his gaze. "Not yet, but I am marking down the great hunt tonight. I suppose we shall have to make you one."

  "What will it be?"

  Caspian gazed at the piece of wood in contemplation, then reached over for his tool and began carefully scoring a line at the end of the current row he was working on. It curved around in a crescent, eventually taking the shape of a semicircle tilted half way on its side. Then, Caspian pressed the tip of his tool down in the centre, rotating it back and forth in the smoking wood until he created a dot being cupped by the crescent.

  She leaned in eagerly as he moved the piece of hot metal away, eyeing the mark that now meant Netya. "This is me?"

  Caspian ran his finger around the edge of the crescent. "The moon." He tapped the small circle in the middle. "And the sun, both coming together in one person."

  Netya grinned as she admired the small symbol, fascinated that such a simple mark could be used to encompass an entire person. "I like it. It looks beautiful."

  "As it should. I only wish I would get more chances to use it."

  She caught him staring at her for a moment, his gaze lingering as a familiar distant look crept into his eyes, as if he was seeing something beyond just the girl sat beside him.

  "Perhaps I will use it myself, then," she said. "If I am to be a seer, I may have need of recording things in this way."

  "You are taking hold of clever new ideas already. I tried to share this with Adel, but she insists it is a waste of time when she already remembers everything she needs to know."

  Netya edged a little closer to the man seated beside her, growing more confident. For once Caspian was not preoccupied, with no other business to distract him from her.

  "Are you a friend to the den mother?" she asked carefully, keenly aware of how Khelt might react to such a line of questioning. But Caspian did not even blink as he continued marking down his next symbol.

  "I do not know if Adel has considered anyone a friend in her life," he said. "I suppose she tolerates me more than most."

  "No wonder she is so unkind."

  Caspian looked at her. "You think her unkind?"

  Netya shrugged. "She has never treated me well. And she does not seem to respect Khelt at all."

  "Yes, those two will never see eye to eye," he sighed. "And Adel is apt to behave cruelly if she thinks it will serve her purposes. Khelt is the opposite. It hurts him every time he is forced to be hard on his pack. I sometimes think his decision to take you from your people was a kindness on his part."

  "I do not regret it, but it did not seem kind to me at the time," Netya said, strangely aware that this was not the kind of conversation she could have had with any other member of the pack. "He was treating me as a spoil of his victory."

  "But what was his alternative?" Caspian said. "He allowed the man they found with you to escape, but our pack expected justice for the death of Cera. Most of them wanted a kill for a kill, and they would not have accepted it if Khelt took mercy on two of their enemies in one night. He had to make a choice between killing you and taking you as a trophy."

  "And what would you have done?" Netya said.

  Caspian shook his head with a smile, not deigning to answer. All he said was, "That is why I am not alpha."

  His response puzzled Netya. He seemed to lead the pack just as well as Khelt, even if he was less direct about it. He was strong, wise, and perhaps more unique than anyone else in the pack, besides Adel. Who else would have thought to make markings on wood to remember every single hunt of the year?

  But perhaps, she thought, that was exactly the answer to her question. Was Caspian too different from the others to lead them? From the way he spoke about the conflict between her people and his, she doubted he would be willing to take the kind of vengeance his pack expected.

  She held her breath and reached out to touch his hand, and a quiver of excitement ran through her as he took it, squeezing her fingers as if the gesture was the most natural exchange in the world.

  "Will you tell me something Khelt would not?" she asked quietly.

  Caspian propped his free elbow on the table and turned to her, his wood burning forgotten. "If I can, I will."

  "What happened between him and Adel to make them hate one another so? Nobody speaks of it, and it upsets him in a way I have never seen."

  A sadness entered Caspian's eyes, but he did not withdraw as Khelt would have done. "You know better than to repeat any of this to him, yes? I have tried also, and it does not end well."

  Netya nodded, tingling with apprehension.

  "It upsets him because it makes him doubt himself. He still believes the choice he made was the right one, but a part of him questions it. Our pack very nearly splintered apart because of what he and Adel did that night."

  Netya resisted the urge to ask questions, hanging on Caspian's every word as he revealed the truth to her. For months she had wondered what could have driven the wedge between the alpha and den mother, and she listened with rapt attention as Caspian spoke.

  "Adel sought to take charge from the moment she came to our pack. It was clear she resented everyone at first, both our people and hers. I am not sure which pack she blamed more for using her as a peace offering the way she was. But a woman like Adel would never have been broken down by such strife; it only made her fight back harder. So instead of falling obediently in line, she tried every day to wrest as much control away from Khelt as she could. He had not been alpha for long back then, and he thought it all something of a game. Adel was intended to be his mate, so he indulged her, thinking she would tire of it eventually and settle down."

  "She cannot have been fond of that," Netya said.

  "It was certainly her first reason to begin disliking Khelt. She saw him as a brash young man who had barely come of age, without the wisdom to lead properly, and every day she tried to convince the others of it. Some of the seers agreed, and Khelt did not realise how many of the pack were questioning him befo
re it was too late."

  "Did she try to challenge his leadership?"

  "No, she could never have done that. Whatever you may think of her, Adel detests conflict and violence. She would not have driven the pack to in-fighting."

  Netya thought back to the way Adel had spoken the night Erech and Nathar fought. She had to admit, it had sounded as if the den mother truly did abhor the barbaric tendencies of her people.

  "That year the hunting was very poor," Caspian continued, "far worse than what you saw last summer. There was no prey to be found for months on end, and eventually Khelt was forced to lead almost the entire pack afield to search for new hunting grounds. The search took us closer and closer to the edge of the forest, and soon we were sending hunting parties deep into the territory of the Sun People. Khelt and Adel were leading a group one night, each surrounded by their most loyal followers, when they came across a pen of several dozen sheep. There was enough meat there to feed the entire pack, and it was ripe for the taking."

  "But the men of my village would have come to protect their animals," Netya gasped.

  Caspian nodded. "And so they did. They must have been tracking us, because there were more of them than usual, and they were well armed. By the time our scouts reported the location of the sheep back to Khelt, the Sun People had arrived to protect their flock, but they had not yet gathered their full strength. Perhaps it was fate that he and Adel were both together on that hunt, because things would have ended very differently had they been apart.

  "Khelt had a dozen loyal wolves with him at the time, Adel a dozen more, and we planned to make straight for the animals before any more of your people could arrive. Fear is often more powerful than our teeth and claws, and Khelt was convinced that a show of force would be enough to make the enemy back down. Even if he was forced to fight, the numbers were on his side, and our people would starve without fresh kill. But Adel disagreed. She had seen the way her old pack had suffered at the hands of the Sun People's warriors, and she believed a fight would only leave more dead on both sides. She wanted to retreat and search for prey elsewhere."