by Ann Aguirre
Long pause, in which she wondered whether she had overstepped. Finally, he said, “We argued a lot. Drank twice that much. But yeah, I’d say we were close. He gave better advice than my father.”
Why didn’t you look to the bear clan for an alliance then? Thalia almost asked. She didn’t, largely because the question sounded too much like, why did you marry me? And his reasons didn’t matter—or they shouldn’t, if the wolves kept up their end of the contract.
Instead she said, “I’m sorry for your loss. You must miss him.”
“I do. I also miss living with the protection of the Pax Protocols. His death represents a much larger problem…the fact that the world as we know it has changed.”
Once, such an acute observation would have surprised her. Not anymore. Raff only pretended to be a hapless rogue.
“And not everyone wants peace,” she said softly. “Some would rather profiteer and sell secrets.”
“It’s one thing to defend your home, quite another to feel as if you deserve to take what someone else has.”
“I agree. This probably won’t come as any great shock, but Ruark Gilbraith is every bit as dangerous as Tycho Vega.”
“Gathered that when he killed Lileth and tried to take out the entire head table at our wedding. No worries, Lady Silver. We’ll get him. Once I’ve rested a bit, I’ll be ready to wreak some havoc.”
How could he be so confident all the time? It didn’t seem like bravado, either. Thalia found this wolf disturbingly hard to read. Maybe his physical prowess gave him the conviction that all enemies could be bested eventually?
“That is so perplexing.”
“What is?”
“In a few days, your leg will have healed? I don’t understand how it’s possible.”
“An Animari physician could explain it better. I just know our enhanced senses and healing kick in after the first shift.”
“What’s that like?”
“Shifting?” At her nod, he seemed to consider the question carefully. “That’s hard to put into words too. Nobody’s ever asked me before.”
“Other Animari wouldn’t need to.”
“That’s not entirely true. Latent Animari probably do wonder but they don’t ask.”
She thought she understood why. “It would be like a wingless bird asking how it feels to fly.”
“Yes. I’m going to sleep for a bit. Keep watch?”
It was mind-boggling the way he just switched off. His weight sagged against her and Thalia had to wrap both arms around him to keep him from toppling across her legs like felled timber. She cocked her head, listening, but the tunnel was eerily silent. It would’ve been nice to hear scraping from the other side of the blockade.
Maybe Ferith is still trapped?
Best not to imagine worst-case scenarios. If the traitor had laid a trap, they might investigate why she hadn’t stumbled into it yet. It seemed likely that the cave-in was meant to separate her from Ferith and drive her toward the exit in a panic. Since theirs was a political marriage, the enemy couldn’t have planned for a meddling wolf. Who was apparently willing to put himself in harm’s way for her.
Repeatedly. Thalia had mixed feelings about that.
In any event, she wasn’t the sort to panic, even when her plans went south. This time, she’d come ready to fight, fully geared with shock bracers and both knives. She also had five different poisons and twice as many antidotes in her pack, but any conflict had to wait until Raff could walk properly. Down here in the silent chill, she might’ve been cold if not for his body draped over hers.
Though she’d had lovers before, brief moments stolen for physical pleasure, nobody had ever given themselves over like this. The implicit trust was daunting. What if I don’t hear them coming? Thalia half-wanted to turn on her light, but that would give away their position, and they were trapped with the blockage behind.
Stay calm. This isn’t how it all ends.
She sat in the dark and held him and breathed.
No telling how long Raff had been resting, but he snapped awake instantly, his muscles tense. Movement in the tunnel. How many?
He tested his leg. It still hurt, but it was fused enough to hold his weight. Gently, he touched Thalia’s shoulder. She probably didn’t mean to sleep but staring into the dark was monotonous. Raff had counted on his ability to hear an intruder from a long way off, and these trespassers weren’t even trying to be quiet. Eldritch from the smell of them, but he couldn’t distinguish between the houses yet. In time, he’d be able to tell where they came from, based on the olfactory clues.
Not soon enough to help us.
It took a second shake to get her attention. She snapped upright, and he silenced her instinctive question with a press of his fingertip against her lips. Raff set his mouth against her ear, barely making a sound.
“We have company, let’s greet them. I’ll take point.”
Ignoring the twinge from his bad leg, he stripped swiftly. In this terrain—in the dark—he’d do much better fighting as a wolf. It would help his balance too since a wolf could move better on three legs than a man could dragging one. Thalia didn’t question his decision; she was on alert as she scooped up his clothing and stowed it in her pack.
Helpful, that.
Over the years, he’d lost lots of garments, the price you paid to be Animari when the shit hit the fan. Since Thalia wasn’t a shifter, she could keep up with all the clothes he discarded, and he’d have something to put on later, after the fight. It was such a little thing, but it felt good to realize that this mixed marriage wasn’t all doom and dire portents.
He slid into wolf form—like diving into cold, deep water—and stretched, testing the strength of his injured leg. Better now. Raising it still let him prowl ahead smoothly, breathing in the nervous tang of the enemy’s sweat. Closer, he heard the whisper-light scrape of leather soles against the dirt and loose stones of the tunnel floor. Thalia was quiet as a Noxblade behind him, more skilled than the Eldritch creeping toward them.
Eighty meters and closing.
Raff wished he could warn her, but she wouldn’t understand even if he tried. He rushed, leaping at the nearest enemy and tearing into the Achilles tendon. Wolves in the wild normally didn’t hamstring their prey because they hunted as a pack, but he didn’t have any other wolves at his back today. The Eldritch went down, his leg buckling, and Raff tore out his throat in a sticky-sweet rush of blood.
Different than the Manwaring strike team. Why is that?
He circled, dodging the slashing knife strikes that told him the Eldritch didn’t see as well in the dark. A blue lightning arc crackled in the dark and the second target juddered in place, then dropped his weapon. The stench of charred flesh and burning hair filled the tunnel, so he hacked a breath and backed off. He saw it clearly when Thalia finished her opponent with a knife, a quick thrust and twist to the kidney.
“I think that’s all of them,” she whispered. “At least the ones who came in the tunnel. There are probably more outside.”
A reasonable assessment. For obvious reasons, he stayed quiet.
She switched on the torch and said, “I won’t leave this on, but I need to ask some questions. Reply with a nod or a shake of the head. Shall we continue?”
Raff nodded.
“Do you want to lead?”
Another nod.
“All right then. I don’t like leaving the bodies here, but we can’t take them with us. They’ll slow us down and we’ll probably need to fight again.”
That seemed likely to him, too. He trotted off, setting a pace she could keep up with.
Her whisper reached him a few seconds later. “They’re not used to fighting Animari. It almost seems unfair, how fast we killed them.”
It’s kill or be killed, princess. And I won’t let them hurt you.
Raff couldn’t say that, of course, and maybe that was just as well. Her regret was natural. If harming her own people didn’t trouble her, she shouldn’t rule
them. Something he’d read in old history books came to him, along the lines of ‘those who seek power are not worthy of it’.
The tunnel sloped downward and stretched on for quite a while. There was no further opposition, and eventually, the darkness diffused with a trickle of daylight. A cold wind blew through his fur, and Raff rushed toward the promise of freedom. Caution reined him in at the last minute as he recalled there were probably more Eldritch hunting for them. Their recourse now depended on why they’d collapsed the tunnel. Was it meant as an attack on Thalia or an attempt to cover someone’s tracks? Without knowing that, it was tough to be sure how to proceed.
He waited for Thalia to catch up. She stepped out of the cave mouth to shade her eyes against the winter-pale sun. To Raff, it looked like they had tapped into a natural cavern system with that secret passage into Daruvar.
“Let me get my bearings,” she said.
As she fiddled with her phone, he oriented himself by scent. Mountains to the west, forest to the south. There was rain or snow in the air, a heavy storm threatening. He tipped his head back to study the clouds. It will hit soon. We don’t have much time.
“We’re farther from Daruvar than I realized…”
With a bad storm threatening and an Eldritch hunting party on the move, they couldn’t linger. He growled and pawed her leg.
Thalia glanced at him, one fine brow arching. “What is it?”
Like I can answer. Shifting to reply would burn energy he couldn’t spare, so he stared at her, ran a few paces south, and growled again.
“You know the way back?” she asked.
He nodded. Not exactly, but we can’t stand in the open like this. It was a miracle that they didn’t have to fight as soon as they left the cave.
To his vast relief, she fell in behind him and even increased her pace to a graceful lope when he ran faster. There was old smoke this way, the remnants of a fire, and that probably meant shelter. The precipitation he’d scented earlier dropped on them in a wet wave, half-rain, half-sleet, and it iced the ground. He had less trouble than Thalia, who slid and cursed behind him.
“I don’t think this is right,” she called as a tree branch slashed her cheek.
Raff snarled.
Nearly there.
From the forest proper, he ran into a clearing that held a small hunting cabin. There was no visible smoke, but he could smell the remnants of the fire, doused a few hours ago or so. He dropped out of wolf form, and the shift left him shivering, between the sudden cold on naked skin and the expenditure of energy. Raff didn’t expect to find a lock and he was right; the door opened easily.
“I thought we were going back,” Thalia snapped.
Before answering, he got his clothes on. “My concern was getting us out of the weather. Don’t you see that ice?”
“I do, but—”
“It will kill us, Lady Silver. Freeze us to death before we reach Daruvar. We don’t have winter gear with us or the necessary provisions. We have to wait it out and hope that Eldritch strike team doesn’t find us before I recover fully.”
“But Ferith will think we’re dead!”
He sighed at her outrage. “Better than being actually dead. Help me get a fire started and see what the last tenant left us to eat.”
15.
Thalia was pissed off.
Mostly because Raff had a point. The hail had turned into sleet, slush when it hit the ground, and the ice was sticking, enough that the ground was half-covered in white, as far as she could see. The cabin was rustic, at best. Primitive would be a better word. There were no indoor hygiene facilities; a shack out back had a hole excavated for such a purpose.
Inside, everything was built of unfinished wood, a few shelves with random tins, a rag braid rug on the floor—even the furniture looked handmade, from the bed stand to the rough-edged mattress and table and chairs. The lack of trophies made her think this was no normal hunter’s retreat. As she thought that, Raff built a fire efficiently from the wood that was stacked against the wall near the hearth. Even the stones that had been placed were asymmetrical, found rather than quarried.
“This is an Animari hideaway,” he said then.
She asked, “How do you know?” before she thought better of it and then wished she could swallow the question.
“Scent markers. The last person who used this cabin was a cat, no one I recognize from Ash Valley, but there are traces of bear and wolf, too, along with something strange, like nothing I’ve ever encountered before.”
That was interesting. “Could it be someone from the Aerie?”
The bird shifters were notoriously reclusive and lived in a stronghold in the northwest that was said to be unreachable except by air. They’d stayed out of all Numina affairs for the last several hundred years, so if they’d emerged from hiding, it could portend an important power shift. Regardless, Thalia didn’t like the implications of an Animari hideout so deep in Eldritch territory.
Raff shrugged. “It’s possible. These other olfactory trails are old, though, barely discernable even for me. Only the cat is recent, but we already knew that from the smoking fireplace.”
“Do you think they’ll be back?”
“In this weather? Not likely. I think they knew the storm was coming and got out ahead of it.”
“Wish we’d done the same,” she muttered.
He glanced up from the small blaze he’d coaxed to life, narrowing his dark eyes. “Hey, it’s impossible to monitor the weather in a tunnel.”
“I’m not blaming you. It’s just that I’m worried about the situation at Daruvar.”
“Worry is a waste of energy. Focus on what you can change.” Saying that, Raff straightened from the hearth with effort.
Belatedly Thalia remembered his bad leg. Since he’d come here in wolf form, it hadn’t been as evident. As a human, he was limping.
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Some,” he grunted.
“What can I do to help?”
“If you’re asking sincerely, fill that bucket with ice from outside and hang it on the hook on the fireplace. We can’t take a bath, but we can wash up a bit.”
“On it.” Normally, there would be five servants fighting to take over such mundane chores. It was novel to do it herself. “What else?”
Raff settled onto the nearest chair with a strangled groan. “Fuck me, that’s enough moving for a bit. Ah, see what’s in the tins, I suppose.”
“Two are potted meat. Two are mixed vegetables. One is fruit compote.”
“You have the veggies, then. I’ll take the meat. We can share the fruit.”
“Sounds good.”
There were no cooking facilities, so she opened the tins and heated them by setting them at the edge of the hearth. Carefully, Thalia pulled them free with the fire tongs and she was hungry enough that nothing else mattered; she raked the contents out with her fingertips and barely chewed the corn, beans, peas, and carrots. Raff was equally efficient with the meat, and she let him have most of the fruit.
“You sure?” he asked, offering the tin.
“You burned more energy shifting and you need the calories to mend that leg.”
“True enough.” He tipped his head back, his hair a dark tangle down his back as he swallowed.
For some reason, Thalia was riveted. She couldn’t look away from the movement of his throat, from the curls of his beard, and the way it framed his mouth, now slightly smeared with peach juice. It was impossible not to notice that he had gorgeous cheekbones and that the scar that peeked out from his beard looked as if it needed a soft touch, a vertical stroke, and then her fingers would be on his beard, on his lips—
She tore her gaze away with effort, conscious that her heart was pattering in her chest. I thought it was sheer arrogance when he said I’d want him eventually, but…now? Like this? There was nothing elegant or gentle about this man or their surroundings. She was used to candlelight and carefully orchestrated seduction, measured pleasures,
and orgasms that left her lightly satiated.
This…would be something else entirely.
If she let it happen.
Briskly, Thalia rose to check on the ice bucket and found that it had not only melted, it was also warm enough to wash. “I’d give you some privacy, but there’s nowhere for me to go, except out into the cold.”
“I wouldn’t do that to my good wife,” Raff said.
His dark eyes twinkled as if he knew how little she considered herself to fill that role. In name only had never seemed so sad yet apropos. As he shucked his shirt and pants to sponge off the blood, that seemed wrong suddenly. No matter what, he’d shattered his leg coming to her aid, and it felt rather despicable to let him struggle when she was perfectly capable of helping.
“Let me.”
He glanced up in surprise when she plucked the rag from his hands. Thalia didn’t speak, conscious of rising heat in her cheeks. She washed away the red, rinsed the cloth, working on automatic, until he was clean. Though she tried to feign a certain clinical detachment, her hands trembled when she moved upward to clean the blood from his chest. The scrapes had already healed, but he still bore the signs of old injury on his skin. Without her volition, her hands lingered on the scar at his shoulder.
Suddenly, warm fingers wrapped around hers. “Are you bathing or seducing me? I’m not opposed, mind, but I need to know your intentions.”
“I wish I could answer that.” Flustered, she tried to pull back, but the wolf lord didn’t let go.
Instead, he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed each knuckle, one by one. The whisper-light rasp on his beard against her skin sent a shiver through her, a promise of illicit pleasures. Thalia imagined it chafing her thighs, his mouth moving lower, lower, and suddenly, she was all liquid heat, quivering and breathless. Longing never hit her like this, ferocious and relentless, but now she was squirming, legs pressed together.