by Selena Kitt
“Hurry back!” Sibyl called over the crowd at Griff, his shoulders drooping less than they’d been just a few minutes before. “Dinner’s waiting!”
“Congratulations to the winners!” Donal MacFalon called, smiling as he watched his son, Rory, taking the reins of the horses. “I’m proud of all of ye. Clan MacFalon has a surprise for all the winners when ye return, so do’na tarry long, boys!”
“Boys.” Rory sighed, glancing over his shoulder at his father. “When are they going to start seeing us as men?”
“At least he didn’t call you out in front of the whole pack,” Griff grumbled as their team mates started gathering up the rest of the horses. “And ye’re lucky—ye know ye’ll be the laird of Clan MacFalon someday. Ye’ve got no one to challenge ye.”
Griff gave Garaith a knowing look. As brothers, Darrow and Raife had worked side by side for years, Raife as alpha, Darrow his second. Griff didn’t have any brothers, but he knew it was likely that someday, he would lead the pack, and Garaith would follow him, just like Darrow followed Raife.
“Ha, m’sister, Eilis, would have somethin’ to say ‘bout that.” Rory laughed. He was so much like his father, good-humored, always smiling—even when he was facing his enemies. But he was deadly with a sword, and eerily accurate with his bow.
“Yer da would really let a woman lead yer clan?” Garaith asked, even though he knew as well as Griff did that the Scots had no qualms about letting a woman step into that role.
“Aye,” Rory agreed with a nod. “But m’da wants t’marry Eilis off t’some English fop, last I heard, so she’ll likely be givin’ him heirs a’fore the year’s through.”
“Aye? Is that so?” Garaith bristled at this news.
Griff knew that Garaith had his eye on Eilis—since they were just pups, even though Rory’s sister wasn’t a wulver. It wasn’t unheard of for wulvers and humans to mate. Griff’s own mother was a human woman, as was Rory’s father. His mother, Kirstin, had once been a wulver, but had taken a “cure” that Sibyl had developed for the wulver woman’s curse of changing once a month due to estrus, or when she gave birth. The “cure” had worked all too well—Kirstin was now unable to change to wulver form at all.
Rory, Kirstin’s first child with The MacFalon, had been quite a surprise to everyone, except maybe the midwife Beitrus, who had delivered Rory, when he came out as a wulver pup and not a human baby. Beitrus said Rory must have been conceived just at the cusp of Kirstin’s change—completely out of her control—from human woman to wolf form.
“If ye want ‘er, ye better tell m’father, or he’s goin’ t’send ‘er to England and let King Henry pick t’richest match fer her,” Rory warned his friend as they trudged up the hill.
“Aye,” Garaith agreed, his eyes flashing. “I’ll talk t’him.”
Griff shook his head.
He liked women well enough, but he’d never mooned over them the way Garaith did over Eilis, or for that matter, the way Rory did over Griff’s little sister, Maire. Griff could always have his pick of the litter—and he had picked, frankly, more than once—but he’d never found a girl who could keep his attention for longer than it took him to catch them. There were some in the pack who still believed in the idea of “one true mate,” but Griff didn’t hold to such silliness.
“C’mon, let’s go,” he told his two best friends as they mounted their own horses and started rounding up the rest. “I’m starvin’ and I can’na wait t’get served first tonight. We earned it.”
Rory and Garaith both agreed, although they seemed less invested in the win than Griff. He supposed that was the difference between them, the reason he was destined to lead, and they to follow. His father might believe that winning wasn’t everything, but he was wrong. Griff was willing to do whatever it took to win, at any cost.
“Feast ready yet?” Griff asked as he came into the kitchen, seeing his mother standing at a fireplace taller than he was, basting a whole roasting pig on a spit. “I’m starvin’.”
“You stink!” Sibyl wrinkled her freckled nose at her son as he bent to kiss the top of her head. “Go bathe in the stream with the rest of the men.”
“Too cold,” Griff complained. “Can I use yer spring?”
“Don’t let your father catch you,” Sibyl warned as Griff stole the apple from the pig’s mouth, dodging his mother’s swat.
“What?” He grinned, taking a big bite out of it. “I washed me hands!”
Griff grabbed an errant chair and pulled it up to the end of their long dining table. Beitrus, their old midwife, sat there kneading dough for bread. Moira, who ran the MacFalon castle almost singlehandedly, and had for years, sat with her, both of the old women chatting amiably. It had been poor old Beitrus who had offered to try Sibyl’s “cure” for the wulver curse. She and Kirstin were the only two women who had ever taken the cure, and it had turned out to be quite permanent.
Sibyl had expressed her hope over the years that perhaps the effects would wear off and the women would be able to turn wolf again, but alas, that hadn’t happened. Kirstin, who was married to The MacFalon now, didn’t seem to mind. And old Beitrus said she was too old to turn wolf anymore anyway. She joked that the only thing turning wolf was good for at her age was better eyesight to sew by—and she didn’t have hands to do that with in wulver form, so what use was it, after all? Besides, she often traveled back and forth between the MacFalon castle and the wulver den—she and Moira had become good friends and traded both recipes and herbal remedies—and while the Scots on MacFalon land had grown used to the wulvers over the past twenty years, it was still safer to remain human in their presence. Raife hadn’t been joking, Griff knew, when he said they were the last of their kind, and most humans would kill them out of fear alone.
“I heard t’young girls talkin’ ‘bout yer sword skills in the Great Hunt today,” Beitrus teased, pulling off a bit of dough and rolling it between her hands before putting it on a tray.
“They’d better not know anything about his sword skills,” Sibyl called over her shoulder as she handed a young wulver girl—Colleen, a comely lass, Griff noted, who gave him a sly look—a stack full of wooden bowls so she could begin setting their places at the table. “Or they’ll be scrubbing pots until their tails fall off.”
Griff snickered, but he raised his eyebrows at Sibyl’s sly smirk. “Aye? Is that so?”
“I heard ye got a scoldin’ today, young pup.” Moira stood, groaning softly as she put her hands at her lower back and arched. Griff just snorted at that, taking another noisy bite of apple. Moira gave him a sympathetic smile, leaning over to ruffle his hair. “He’s hard on ye, but it’s only a’cause he loves ye.”
“Funny way of showin’ it,” Griff replied, mouth full.
“Ye’ll understand why, some day,” Beitrus told him, rolling another bit of dough in her hands. They were the very hands that had brought Griff into the world, which felt both comforting and strange at the same time as he watched her make biscuits. “Ye might even miss it.”
“I doubt it.” He rolled his eyes, ducking as his mother reached over to playfully smack him as she passed, finishing off his apple.
“You know, you’re expected to lead them all, some day,” Sibyl reminded him, stopping to press a soft kiss on his forehead instead of slapping him. She almost had to go on tiptoe to do it, even though she was standing and he was straddling a wooden chair.
“He’ll ne’er let me lead,” he growled, tossing the apple core into the fire—perfect aim. “Just like he doesn’t even let us use real swords.”
“Mayhaps yer destiny lies elsewhere,” Moira mused, moving to help the younger wulver girls set the table on her end. Griff snorted at that, too. Talk of fate and destiny and prophecies bored him. He’d heard them his whole life, but they never really amounted to much. Just a lot of words in a book, written like code that they were supposed to translate.
“Moira...” Sibyl gave the old Scotswoman a dark glance, a clear warning. That caugh
t Griff’s attention.
“Aye, Mistress, aye,” Moira muttered, eyes down as she set the table.
“Sibyl!” Laina poked her head in, glancing around at the crowded kitchen, wulver women bustling everywhere getting food ready for the feast. “Kirstin and Donal’d like t’see ye.”
“Coming.” Sibyl sighed, wiping her hands on her apron before untying it as she followed Laina out.
“What were ye sayin’?” Griff asked Moira as the woman came to take the tray, now filled with biscuits, from Beitrus. “‘Bout m’destiny?”
“Oh ye’ve heard it all a’fore, lad.” Moira gave him a half-smile as Maire, Griff’s younger sister, took the tray from her hands, heading for the oven. “Y’know, t’prophecy of t’red wulver.”
“Aye, t’red wulver, wit’ t’red eyes.” Griff rolled those same eyes as Maire came back carrying a tray laden with little pastries. ”But what am I supposed to do? Whose savior am I again?”
“The future’s uncertain.” Moira sighed, leaning back and rubbing her tired eyes. “But there’s somethin’ to the prophecy, methinks. Even if it’s the stuff of legend now.”
“Ye’re right t’question it, lad,” Beitrus assured him with a pat of her hand on his arm. “The words’re old and the translation isn’t clear.”
“Snitch!” Maire went to slap Griff’s sneaky hand, but he was too quick for her. The pastries were juicy little bits filled with gravy and rabbit and he went to steal another one, but Maire gave him a dark look, sliding the tray down the table, out of his long reach.
“Brat.” He scowled at his sister, wondering what in the world Rory saw in the girl. She was tall and dark-haired, like their father, and she had Sibyl’s delicate features, but a wulver’s blue eyes. She was comely enough, he supposed, but such a mouthy know-it-all, he didn’t know how Rory could possibly stand being around her for more than five minutes.
“Jus’ a’cause ye won at swordplay doesn’a mean ye get served a’fore e’eryone else.” Maire wrinkled her freckled nose at him—she had her mother’s pale skin and tendency to burn instead of turn brown like most of the wulver women.
“That’s exactly what it means.” Griff grinned.
“Not just ye, y’arrogant arse,” his sister snapped. “Ye weren’t t’only one out there swingin’ a wooden sword.”
“Aye, but I was t’best one,” Griff called as his sister went to get more food for the table. She flipped her long, black braid over her shoulder in a huff and he laughed, tuning back into the conversation between Beitrus and Moira.
“We can’na tell ‘em a’fore we know,” Beitrus cautioned, glancing toward the entrance to the kitchen, as if worried Sibyl might reappear. “‘Tis too dangerous, unless we know fer sure.”
“What else could it be?” Moira scoffed. “It says the lost packs can be found in the Temple of Asher and Ardis—and legend says the temple’s hidden on Skara Brae.”
“Skara Brae, hm?” Griff’s eyebrows went up at that. “What lost packs? You mean—more wulvers? I thought we were the last.”
The two old women exchanged a look, and then looked up at him as he stood, staring down at them.
“Are there more of us, then?” Griff prompted.
“We do’na know...” Beitrus shrugged one frail shoulder. “Mayhaps. The text is unclear.”
“Oh, I think it’s clear enough.” Moira snorted.
“Lost packs,” Griff mused. A sharp zing of excitement went through his body at the thought. He hadn’t put much stock in prophecies and ancient wulver texts, but the idea that there were, mayhaps, other wulvers out there—now, that was interesting.
“Do’na tell yer mother I said anythin’,” Beitrus hissed. “Sibyl’s still mad, twenty years later, that I stole t’cure and swallowed it, jus’ to test it.”
“Do’na worry. I’ll keep yer secrets.” Griff gave the old woman a wink as he headed toward the secret entrance to the spring that led to his parents’ quarters. It was a cool spring, but not nearly as cold as the creek up top.
His mother had been right about one thing—he did stink. Griff stripped off his clothes and jumped in, the shock of the water hitting him like a wall, but he reveled in it.
It would serve two purposes—cleaning his body and clearing his head. The former wasn’t all that important, except that he intended to find a little wolf tail later—but the latter was paramount. He needed a clear head to make the right decision. And he had a feeling that the decision he was contemplating would be the biggest decision he might ever make in his entire life.
Griff was up before first light. He had one candle lit to dress by. As the pack leader’s son, he had the privilege of having his own room, even though the den was growing ever more crowded. In his bed, a young wulver woman—her name was Colleen, a shapely little lass who had offered her bottom up to him more than once the night before—rolled over and sighed in her sleep. She’d be surprised when she woke and found him gone. They both would—the other girl, Eryn, was curled up at the foot of the bed, in wolf form. Her white paws twitched in her sleep, like she was dreaming about running.
Griff thought of his mother as he rolled up the map of a route to Skara Brae he’d pinched from his father’s room. Skara Brae was an island in the far north of Scotland, and it would be a long trip. Mayhaps even a treacherous one, given the number of reavers that roamed far beyond the borderlands now. But a necessary one. His decision had been made with a clear head. He would go to Skara Brae and find the lost packs. If there were other packs out there, mayhaps they were leaderless. Mayhaps he wouldn’t have to challenge his father’s position. Mayhaps that silly prophecy would serve a purpose after all.
Griff blew out the candle and slipped out of his room into the dark tunnel. His parents were likely still sleeping in the room beside his. The den was quiet, resting. Griff turned and headed toward the long staircase that would lead to the surface, where he would go to the barn and saddle his horse for travel. But before he reached the stairway, he stopped at the pack meeting hall, looking at the round table where his father always sat with the rest of the wulver council. His seat was to his father’s left, Darrow’s to his right. There was no head of the table, but everyone knew who was alpha.
Griff slipped his dirk out and stuck it into the wooden table in front of his seat. It was an old wulver way to mark your territory—it would let everyone know he’d be back, and that anyone who wanted his spot would be challenging him. Then he shouldered his pack and left the den of his childhood behind him.
Chapter Two
“I’m goin’ t’win this time!” Bridget’s sword glinted in the sun, and she had a brief hope that, just for a moment, it had distracted Alaric enough for her to triumph and turn her bold statement into truth.
But Alaric wasn’t one to ever let her win, and while she was good—one of the best students he’d ever trained, as he often told her—she still had only bested him a few times.
His claymore was far bigger and heavier than her long sword, but he wielded it with frightening accuracy. Bridget went forward and back, her feminine form an advantage in the way she moved, with the grace of a dancer, but her footwork was wasted on a fighter like Alaric. He moved with the efficiency of a warrior, expending energy only when necessary, and despite his massive size, he was always ahead of her in some way. His claymore went left, and so did Bridget’s long sword, but at the last moment, the big man’s weapon changed direction, a feat which took a tremendous amount of strength.
She had always been vulnerable to fakes and feints, a fact Alaric used to his advantage.
“No!” Bridget brought her sword back just in time to block the blow. She panted with the effort it took to hold him at bay, but it didn’t last long. Alaric saw her weakness and exploited it, unending her smaller form and sprawling her in the dirt. He pointed his claymore at her throat, although the tip stayed several feet away.
“Ye’re dead.” Alaric shook his head regretfully, as if he was truly sorry he’d “killed” her. “
Ye lemme fake y’out again. Will ye e’er learn?”
“I did’na fall fer it t’first two times!” she reminded him, berating herself internally for falling for it the last time, or at all. Why did she always trust that someone was going to do what they looked like they were going to do?
“Ye know I’ve ne’er trained or fought a better student.” He sheathed his claymore and held a hand out to help her up.
Bridget took it with a sigh, letting him pull her easily off the ground, even wearing mostly English armor, at least on her upper body. She brushed off her plaid. Her tailbone ached where she’d landed on it, but her pride was far more hurt. It wasn’t losing that bothered her—losing was part of learning—it was making the same mistakes over and over that irked her.
“Yer doin’ well, lass.” Alaric’s hand fell to her shoulder, as big as a ham, squeezing gently. “A fine guardian-in-trainin’. An’ I know yer mother agrees wit’ me, a fine handmaiden-in-training as well.”
“Thank ye.” She gave him an encouraged smile. Praise from Alaric wasn’t earned easily, nor did she take it lightly.
“Jus’ watch yer hips’n’torso. They ne’er lie.” His left hand moved quickly, fingers snapping beside her ear, and her head turned left, instinctive. That’s when he slapped her cheek lightly with his right. “D’ye see where me body was turned?”
He pointed to his chest and then left, dropping her a wink. “It gave me away, aye?”
“I’m too distractible.” She sighed, sheathing her long sword, both cheeks burning, even though he’d only slapped one.
“Go t’yer mother by da pool, Miss Distractible.” Alaric smiled. “It’s time fer t’purification.”
Bridget took off running—as fast as she could run with a sword sheathed at her side. Before she entered the temple proper, the sword came off, and she switched roles as quickly as she shed her armor. Alaric would yell at her for leaving it near the entrance, but she was already running late and her mother would be waiting.