by Parker Foye
But Kent couldn’t turn around. Because he was a fucking coward.
Eventually Hadrian let out a sigh and entered the building, the door clicking softly shut behind him.
Chapter Six
“And you goes and leaves him there? Without even seeing her highness? Sorry, Tabitha.”
Kent tore off another piece of bread and didn’t answer. Not that he needed to. Annie could keep enough conversation to fill a table by herself and have breath left to berate someone for leaving their dirty shoes in the hall.
He’d fished Annie from the Ouse when her screaming reached the old boat he’d been using as a den to shiver through the winter. She’d only stopped screaming to curse. After pulling her to the banks, she’d hired him to guard her boarding house, to deter her late husband’s gang and their unwanted lingering ties. Kent hadn’t the pride to refuse.
Annie took his bowl and refilled it with stew, the rich meaty scent making Kent’s mouth water. Some slopped over the edge and he mopped it with his bread. Focused. Eating took a lot of concentration. He’d spent the afternoon and early evening walking the city, fast enough his regrets couldn’t keep pace. Sitting at Annie’s table, they’d invited themselves to dinner, occupying the other chairs like unwelcome guests.
“You ignoring me, little pup?”
Kent flashed his teeth on principle. Little pup. Never mind it was Annie saying it, it still made his fur rise.
She tutted. “Put those things away, and finish your stew. Else I won’t make you no more.”
Kent rushed to finish the stew as Annie bustled around the small kitchen. There were two tenants at her boarding house besides Kent, and Annie supplied evening meals for a few extra pence. The clerks had already been and gone, their crockery neatly stacked. Kent kept different hours and Annie knew why, though she didn’t approve. And didn’t hold her tongue about her disapproval.
“You knows how I feel about that lady,” Annie said, true to form, as she took Kent’s scraped-clean bowl. “Talks good but thinks worse than I ever did. You should go south. Find yourself a pack. It’s no good for you here, sitting with the blue devils like you are.”
Not worth arguing. Kent huffed in acknowledgement and rose to his feet, helping tidy the kitchen until Annie left for bed. When she was gone, he checked the house—the clerks were sleeping—and paced the narrow street, ears flicking for trouble. The near moon made him itch. Something brewed in the night.
Returning to the house, Kent crept quietly to his room. He’d left the cottage clothes on his bed on returning from the Shambles, and they seemed like a relic from another life. Folding the clothes with careful hands, he placed them at the bottom of the wardrobe, wrapped in a sheet borrowed from Annie’s stores. Might come a day he’d need them.
Restlessness stirred under his skin like fire under Hadrian’s. If Kent concentrated, what darkness might seep from him?
He pulled out the two knives that had survived the trip north and set to sharpening. Old friend whetstone kept him company in the thin hours, and Kent checked the edge of the first knife on his thumb. A narrow red line opened and he put the blade aside. Picked up the other.
Deep in the rhythm of sharpening, a heartbeat passed between the scent of cloves seeping beneath his door and Kent moving.
It was a beat too late.
Their approach silent under wardings, Tabitha’s men burst into Kent’s room in a sudden cacophony of boots and curses. Doors opened and slammed quickly shut down the hall: the clerks. Hopefully Annie. Let Annie be safe. Kent’s shoulders weren’t broad enough to carry her dead weight.
His last breath of hope went to Annie as one of the men yanked back his arms and broke Kent to the floor. He struggled but their movements were fast, accelerated by whatever wardings Tabitha had supplied. Kent might as well have been human for how quickly they pinned him, a knee to his spine like a spike through a butterfly.
“If you stop wriggling, we’ll be taking you to see her all nice-like,” one of them said. Reasonable. His breath washed over Kent. “Otherwise we’ll take you anyway. Only less nice.”
Kent let his head drop. “No one else?”
“Just you.”
He nodded. One of them heaved him up like a sack of potatoes. Like a pup. Kent didn’t protest. He needed another three nights of good sleep before he had strength to waste on dignity. As they left the house, he saw Annie’s silhouette at her window and raised his hand to wave. When she returned his wave, he let out a breath of relief.
The men walked quick through the night, no one daring to bother them, and in short order reached Tabitha’s property. They tossed Kent at Tabitha’s feet, his knees cracking on the floor. He didn’t bother trying to rise. Stayed still. Kept his head bowed.
“I imagined you would take up residence in my office until the breaking was complete,” Tabitha said, her feet moving into his line of vision. Shiny black boots with silver buttons. He traced the stitching with his gaze as she spoke. “Yet instead you send Hadrian to me alone. Why did you do that? I thought we had an understanding.”
No good answer. Kent had learned that already. But he had to say something. Not answering was worse.
“Tired.”
Tabitha grabbed a fistful of Kent’s hair and yanked his head back, making his collar press into his throat. Bright bird eyes gleamed in the low light, like the thin blade in her other hand. Kent kept his eyes on Tabitha even as she pressed the edge of the blade to his throat, above the collar, where thin scars already crisscrossed from both her blades and his.
The stench of cloves became cloying. Kent fought to keep his face blank despite the itch in his nose and the way his eyes watered.
“No one leaves one of my jobs half-finished, Prince. Are you changing your mind about our agreement? You can stay longer, if you prefer. Stay with me.”
With his head forced in an awkward position, words were harder to find than usual. Kent swallowed, feeling a hot slice of pain at his throat, and licked his lips.
“Not changing my mind,” he said. Again. “Not.”
Tabitha released his hair and withdrew the knife, letting it clatter to her desk like it was nothing. Kent’s blood spotted the edge. She sat at her desk and steepled her fingers, studying him over the top, tucking her shiny black boots behind the legs of her chair. Kent blinked, head feeling heavy. He didn’t move. Not yet.
“Lucky for you, Hadrian spoke highly of your services. To myself and his pack. A telegram, I believe? Therefore I shall be equipped to remove your collar at the full moon. Two nights, and you can finally be released from your binding. What is it you plan to do with your freedom?”
Get as far away from here as I can.
Kent shrugged and creaked to his feet. He could move now. Was allowed. Aches mumbled their presence across his body. He ignored them with ease of practice. As he ignored the mention of Hadrian.
“Will—will think. After.”
“You don’t intend to stay in the city?”
Kent rubbed his throat, smearing his fingertips with blood. He let his grimace be his answer and wiped his hands on his trousers.
Tabitha drew the bloodied knife across the table and made it spin, speaking to the flash of the blade. “No longing for a pack of your own? I’m no wolf but I know—”
“You don’t know,” Kent snapped.
“There he is. I missed you, treading so carefully around me as our deal draws to its end. Don’t you trust I will keep my word?” Withdrawing a black bowl from her desk, Tabitha ran her little finger along the blade, pushing Kent’s blood to drip into the bowl. “The final ingredient. As I vowed. Now we wait for the moon.” She set the knife to spinning again.
Kent reached for the slowly spinning knife. Tabitha’s unblinking gaze followed his actions as he cleaned the blade with the bottom of his shirt. Clove-scent clou
ded the room, as if she were preparing a warding for use.
Kent replaced the knife on her desk. Met her bird eyes.
“Trust.”
“Very well. As a gesture of trust, you can patrol the river for me tonight. Yes?”
Always something. “Yes.”
He stuck his shaking hands in his pockets and left her office bristling with adrenaline. His throat itched as it healed, but the hurt was a quiet murmur under the chorus of other hurts. Louder was his anger. Tabitha could have asked. He thought she would have asked.
Two years and this is how it ends.
There would surely be a fight brewing by the riverside where he could burn off his anger before it turned to rage.
And if there wasn’t, Kent would start one.
* * *
Anger took Kent to the first bridge across the Ouse, where he dropped down to the banks and trudged through the mud. Darkness closed like curtains the farther he got from the centre of the city, too far from slumbering residential streets to benefit from their gas lights. Hoping for challengers to Tabitha’s night deliveries, Kent headed for the barge landing point, careful to keep ears and nose primed for anyone following. He couldn’t be caught again. He still shook to think of Tabitha’s men in Annie’s house and him like a lamb in the field.
Maybe he should go south like Annie said. But not London. To France. Italy. However far his feet could take him. Start again.
A howl pulled Kent from his thoughts, and he froze. Listened. A second howl followed, a call. Kent’s scalp prickled and he glanced at the moon. Close to full. Someone yelled, too far for his ears to distinguish words. Close enough to the city to be Tabitha’s problem. Close enough for Kent to justify getting his claws out.
He ran along the banks toward the sound, a loping stride that pushed his healing body, dropping to a walk when he could hear the argument more clearly. Men arguing over a job gone wrong. Delayed. Raising their voices to carry a message down the river to waiting wolves—not a pack, though. Strays. Like Kent could’ve been if Tabitha hadn’t given him work. If Annie hadn’t given him a home.
Crouching low, Kent edged forward toward the dim lantern light, keeping downwind. Men moved around an old barge set on the banks, a barge Kent had seen and dismissed a dozen times on his patrols. Now it stank of sweat, tobacco, piss. Wolves and men living in close quarters. Bottles clinked together as they transported crates from the shore to the barge. Kent grinned. Alcohol running was preferable to warding traders, but cut into Tabitha’s profits nonetheless. He’d found his fight.
He watched the three men: two wolves, one human. Kent’s grin grew fangs. Three was just enough trouble.
Creeping around to where the man carried his crate to the barge, Kent stepped in front. Spoke low.
“City not yours.”
The man dropped his crate, bottles clattering together in expensive symphony.
“Fucking hell! Where’d you come from, mutt?”
Kent let his fangs show. “City not yours.”
Stopping their work, the man’s companions exchanged a look with each other and reached as one to their waists, hands resting by their belts in warning. Kent’s nose twitched. Guns. One of them had a Webley, the other a Luger. When had he seen a Luger recently?
Not the time for memory games.
“This the one your boy said about, Carter?” Webley asked.
“Heard youse was trotting around with an alpha,” Luger added, scoffing at Kent. “Heard you let him turn you. Bet you think you’re something now.”
Kent went cold. He flexed his claws. The importance of the guns faded. How did these clowns know about Hadrian? About him? He wanted a clean fight. Not whatever this was. He glanced at Carter, grown confident with guns backing him, and got a sneer in return.
“Saying this city isn’t mine. It isn’t yours, little mutt.” Carter jerked his chin. “Everyone knows you’re in the pocket of that witch. That her hands are around your throat and keeping you in line.”
Webley bared his yellow teeth. “What’s your alpha say about that?”
“Not wolf. No alpha,” Kent said. Had to say. He’d never had pack privilege to protect him and wouldn’t shelter under it now. His hands flexed. “How—”
The sound of Luger’s gun cocking made Kent’s few words dry up like a river in summer. He shifted his weight to balance on his toes, ready to run. Guns weren’t a language he spoke nor a language he wanted to learn the hard way. The pleased smell rising from Carter and his companions made Kent’s stomach twist as he raised his heels, careful not to signal his intentions.
Impatient with the impasse, Webley’s hand twitched toward his gun.
Kent turned and ran.
Carter had guns and numbers, but Kent knew how to use the terrain and the dark. Two shots coughed clouds of dirt around his feet, but he was too fast for their bullets. Breath coming harsh in the otherwise silent night, blood pounding in his ears, Kent scrambled for shelter in the alleys he’d last seen as a scrawny pup. Hadn’t thought he’d need to hide in them again, contorting his slightly larger frame into a crawl space near the Rowntree factory, where burned chocolate disguised his scent from those who might follow.
Still running away after all these years.
Trying to find a more comfortable position in the space—there wasn’t one, and never had been—Kent discovered new cuts and bruises. The stench of his own blood made him wrinkle his nose. He flexed as best he could, searching for the source, until a particular shift made his shoulder blade sing in pain. Webley or Luger had been a better shot than he thought and managed to graze him. Annie would be cross when she saw him next.
Shifting made his stump press against the wall, and he winced. He’d definitely grown since the last time he’d hid here. In body if not in mind. Kent rubbed his eyes and swallowed a yawn. Felt like he hadn’t slept in days.
I won’t sleep here. I refuse.
One thing to run well-trodden paths in time of panic, another to curl nose-to-tail like they were home.
Eventually, dawn began to creep through the crawl space, prompting Kent into action. The day had turned over and brought him closer to losing his collar and gaining a future. Providing he survived the latest fuckup.
What do free people even do?
One way to find out.
With care, Kent extricated himself from the crawl space, reopening shallow cuts from the jagged exposed brick. In daylight, he could see gouges made in the ground and walls, from a hand slightly smaller than the one he fitted over the marks. Not near the entrance, he hadn’t been trying to leave, but at the far side. Like he’d been trying to get deeper into the earth. A wolf in his tomb.
Kent washed his claws in a shallow puddle before sneaking off the factory grounds. He wasn’t that child anymore.
He took an indirect route to the boarding house, senses stretched to their limits. Carter and his guns were unchecked in the city, and Tabitha needed to be notified, but Kent baulked to tell her of another of his failures. Not when he was so close to everything he wanted.
With his senses on high alert, Kent smelled Hadrian’s approach before Hadrian burst onto his path as the sky began to spit with rain. Early-morning workers tucked their heads down, hurrying onward. Kent stopped. Rain turned his hair to snakes.
How long had it been since he’d seen Hadrian? A day. Less. Hadrian had bathed. Shaved. His clothes were pressed, the white of his shirt crisp and bright. Shined shoes. A suit that fit him well. Money and station undoubtedly flexing their influence. He carried a cane.
Yet for all Hadrian could be another man about the city, there was wildness in his eyes Kent recognised from the inside. It sang in him like a struck note.
“May I walk with you?” Hadrian asked, when he drew close enough. Rain dripped from his nose.
Kent
inclined his head. What else would he do? Hadrian tucked his hands in his pockets, politely waiting for Kent to stutter into motion before falling into stride with him. His cane kept time with their steps. Kent felt dizzy. Like he’d taken too many blows to the head. Was Hadrian really beside him? Or did Kent dream, still tucked into his den?
Hadrian’s cane tap-tapped. A metronome. “I met your Tabitha. She’s quite the woman. She’s arranging an escort south for me. Politics, you understand.” He huffed a laugh. “Of course you understand.”
“Yes?” Kent said, when it became clear something was expected. “And?”
“Yes, I will be leaving after the moon. And I couldn’t bear to go without seeing you again. Even in this atrocious weather.”
Kent’s cheeks warmed with the intimate tone of Hadrian’s confession. He glanced around the street for witnesses, but there were none. A complicated mix of relief and regret curdled in his stomach.
“See me now.”
“I would see more of you.”
“What—”
“If this is to be the last time we meet, I would see as much as you would show,” Hadrian said, his low voice on the very edge of Kent’s hearing.
Humans wouldn’t have heard him.
Ears twitching, Kent glanced at Hadrian and saw the pleased crescent curve of his fangs. Like he’d tested Kent and wanted him to pass. Heat rose to Kent’s face, and he ducked his head, grateful for the rain cooling his cheeks. He scowled behind the curtain of his hair. He wasn’t a fucking pup at lessons, happy to please his alpha teacher.
“Kent, I didn’t mean to—”
“Where are you staying?” Kent didn’t need teaching.
Hadrian’s cane missed a beat. “Nearby,” he said. “Let me take you there.”
* * *
Inside the warmth of Hadrian’s room, Kent sank to his knees without waiting to strip their wet clothes. His mouth watered with Hadrian’s proximity, surrounded by his clean sea-scent, made clearer with the rain washing away any artificial smell that might have lessened him. Kent didn’t want Hadrian lessened. If he would have an alpha, Kent wanted every part of him.