by Brea Viragh
Van’s eyes seemed to take on a glow, with enough of a deadly edge to have Calen rethinking his sharing. “Haven’t you ever wondered what is stopping you? What kind of mental hang-up has kept you blocked off?”
Again, with the brusque, clipped tone. Almost as though Van really couldn’t be bothered with the answer, although he was the one who started the conversation. And the look—
“Are you really interested, or are you just trying to fill the silence?” Calen posed.
They listened to the snap and crackle of flames—the air filled with the scent of roasted game from the few rabbits Van had snared earlier, breaking their necks with a quick chomp of his fangs.
“I’m curious about you,” Van admitted at last. And a little more of the mask dropped. “I have never seen or heard of a case like yours. And I wonder why Alex keeps you with the pack.”
The bitterness rose to strangle Calen. He used to ask himself the question every night once he failed to shift with his peers. Until the answer became unbearably clear. “He keeps me for one purpose only: I make lemon tarts.” And the acid filling his throat could rival any lemon.
“I’ve heard of those. Never got to try one. The ceremony was over before it began and the dessert cart trampled, so I was told,” Van quipped, and a flash of amusement lifted his eyes.
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”
“I wasn’t really keeping an eye on it and couldn’t tell you for certain what happened.”
Where had Van been during the kidnapping? Calen wanted to ask and found the question floating away half-formed in his head.
“You could at least have a little compassion for what she went through, you know.” Calen struggled to say instead. “Do you have any idea how much it costs her every day she is trapped on that lake?”
“I do not pretend to compare my suffering to hers, or to yours,” Van said simply.
“Just observe us and our pack, right?”
Probably looking for any potential weaknesses he could exploit. But that didn’t feel right. Not anymore. It had at first, when Van landed a blow to his face that sent him sprawling backward. Calen touched a finger to his eye. Now that they’d spent the last day traveling together, the declaration was hollow.
Van inclined his head and poked at the fire a second time. “Look. I’m a warrior,” he said. “Running my packs’ lands fell to me through a...different...set of circumstances than I anticipated. It left me little room to operate, and I was forced to adapt along the way. The marriage to your princess came out of nowhere, although I should have expected it. I would do anything to protect my people.”
“What about our people?” Calen asked.
“They’re the same thing.”
The flatness with which he aired the truth told Calen enough about how Van felt about his current position within the hierarchy, about the marriage they’d both been told would take place.
But it was too personal for the two of them given their interactions until now, which had been none besides a punch to the eye.
Van took one of the rabbits from the rough skewer, pulling the meat free and handing it off to Calen. Though it burned his fingers and lips, he took a large bite, and chewed with a groan of delight. Heavens, that was good.
Finally, he swallowed and cleared his throat, saying, “What sort of plan do you have going forward, then? To break the spell and free Odessa? How are we going to defeat the mage when we don’t know anything about him?”
What he’d meant to ask was, Why are you so invested in this when you want nothing to do with Odessa as a bride? As a woman?
But he paused for a moment, allowing Van to ruminate on the question and see what kind of answers that cool, calculating mind conceived.
Van took a large bite of his own rabbit and chewed thoughtfully. “I care about my people, the same way you do for yours. They rely on me to lead them, they rely on my father to lead them, and they are invested in this alliance. For them to see it fall apart would have devastating consequences that I am not willing to break.” Calen shivered, and Van went on. “These lands used to be part of the Evertooth pack before certain circumstances took them from us. I won’t go into the details, but the wolves under my father and I have been driven into cowering, thinking themselves unworthy of their powers. Now, with the alliance on the horizon, they have reason to hope again.” A long pause had Van nearly choking on his following words. “Things are different since Odessa came into their lives. And I will do everything in my power to make sure they never fear their place again. Even if it means losing myself in the struggle.”
“Losing yourself because you think you might die?” Because the wolf was anything but defenseless, given his size and stature.
“Losing myself by marrying someone I do not love,” Van replied at last.
Calen glanced down at his hands, wishing he could will the change on him so that none of this would happen. If he had the ability to shift, then he might have been able to stop whatever had happened the day of the rehearsal dinner and performance. He might have been able to attack the attacker before lives were lost and Odessa was trapped in swan form.
He stared at those hands and saw no trace of claws. Only olive-toned human skin.
“What else can you possibly do?” he asked, tracing the path of that stick with his eyes.
Van didn’t even look up. “Everything.”
They arrived back at the manor house the following morning as the sun crested the tree line, with no one the wiser, save for Nova and Ghast, who met them at the front door.
“Look at what we have here,” Nova stated with a sneer, blocking their way with a meaty arm against the doorjamb. “Are you trying to worm your way up the ladder, Siegfried? I didn’t realize you chose to associate with the riffraff.” This statement to Van.
Van silenced the taunts with a well-placed palm on Nova’s face, shoving the younger wolf back a few steps and clearing a path through the front door for himself and Calen. “We have business,” he said curtly.
If Nova and Ghast noticed the way the two men walked side by side, they said nothing. And when Calen turned to stare at them, both of them were looking intensely down the lawn toward the forest path where they’d just come.
“You.”
Calen snapped his attention forward at the bark of Van’s voice.
“Excuse me?”
“Upstairs. A word.”
Well, who could argue with that?
He trailed Van up to the borrowed rooms where the man had been sleeping since arriving for the nuptials and tried not to feel as though he didn’t deserve the duty that he’d taken upon himself. The weight on his shoulders grew with each step up the marble staircase and left him feeling carved out inside.
“They will wonder what we are doing together,” Van muttered under his breath, careful not to be overheard. “I can shield a room from prying ears but try to speak to me as little as possible until then.”
Calen’s brows drew together in a line. “It will be a pleasure.”
“Keep the interactions to a minimum until I can find a way to spin the situation so it doesn’t look obvious.”
Van waved his hand and Calen didn’t need another word to excuse himself, returning to the kitchen with no one the wiser.
It was strange to be back. To push his way through the door to his room and realize how small it really was. The size hadn’t bothered him before. Now the walls caved in on him. The ceiling pushed closer, and when he sat down on the bed, stretched out his legs to their full length, his ankles dangled over the edge.
The observation had frustration rising and he hurriedly tamped it down.
For Odessa, he would fight.
Over the next three days, the Evertooth heir did indeed find ways for the two of them to interact without being obvious. Calen found himself joining Van in his stateroom more often than not while the alphas worked downstairs on a way to find Odessa, sending patrols out to hunt the grounds, unseen. And although, at first, Bo
zart had complained bitterly about his help being taken from him, a snap from Van had the large wolf lowering his eyes and backing down.
Despite being an occasional bastard, Calen found he didn’t mind Van’s company as much as he thought he would. He did most of the talking and conjuncture, which was fine; it left Van free to brood over the consequences of the big magic taken to change Odessa and Jean into different forms.
Birds. Calen had never gone hunting himself, aside from the days he’d spent in the forest when he’d had little choice.
After mentioning this to Van, the other man had dragged him outside and shoved a bow and arrow into Calen’s hands. If he didn’t know how to shift, then he had to be able to defend himself and send the arrow pointing in the right direction.
His excuse? The pack was only as strong as its weakest member. Of which Calen was hands-down the winner. Now all the wolves around the manor saw Van as this sort of hero to the downtrodden, the persona masking the real reason for the lessons.
To keep Calen alive should things come to blows.
Van said this with a snort of derision, of course. At least it was a start, although the bow felt awkward and delicate in Calen’s hands. He did not have claws. He did not have the teeth. The least he could do was try to defend himself with mortal weapons.
When the bow proved to be more than he could handle, Van switched him to a sword. Calen nearly cut off a toe before they called it a day.
He hadn’t seen Nova and Ghast around the manor since the morning they had returned—off hunting for the missing princess, Bozart had informed him before practically chaining Calen to the oven during his time away from Van.
And this, not long after a lengthy lecture regarding the things Calen could and could not do at the house, which included but was not limited to disappearing and shouting f-words at his boss. Bozart asked too many questions, Calen knew. He wanted to know everything about the new dynamic with the Evertooth alpha, what they said and what they did together.
Calen had dropped his head, feigning chagrin to the best of his abilities when he felt nothing on the inside, and said even less.
No, it wasn’t true that he felt nothing.
He felt... too much. Remorse and blame for his failure to help Odessa when she needed him, for leaving her at that lake to come here and pretend. Dread and fury at the prospect of never finding a solution, of time ticking down on them. He didn’t need Van to tell him they needed to hurry. Calen felt it in his bones. Grains in the hourglass falling steadily while they wasted their time pretending things were normal, while they researched spells in ancient texts from the library only Van could access.
A pall had fallen over the manor house. The wolves under Alex’s care were husks of themselves, mourning the loss of their mates in the murdered females, mourning for Odessa. Without her there, it seemed even the sun had taken to hiding.
One day when he had a moment to break, Calen found himself in the garden where the stage had been erected. The executive decision must have been made to leave it there. It hadn’t been broken down yet, the metal legs keeping it standing hitched to odd angles although the rest of the debris was long since cleared.
The stage remained a reminder of the night. A reminder to all what could happen even under the watchful eye of so many powerful Lycans.
Someone had gotten the jump on them, and for what?
Calen returned to the kitchens for most of the day and spent whatever extra time he could carve out pouring over any books Van threw his way regarding magic. Not many, he concluded. But each moment he spent doing something, anything, was a relief.
On the third night after returning home, his mind circling around to Odessa for the umpteenth time, he’d barely sat down for dinner under the looming nose of Bozart when Van stalked into the kitchen, giving no excuse before dragging Calen outside by the back of his shirt to practice his swordplay.
Bozart stared after them for a moment but did nothing to call out the alpha’s son again. He wouldn’t dare raise his voice against the higher-ranking wolf.
A mixed blessing, Calen thought as he struggled not to choke.
“You can let go of me,” he managed. “No one is going to come after us.”
Face pale and tight, Van barked, “He worries about you.”
Calen slumped. Wholly undignified as Van dragged him through the back door toward the exterior gardens being prepped for autumn. “Bozart is a good man,” he said at last. “At least, he’s one of the only people here who ever gave a real shit about me once my parents died. Aside from Alex taking me in in the first place.”
“You don’t want to involve him in this hunt?”
He’d given spare thought to the idea of trusting Bozart and then decided it was better not to. “I prefer everyone stay out of it. And the alphas are so focused on keeping the borders of the land protected...no, it’s best if we keep this between the two of us. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
Because of me.
A brush of ice slithered behind his navel before settling underneath his ribs. When they had finally reached the practice field Van claimed for them, the other man took hold of a sword and tossed it to Calen.
“You need to be brutal,” he stated. No mercy in those words. “You have to think about these people that care about you and do what you need to do for them.”
Calen studied the dented metal—tested its weight, still not used to carrying it, the heft unnatural. Was that how Van managed his affairs? By being brutal? “We won’t win this by being friendly. Will we?”
“Absolutely not.”
Although it seemed like a lonely position to hold, cold in a way he couldn’t shake. And as he squared off against Van, Calen wasn’t sure why the thought bothered him so much.
ODESSA SPENT THE NIGHT bound and gagged inside the stone ruins.
No one came to her aid. If they had been able to, they had been kept from her through some sort of sorcery. She didn’t dare cry out for them no matter how she wanted to. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, unwilling to look at the shadows around her, picturing hunters and predators lurking outside ready to devour her whole.
Waiting. Staring at her, picking the perfect time to pounce and clean the meat from her bones.
No, please don’t let this be the end. It can’t end like this.
She had no control over her body, absolutely none. So every time she soiled herself, she had no choice but to lay there, stewing in it with the stench of fear filling her nostrils.
Her mind conjured the worst possible images. Unable to let go of the severity of the situation, she imagined the wolves at her side as she continued her dance on the night of the engagement party. They’d moved their bodies behind her, plucked at her dress and made sure her hair looked perfect. They would have done anything for her within their power.
Including die.
And there she danced without a care for their safety, their happiness, focused wholly on her own selfish desire to run, as she had before.
In her mind’s eye, Odessa saw the plumes of blood splattering across the ground as they were slaughtered one by one. Her hands steaming and sticky with their blood. And then the women she knew, the women she loved, were red and skinless, heat rising from their muscles as their hides were nailed to the trees.
She threw herself out of such nightmares to see the sun rising through the leaves of the trees outside. Forcing herself to breathe, to draw air when she could not, she cracked open her eyes and noted every detail of the still-shadowed stone room.
Real. This was real, not the bloody images in her head, where her kin, her friends, were red and peeled.
Bile stung her throat.
Not real. A dream. A dream based on reality, but a dream, nonetheless.
She spent the rest of the day in the same position, muscles aching and wings struggling against invisible bonds, before a soft, breezeless wind picked her up off the floor and carried her down to the lake. The moment the magic set her down on the water, moon
rising, she shifted into her human form and let her head dip beneath the cool, silent depths.
Odessa stayed there scrubbing at her face. Maybe it was the quiet, the cavity inside of her—perhaps it was only that she could no longer fathom how to keep her hopes alive, but...she knew regret. Realer than anything she’d experienced until now. And she knew impossibility. Hopelessness.
It was the latter that coated her tongue and made her bones heavy, causing her to sink deeper.
She shuddered as though to fling it off. Kicked to break the surface and draw fresh air into her human lungs.
Wondering how long it would last and if she would ever feel daylight on this skin again.
Chapter 11
Calen frowned at Van’s back as they hiked the slope toward a low-lying mountain outcrop that lay hours outside of pack territory, rocks and incline designed to keep the unwary from traveling forward. They’d taken a vehicle to get there with some excuse or another from Van masking their true intentions.
Monster hunting wouldn’t go over well if they learned the truth.
It had been an eleventh-hour effort when they failed to drag up a hint of a direction from any source. Calen had been ready to go out of his mind with the waiting. With the desperation that every page turn with nothing to show for it brought.
A prison. It was a prison they sought, in neutral territory that no Lycan or otherwise could claim for their jurisdiction.
The mountain, bald faced with no trees or greens growing along those barren planes, lay nestled at the foot of a larger mountain range. It was avoided by all besides those insane enough to cross it. Those were few.
He would have done better with the climb on his hands and knees instead of scrambling to keep his balance on two legs. Unfortunately, they had no time to waste on foolishness. Or so Van had barked at him when Calen paused only long enough to question the sanity of their plan and grab a drink of water.
Higher they went until his vision blurred in the cool wind and even the birds stopped their ceaseless melodies. All around them the wind whipped mist and clouds past in a hollow moan that swallowed out the pounding of their footsteps.