Page 143 of Settle Down, Princess

“Once we take this garrison, once we free our brothers,” I told them, “ravens can be sent to each and every garrison in the country, with messages delivered to all of the shifter commanders in the army. They will all know that the treaty is broken and can do with that information what they wish.”

I nodded slowly.

“Once we do this, we will be free.” It felt like I met each and every one of their eyes now. “To return to the packlands, to your mates, your families…” Small rumbles escaped the chests of many a shifter. “To the capital, if you wish, to exterminate the greatest threat to our kind. The king brought his men to the packlands during the mating games. The king threatened our women and children with burning.” Fangs were bared and eyes shone in the darkness. “The king made clear how little regard he has for us and our sacrifice.” I rose up, my silhouette now apparent to any human standing on the parapets, but I thumped my chest with my fist rather than sink back down. “Pack doesn’t fight pack, but that king?” I shook my head sharply. “But that king is not pack.”

“The king is not pack…”

That was muttered around the crowd, the sound growing louder and louder, until I was forced to throw my head back and send up the signal howl. The humans gathered at either gate would be dousing their arrows in pine pitch, then set them alight with regulation flint stones and send them flying through the air. Not to burn the gates down, but to redirect the humans inside the garrison from where we intended to attack. I heard the sound of shouts and orders being barked out as we moved. We did not want the humans inside engaging with our humans. The fight was ours to make, ours to take and so I roared.

“But those inside are! We free them now and all of shifterkind.”

I felt the moment when every single one of us took the half wolf, half man form, the combined madness of both driving us forward. We crossed the space between the trees and the wall in a breath, another having us leaping up onto the wall, claws punching into the raw stone. It was hard. I felt the reverberations all the way down to my bones, but I punched claw after claw into the stone, using it as leverage to launch myself higher.

We came like a wave, rearing up above the parapets, sending the few humans standing there stumbling back in shock. One threatened to fall off entirely, no doubt to smash his head on the flagstones, but my hand snapped out and grabbed his arm. “No,” I snapped, setting him back to rights. “No!” I roared at an archer who raised his bow our way. “NO.”

This was when the red haze rose inside my head, crowding out all thought, all feeling. The temptation to surrender to it, to become a merciless killing machine until such point all of my enemies lay dead around me or I did, but that was not how this was going to go. “Pack…” I growled to myself. “Pack… Clinging to that thought like it was a lifeline in the thrashing sea, it helped anchor me here, blinking until I caught the moment each man lowered their weapons. “Pack!” I barked, the wolf riding me now, stripping me of the power of conscious thought. “For pack!”

That was enough to convey my meaning. Shifters threw themselves off the parapets, landing down into the courtyard below, ducking and dodging the blows that came before disarming their opponents with well practised moves. Ones the army had taught us, wanting to hone us into the perfect weapon, never expecting that blade to be turned against themselves.

“Pack…” I muttered to myself, over and over again, until I heard the chorus of howls.

There. On the ground floor of the garrison proper, that’s where the howls came from. I didn’t need to shout out an order to my fellows, because they all heard the same thing. Cries for help, promises of destruction, pain and anger and disgust in their howls, they spurred us forward. I dodged out of the way of one human, shoving him to the side when he went to attack, then swept the feet out of the other before storming forward. Forward, always forward, that burned in muscles aching from the abuse I’d put them through to get right here, marching towards the garrison door.

“This is not insubordination,” a puffed up man shouted, throwing himself between me and the door. I took in the insignias on his uniform, knowing what each badge meant. “This is open rebellion against your own people! Why would you strike back against the very people who strive to protect the country you live within?”

“Pack doesn’t fight pack,” I snarled, feeling my fellows cluster at my back. “Pack doesn’t corral members of the pack in a cage like an animal.”

“We were given orders.” The man held up a piece of paper sporting the royal seal, his hand shaking only a little. “By the king—”

“Not my king.”

Knocking the piece of paper from his hand would’ve earned me a whipping, then a stay in the stockade. I knew that because I wore scars all over my back, faded now by time.

“We must stay—”

“You must stay.” I poked my finger into his chest, his eyes widening as he watched it turn from claw to fingertip. “Or you could come with us.”

“What?” The man puffed up immediately. “And allow the Lanzenian devils across the border? The country will be in ruins before—”

“You are a wolf.” I’d always fought the red haze inside my head before, because it felt like it was going to swallow me whole. It took away from sense, my control, my vision even, narrowing my focus down to whatever I’d decided was the enemy, but right now it did that to make something clear. I cocked my head, staring at the man and for once not seeing his uniform or his weapon or his badges of insignia, but this. “You are a wolf.”

We knew that the humans shared ancestry with us, but each and every one of them seemed so blind to the world around them. They only sensed the seasons to complain about the heat or cold. They only saw potential farmland, not the forests or the plains and they didn’t feel the other half of their heart.

“You are a wolf with his mate and his children at his back.” I looked left and right. “With your packmates at your side. You fight for what you think is right.”

“Yes—” the man said, hope in his eyes.

“You fight to protect your land.”

“Yes.” He said that simply, waiting for me to continue.

“You fight to enact the orders given to you from your alpha.”

“Yes.” He shook his head hopelessly. “The orders were most explicit. If we allowed our…” His pause was telling. “The wolf shifters to leave, we would be court-martialled and executed for our failure.”

“Our comrades.” I filled his gap for him. “Your pack, because you are wolves at heart.” I looked around me, seeing each human soldier standing there, listening to everything I had to say. “You fight like the devil to protect that which you see as yours.” Little mumbles there made me wonder if they saw my meaning. “You follow a strict hierarchy and don’t dare disrespect those higher up than you and you…” I nodded slowly. “You follow their directives without question, but… what does the wolf say?”

This was risky. I could hear the shouts coming from within the garrison barracks right now, but only dimly as I paced in a circle, confronting each and every one of them.

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