Page 111 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 44

“Darcy!”

A little voice had my head jerking up and I saw a young boy come barrelling towards me. Strong young arms wrapped around my legs, and my hands went to Del’s shoulders.

“Del! What’re you doing here? And where’s Jan?”

“Miss Lannie said Jan had to go to bed. She’s too little for ‘gallivanting around,’ but I’m not.” He peered up at me then. “You said you’d come and visit.”

His voice wasn’t exactly accusing, but there was a hurt edge to it. I dropped down to his level and, when I did, I was reminded of how I’d found him. But this was not the wild-eyed boy sinking fangs into my shoulder. He had obviously been presented well for tonight. His hair was washed and brushed neatly, tied back into a small queue, and I noted the braids running along his scalp.

“Someone’s been putting in warrior braids for you,” Weyland said. “They suit you.”

Del straightened up at that, meeting Weyland’s look head-on.

“Miss Lannie said I’d earned them, looking after Jan.”

“And so you have,” I replied. “More than anyone I know. So how are things with Miss Lannie? She seems like a very nice lady.”

Del nodded slightly. “She is. She’s very gentle with Jan. When we, I mean, she cries at night, Lannie always hears her and comes and gives us a cuddle.” He frowned a little, then glanced warily at Weyland. “It’s good for Jan. Helps her to try and forget what happened to Mother and Father.”

“A cuddle is a good thing for anyone at any age, Del,” Weyland told the boy. He moved in closer to me and snaked his arm around my shoulders. “I’m pretty partial to them myself.”

“So, Darcy gives you cuddles when you’re feeling scared?”

There was a desperation, a hunger, in Del’s voice, like he really needed to hear our answer to normalise what he was going through. I moved then, Weyland’s hand slipping off me as I wrapped my arms around the boy and squeezed him tight.

“People need human contact,” I said, almost whispering it into his ear. “Wolves need the touch of their pack. Wanting to be hugged, for someone to show how much they care about you? There’s no shame in that. Everybody needs it, from the fiercest of warriors to the smallest of children.”

It was then I felt him slump against me, just going limp and surrendering to my embrace. I’m not sure how long I held him for. The sounds in the room seemed to drop away then and there was only the frantic little beat of his heart.

“I needed the cuddles too,” he said in a breathless little voice. “When it gets dark, I see them, the monsters. They’re half wolf, half man and they have such long teeth and claws. They slice through everything and then…” I clasped him tighter. “And then I become just like them.”

“No, Del,” I said firmly, holding him at arm’s length. “You might be two-souled.” I saw something shift behind his eyes then, just a flash that was there and gone again. “But that doesn’t make you like the Reavers. No one is like the Reavers. No one else is as senseless and stupid in the way that they are.”

He nodded sharply at that, his jaw clenching, his eyes shining.

“But you’re going to stop them, right? I hear Patrick, Lannie’s husband, talk and he’s mad. Mad at the king for not sending the soldiers. Mad at the Reavers for destroying all those towns.” Del’s hands became fists. “They’re taking more and more of them. People are coming flooding in—”

“And that’s what I need to show Darcy now,” Pepin said in an even voice. “I know you’re angry, Del, and you have a right to be, but right now we all need to work hard to try and change this, right?”

The boy nodded, but there was a terrible fire burning in his eyes.

“Now, there’s some children who’ve just come in from some of the towns that were destroyed. They’re tired and scared and don’t know what the hell is going on. Do you think you could maybe talk to them about what this place is like? About how it works?”

“I could do that,” Del replied.

“Good lad.” She patted Del and then waved someone over, who started to lead the boy deeper into what appeared to be quite the complex. Like before though, he looked over his shoulder, watching us, as he went.

“I thought this was just a house,” I said, glancing around me, seeing rooms upon rooms.

“Snowmere is built on the foothills of for a reason. Initially, for less salubrious reasons,” Pepin said with a sheepish smile. “There’s a network of tunnels left over from when it was used as a smuggler's den, bringing in stolen goods and such. But now those same secret pathways are used for a whole new reason.”

She nodded her head, leading us into a massive room that looked somewhat like the map room in the castle. No king and his smug bastard lords here though. Instead, the room was teeming with people, some I recognised from the barracks in Bayard, some I didn’t. Pins were being pressed into a map as some sorted through pieces of paper or others took down notes as they spoke to people with bloodied faces and empty eyes I now knew well. But it was the map that drew my eye more than anything.

There’d been too many pins as it was when we saw the one inside the barracks here in Snowmere, but now the markers seemed to nibble at the edges of Strelae like rats with a wheel of cheese. I studied the lands they were pressed into. Not just the tiny foothill towns now. The pins cut deeper into what appeared to be the lands of the nobles.

“Why do the lords not do something about this?” I asked Pepin. “Their own farmlands are being destroyed.”

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