Page 33 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 15

I caught sight of my father’s gleeful expression as I was carried inside the keep, but I bit back my response even as the door to the princes’ chamber was shoved open and I was tossed down on a bed on the far side of the room. As soon as I was freed, I crawled backwards at a rapid rate as Weyland tore his jerkin up off over his head and threw it to the ground. At some point my back hit the wall, and that’s when I reached for the dagger I kept stashed in my boot.

“Brother…” Dane said, walking in and pausing when he saw me. He blinked when he saw the knife, then nodded slowly, before turning back to his fellow warg. “Brother, we—”

“No, it’s done!” Weyland snapped, his eyes so blue right now. “We’re done. I’m done playing these endless games. I’ll take everything Father has to dish out if I can just have her.” His breath came in noisy gulps. “You didn’t see that whelp, what he was doing. He was touching—”

“We know what he was touching, or we can imagine it,” Dane said, holding out his hands, as if that was enough to stop Weyland’s words from coming. He glanced at his brothers, at Axe’s face, a mask of fury. “You’ve defended Darcy’s honour—”

I let out an incredulous little snort at that and then did something completely ill advised, particularly with a half-mad warg in the room.

“What has any of this to do with me?” I asked in a voice far sharper than I’d ever dared, but I guess even humans reach their limits too. “I didn’t ask for you to come here. I didn’t ask for you to interrupt my hunt. I didn’t ask for you to lick the blood from my fingers like a bloody animal,” I spat at Dane, then my focus shifted to Axe. “Nor to be claimed like a war prize for the ignominious price of tonnes of raw iron.” Finally, I came to stare at Weyland. “I didn’t ask you to walk in on something… so private, nor to go and challenge a man who I…”

I couldn’t complete the sentence, because whatever I felt for Kris, it was all a big, tumbled mess. He was as much to blame for the turmoil I felt right now, with his harebrained schemes, and yet… I saw him flying through the air over and over in my mind and knew that what he would face now was all my fault.

When a knight was stripped his rank, it was a shameful affair, almost akin to a public hanging. The knight’s sword was broken or bent, his armour taken from him and crushed. His shield and its heraldic emblems smashed, and his spurs cut off his heels. He left the keep in a worse state than he entered it, never able to attain such a title again.

“None of this has anything to do with my honour,” I said, and I realised that applied to both men. Kris’ professions of love were more about protecting me from the ‘heathen beasts’ than anything to do with me as a person. He wanted me physically, that was clear, but Darcy the woman? I recalled the way he’d described our life together, his blatherings about humours, about me becoming a mother. I balled myself up tighter then, wedging my back into the corner. “None of this has anything to do with me. I’m just a good, a chattel, to be passed around because for some reason I’m deemed to have value, so stop pretending it’s anything else but that.”

“I told you this would happen,” Gael said, his voice knife sharp. “I said that we were taking the wrong tack. Human women are not ruled by instinct, not like we are. This must be completely and utterly alien for her. You say she’s our mate, that you’ll do whatever it takes to meet her needs, but what do you know of a human woman’s needs?”

“We’ll need to learn more about that once we get on the road,” Dane replied in a determined tone. “I’ll return to the bargaining table, but the rest of you will stay here. Something’s afoot in this keep, no matter what His Grace might think. A human woman riding out with wargen? That’s the kind of thing to get other idealistic young men riled up, especially when one of their own is dishonoured for doing what they assume is right. We may need to leave tonight.” A series of groans were uttered at that. “Once we’re over the border, we can regroup, but, like Weyland, I am done spending time in Grania. Sleep if you can. You’ll need it.”

And then he swept out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him. I jerked my dagger up as all the focus of the three remaining wargen came to rest on me. Gael shook his head in response and walked over to one of the beds, lying down flat with a sigh. Axe sat down on the edge of the nearest one, watching me intently. But Weyland? He edged closer, looking thoroughly shaken by everything that had gone on, and that somehow reassured me. But any relief I was starting to feel evaporated when he sat down on the bed I occupied. I tightened my grip on the knife, kept the point trained on him and bared my teeth in a way I hoped made clear my thoughts on the situation.

“You don’t feel safe and that’s killing me,” he ground out, “because I’m the one that makes you feel that way. All I can say, lass, is that you will feel better when we get you away from here.”

And the sad thing was, I couldn’t even argue with him. Whatever life I had here, it was entirely ruined. There would be no more fighting on the training grounds, then popping into the kitchen and stealing a scone, and no more sitting on the hay bales in the stable, just listening to the sounds of the horses. The best I could hope for was to take some valuables with me and try and use them as I went my own way inside Strelae.

The men let out a breath when I laid my dagger down on the bed, but none of them dared come any closer. I settled down on a bed that smelled of man and wolf, bunching the pillow under my head, and then closed my eyes, wanting to escape into sleep.

I got a few hours.

“It’s done.”

At the sound of Dane’s voice, I roused as did the others. I looked out the window and saw that night had fallen. The lamps on the wall illuminated the long lines on the warg’s face.

“Father’s going to kill us,” he continued, “but we’ll face that challenge when it comes.” He looked at me now briefly. “If there’s anything you want to take, you need to pack it now and you’ll need to take one of us with you while you do it. His Grace has finally acknowledged the problem and agrees the men are restless. He didn’t dare strip Sir Kristoff of his position, not yet. He’ll carry that out once you’re gone and the king’s men have arrived.”

Which would not cast my father in an especially good light.

“He’s requested reinforcements and, now that the agreement is in place, the king has agreed to send them. That will take some time…”

“Time we don’t have,” Gael said grimly. “We travel tonight, as late as possible.” He glanced out the window. “There’s only a sickle moon up, so there’s low light. That’ll make it harder to follow us if they persist.”

A knock at the door had everyone turning around, just staring at it. Axe peeled himself off the bed and stalked over, jerking the door open to reveal Linnea. I blinked at the incongruous sight of her, then frowned as she and some of the servers brought food in.

“His Grace thinks it best that you eat in the rooms tonight,” she explained, setting down bottles of wine and a ewer of water. “The keep is… uneasy. There are some who are having difficulties accepting the arrangement outlined in the agreement, but His Grace has sent a bird to the monastery, to have one of the fathers come and officiate the marriage in the morning.”

We wouldn’t be here by then, apparently, but we all just nodded in agreement.

“I’ll water some wine for her ladyship,” Linnea said, using the saccharin mother figure act she put on for strangers. “She’s a nervous little thing at the best of times, but nursing a sore head and a sour gut…”

“Thank you, Lady Linnea,” Dane said crisply, ushering her out of the room. “We’ll look after things from here.”

“Well, feel free to ring the bell if you need me,” she nodded at the velvet covered rope that was connected to a pulley system on the wall. It could be used to summon servants, although I always liked to go and find someone, not ring for them like they were a trained monkey.

“Why does my jaw clench the moment that woman enters the room?” Gael said with a growl, grabbing one of the pewter goblets and filling it with wine. “Water or wine, milady?”

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