Page 90 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 37

It took us several days to get the refugees to the capital. Axe arrived in the city the morning after he left, collapsing into the commander’s yard before passing on the message. Supplies were ferried out to us by a few riders on very swift horses, which was good because we had quickly run out of food. A much slower escort came the next day and then we all made the torturous route back to the city together. Weyland and I sat with the children the entire time, either walking by the cart or carrying them with us on our horses when we rode. But when we finally got to Snowmere, we did so circumspectly.

“Straight to the barracks,” Dane ordered. “No one goes in or comes out without the commander’s express permission. It’s the safest place for the people right now.”

The soldiers nodded and then went to take all the horses to the stables for a rest and some food. The commander arrived as soon as word was sent and with him came a sea of women.

“Oh, you poor love!” Lannie, one of the women that had ridden with us from Bayard to the capital, came rushing over, the children tensing when she took their faces in her hands. “Little motherless mites.” I winced at that, shooting Weyland a warning look. “Let's get you home and in a hot bath.” Del stiffened. “Then some fresh clothes, and a big hot meal for you two.”

At the mention of food, the two children brightened.

“Lannie’s a good woman, Del,” Weyland said to them. “She’ll take care of you and make sure you have everything you need.”

“But will you come and visit?” Jan asked, blinking up at us with her big blue eyes.

“We will,” I promised. “But it won’t be as often as we’d like.”

“Darcy and Weyland have royal stuff to do,” Del said in a gruff voice, trying to be the man of the family now. “They’ll come see us when they can, but… I’ll look after you, Jan. You’ll always have me.”

“Why doI feel like a total arse right now?” I asked Weyland as we walked back to the palace. “I don’t want children anywhere near what’s happening in the palace, but…”

We both looked over our shoulder to see Lannie chivvying the children along, but Del looked over his shoulder and raised a hand in farewell, leading to us doing the same.

“Father’s in a meeting with some of the more prominent lords,” Dane said when he joined us, Gael and Axe walking up to us as well. “We’ll corner him there and try to get to the bottom of this situation.”

“Don’t tell him about the refugees,” Axe said, watching as the rest of the people of Wildeford were guided toward accommodation and food. “We don’t want to give him any more targets.”

“So we tell him… what? That everyone was killed?”

Of course,in the end, it didn’t matter what story we’d come up with, because when we were granted entry to the king’s map room, we didn’t find a particularly sympathetic audience. We were confronted by the sight of a massive table, covered with a huge map of the realm, but rather than pins to mark massacres, it had small clusters of figures placed in each province.

“And what do we have here?” King Ulfric said as we entered the room. “My erstwhile sons and their ‘mate.’ Darcy was due to present herself to the Wolf Maidens three days ago.”

“Father, we were called away on an urgent matter,” Dane said, stepping forward. “We received reports that an attack from some unknown force took place at Wildeford, near the mountains.”

“Wildeford?” one of the men seated at the table said. “Where in the bloody hell is Wildeford?”

“One of those terrible little mountain hamlets from memory,” another man said, peering at the map. “Tiny, muddy and the people are always awfully inbred. I’ll never know why they don’t come into civilisation.”

“Better they don’t,” another man snorted. “Filling Snowmere with the likes of them…”

“And why would a mishap in some pisspot town warrant all of my heirs rushing to its aid? Without my permission, I might add,” King Ulfric said, inspecting each one of us. “If you’ve decided to engage more in civic life, perhaps you should rush back over to Grania and fix this aberration of a deal. Though maybe I should go to renegotiate the terms. If I’m to be fucked by someone, I like to at least look the bastard in the face.” The king’s gaze landed on me, and I fought the urge to take a step back. “I can take this feral little slip with me. One duke’s daughter, gently used.”

He and the other men in the room all chortled at that.

I’d known we would get nowhere with the king, as soon as we’d started climbing the castle stairs. The knowledge had slowed my steps, felt like a weight around my feet, dragging me down, but that was nothing compared to the reality of his response. It was the humiliation that bit the deepest, that we had thought to bring something so patently wrong to the king’s attention and he just dismissed it like it was nothing. For a moment, all I could do was focus on sucking one breath in after another.

In all of our minds, there existed a fantasy of the kind and benevolent king. The sort of leader who, when something awful happened, something that could potentially threaten the whole country, they would step in. They’d use all that power and wealth for the betterment of the people, because if we were all his subjects, surely he could be trusted to look after us? But as I stared at the assembly here, I could see that not one of them gave a single shit about any of it.

If they’d seen what I’d seen? The blood, the torn bodies, that mark painted on the side of the house. Reavers… Surely, their own self-preservation would kick in at some point, if not a basic amount of human empathy. But these men really were the wolves they were supposed to be fused with, sitting around the fire, jaws open, their teeth glinting in the flickering light.

“Father, we saw evidence of Reavers.”

Axe said precisely the wrong thing. At the sound of the title, the men’s faces transformed, becoming pictures of sadistic delight, right before they erupted into gales of laughter.

“Ooh, the Reavers are coming,” one of the lords said, his eyes too bright, his face too flushed. He had several empty glasses in front of him that stank of whiskey. “Good gods, Your Majesty, I can see why you’ve turned us away from the idea of fated mates, if this is what happens as a result?” The man shot Dane and the others a scathing look. “The girl must have addled their brains, to have them signing this deal and chasing after myths in the foothills.”

The others went to laugh along with the lord, but at the king’s steady regard, they all fell silent well before the speaker.

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