Page 133 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 53

The morning after.

The morning when I met the princes, when I sneaked out to go and hunt the deer, I often wondered why did I decide that was the day to disobey Linnea and Father so completely? I’d thought about it later, but never really had an answer other than I felt like I should. I’d been filled with a strange kind of surety as I left the keep that day, and when I woke up now, I felt an echo of that.

My mouth felt like the bottom of a chicken coop and my head throbbed oh-so-painfully, but when I turned my head on the pillow to see an almost empty bed, somehow I knew. Gael was there, grumbling into his pillow when I'd moved, but where were the others? We’d planned to meet up at the White Hind, knowing if that failed, they were supposed to come here.

So where were they?

I got out of bed, with that same strange sense of purpose I’d felt that day that’d had me riding out to hunt the stag throbbing inside me again, but rather than saddle my horse and sling my bow over my shoulder, I picked up the two swords waiting for me on the bedside table. The weight of them was reassuring, grounding, but it also pushed me on. I bent over, placed a kiss on Gael’s brow, not sure whether it was a kiss of farewell or just because I could? I walked out of the room and down the stairs, checking a few rooms, but I knew what I’d find. Each one empty. I needed to find them, that beat hard and true in my chest, so I left the house, the grounds, and walked out onto streets that were completely empty. The city of Snowmere slept on after its revelry last night and I should’ve been doing the same. Entangled in my mates.

A vision of Axe looking down at me, love shining in his eyes, as the chaos of the pub raged around him.

Sleeping with their scent in my nose.

Weyland pulling me closer, into a secluded corner of the alehouse, to tell me how much his heart burned for me.

Feeling them tug me tighter and then when we all wakened, exclaiming at the bond marks Gael and I now wore.

Dane running his fingers through my hair, then pushing a glass of water at me for every beer drunk. He watched me drink every drop, so why was my mouth so dry now?

I walked on.

The priests often spoke of the dangers of drink. Act in haste, they said and regret at your leisure, but I didn’t regret anything that’d happened last night, nothing but this. As I kept on going, I saw the three princes in my mind, seeing where they must’ve ended up. They were drunk now, or drugged, each one muzzy-eyed and compliant as they were drawn up the stairs, into the palace, and back to the suite they shared. And I was the one that led them, every time.

My hands went to the hilts of my swords, gripping them tight as I saw it. Shadowy figures in a dark room, but there were too many of them. Three men, of course, but also three women. Three Darcys, if the vision was to be trusted and that’s what had me breaking into a run.

I should’ve been stumbling, my body was over-tired and weighed down by drink, exhaustion and a new knowledge, but I didn’t. What I knew, it was like I’d swallowed a stone, but I hadn’t really started to digest it. I moved as I had across the moors, flattened across Arden’s neck then, sprinting now, my beast lending me her strength and stamina, having our feet flying across the cobblestones until they brought me to the castle.

Whatever the Reavers’ plan was, striking this morning would have been the smartest tactic, because all the soldiers and courtiers who usually bustled around the place were gone. It was silent as the grave, not a single person moving, none but me. I made no sound then as I scaled the stairs, nor when I went down the corridors, my steps getting longer, harder, faster, as I went. And then I came to the door of the princes’ suite.

My suite, our suite, something along those lines, surely. I’d slept here many nights since we’d arrived, and yet? I cocked my head to one side, smelling a collection of strange scents over ones all too familiar to me. I pushed open the doors. Odd that they were left unlocked. I walked through the sitting room and then put my hand on the bedroom door, my heart pounding so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else above it. I had to force myself to twist the knob, acid somehow forming in my eyes, making them ache as they began to leak. I jerked it open and there they all were.

I hadn’t seen all of my mates entirely naked, and rarely in the cold light of day. It was always by lamplight, or stolen glimpses, not like this. Their nakedness was harsh, pale and wanton, their bodies strewn across the bed like dropped dolls, but that wasn’t the problem.

I sucked a breath in and there it stayed, my lungs inflating like balloon but never able to pop. The pressure built there, my breaths coming in frantic little whoops, but that just exacerbated the problem, not solved it. My lungs were like a drum being struck over and over, sending out a distress call, but no one answered.

Because there, just as naked, were Malia, the blonde-haired girl, Leia, and the catty girl with the long dark hair.

Breathe!I told myself furiously. Breathe, please!

I tried but the harder I worked, the narrower my windpipe got, which just had my whole rib cage hauling air in, but where was it to go? Not one breath I’d taken was allowed to escape and yet the air in my lungs didn’t have what I needed. I clawed at my chest, my neck, leaving bloody rivulets behind, and that’s when I heard again Nordred’s words from last night.

“All children need to grow up, stand on their own two feet and now’s your time.”

No-one was coming. Nobody was going to put their hand on my chest and ease this pain. No-one could stop the blackness bleeding in from the edges of my vision, ready to swallow me whole.

And just like that, as my knees began to weaken and my hands slapped down on the bed, I saw it. The moment I drew my arrow back. I’d stared down the shaft, knowing where it was about to go, filled with the knowledge of what would happen as a result and that had stayed my hand. But I couldn’t stay there forever. I had to release my hold on the string and let the arrow tumble harmlessly on the ground or I had to let it fly. It felt like that decision was being put to me all over again, but my prey was quite different.

I straightened then, a brief feeling of heat flaring in my chest before I let out a sigh, all the air escaping my lungs, then refilling it with ease. Something I’d be able to do over and over now, that I knew, somehow. Because whatever was in Nordred was also in me too.

I drew my swords then, the silvery sound enough to make Malia’s eyes flick open.

For what, for her, was probably a sweet, sweet second, she shot me the smuggest smile known to man, glorying in whatever shitty plan she had concocted, right before the tip of my sword came to rest at the base of her throat. Her hands went up, but what would they do? She didn’t claw at Dane for help, that I noticed. No, instead she let out a choked little sound, waving her hands around in a completely impotent manner before she croaked out the crucial words that saved her and the other women’s skins.

“We didn’t do anything,” she said, croaking out the words. “They were either too drunk, or too befuddled by the potion the queen gave us.”

“The queen.”

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