Page 21 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“I’ll be gone from here when you do it,” she said, not bothering to specify what it was yet. “I’ll steal a horse and ride and ride, away from this bloody place. Away from you. I came here for your mother’s sake, all the way out to the middle of nowhere, only to watch her die, her son die, but for you to live. And for what? She’d be devastated that a daughter of hers would grow into such a hoyden like you.”

I thought I’d heard every single one of Linnea’s barbs before, but of course, she had new ones. Sharp ones with forked points that tore through me as they went.

“You’ll bring the wrath of the king upon all of our heads, I just know it,” she continued. “You and that bloody boy… I told your father. I told him—”

“Then you’ve done your duty, Lady Linnea.” My voice was crisp and cool with all the hauteur she’d tried to instil in me. “So go to bed and leave me to my doom. I promise I will tell you before I commit my greatest sins so you can skitter away like a mouse before Father finds out.”

When she turned and marched away, I just stared, because I could count on one hand the moments when she had obeyed my orders in the past. I watched her go until she disappeared down the stairs altogether. Then I opened my door, walking in, undoing my stays and the buttons of my overdress, everything feeling too stifling, and that’s when I discovered them. My fingers stilled, then went limp as I saw what had been left on my bed.

Lupines grew wild around the castle and all over the grasslands, proud spikes of flowers that were often a bluey violet, but also came in yellow, red and pink. All the colours were represented in the bunch. It’d been tied around with a rough piece of twine, but that’s not what had me picking them up.

I touched the blooms gently. After the Great Claiming, there was a concerted attempt to poison all lupines across the land, because the flower got its name from lupus, meaning wolf. Their association with the wargs was why they were first hated, then tolerated but never valued. But our hatred of the plant went beyond that.

Before we had turned Grania into the magnificent farmland it was today, our people, worn down and beaten from years of fighting back the wargen, had suffered through a famine, forcing us to try and eat the pea shaped seeds of the plentiful lupine. Wolf pea was the colloquial name we gave the flower. Deathly poisonous, it had done a better job of diminishing our numbers than war had, and only the influx of soldiers, food and supplies from the homeland was enough to save us.

I frowned then, putting the lupines into a vase beside my bed and then sat down to stare at them. It’d have to have been my affianced that left the flowers for me, no doubt discovering that I wasn’t in bed. I nibbled at my bottom lip, wondering what they would do with that information. But it was more the message behind giving me a bouquet of poisonous blooms that I pondered, right up until I stripped all the way down to my shift and then went to sleep.

As I slept,I dreamed of wolves running across the moors, so many wolves. They grew and grew in number, tearing through the flowers and the grass, joining together to form a great carpet of beasts, each one running with mouths open, fangs a-flashing. But rather than being terrified of the mass of them, I felt a strange kind of glee, like it was me that was running with them. At that thought, I found my consciousness rapidly transferred into a beast, my four legs working with all my might. I ran and ran, feeling an alien kind of kinship until—

“Wake up.”I blinked to see it was morning and that my father was standing over me. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose reddened, his breath reeking of whiskey. “Those beasts of yours will only come to the bargaining table if one can spend the morning with you. You’ll take the big one for a ride on the moors and I’ll deal with the others.”

“Of course, Father,” I said and went to scramble off the bed.

“You’ll ride double,” he added. “An hour or so of your arse rubbing up against his cock should have him much more amenable to dealing with me.”

“So it’s Prince Axe I’m to marry?” I asked in a deliberately demure tone, but he just snorted. He smiled, revealing teeth long yellowed by tobacco and whiskey.

“Didn’t they tell you yet? The master deacon informed me of the way it is to be, the bloody heathens. You’ll service all four of the furry bastards and you’ll do it well, my girl. I’m getting birds from the capital, demanding updates, and I must give positive news to the king.”

I was able to pale just like any other girl would discovering she was about to enter into a profane polyandrous relationship, not for that reason, but because of the light in my father’s eye. It always burned with a kind of devilry, but right now it was aflame with something that frankly scared me.

“Of course, Father,” I said, then rushed to my wardrobe, ready to grab my riding habit.

“Boots and trews for you today, girl,” Father said, my fingers freezing at the mention of the clothes I kept folded up in a secret compartment in the back of the cupboard. “For once, those immoral garments have my blessing.” He raked his eyes up and down my form. “Dress up like a boy all you like while you remain here. The heathens like such disgusting displays of a woman’s form.”

“As you say, Father,” I said, dropping a curtsey.

He nodded at that and finally turned to leave. I’d been half afraid he’d want me to dress in front of him, let him adjust my neckline until my breasts spilled out. But when the door clicked shut, I scrambled to get out of my shift and into my training clothes.

“Well, well…”Axe said when I walked into the stables, those twinkling eyes taking in every inch of me. “I was beginning to think the Granians were a neutered bunch, swathing their beautiful women in layer upon layer of fabric. But this?”

He straightened my collar when I got close enough, then turned to his massive horse.

“Apparently every horse in your father’s capacious stable is otherwise engaged this morning, so it’s just you and me on Poll here.” He slapped the beast on the withers, the horse whinnying in response. “Let me help…”

He was going to boost me up, moving to cup his hands and drop down lower, but I was able to just reach the saddle horn with a jump, using it to haul myself up and into the horse’s back.

“Well, well, didn’t expect that,” Axe said, pulling himself up behind me.

I’d tried to sit as far forward in the saddle as I could, to avoid doing what Father had suggested, when I saw the impossibility of it. The horse was huge, my legs feeling like they were hanging out wide due to the barrel chest of the beast, but not big enough. I was wedged in against Axe’s groin, something that only became more apparent when he reached for the reins.

“I’m going to enjoy this very much,” he said in a low rumble of a voice. “Hopefully you will too.”

And at that, he set us off, nudging Poll into a walk so we went out into the courtyard. The men on the training grounds all stopped and stared as we went. They’d seen me gallivanting around in men’s clothes before, but never riding double with a warg and while many pointed and smirked, Kris stood still, staring at me with a stricken expression. One that quickly turned volcanic as he barked orders at the other men.

“Now, I brought us some breakfast,” Axe said, oblivious. Those keen warg instincts didn’t seem to pick up the turmoil bubbling inside me. “But I’ll need you to direct me to somewhere pretty to eat it.”

I knew I should answer, should show him all due respect, but found I couldn’t say a word, not until we left the keep gates and were out facing the moors.

“There’s a spring,” I replied dully, “that way.”

“A spring sounds like just the thing,” he said, then nudged the horse into a canter.

---