Page 75 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

I sucked in a breath as Del’s head whipped around to look at us, the other boy taking advantage of that moment to charge at him, sword raised.

“Del!” My voice echoed across the training ground so loud it felt like the whole world heard it and that’s when Del spun back around. His shield was thrust up, meeting his opponent’s blade head on and blocking the strike. “Pivot… pivot…” I hissed and sure enough, Del moved exactly as I hoped, using the moment his adversary’s sword was engaged to swing his own. Crack! I grinned then at the speed, the strength in Del’s strike, even if it was blocked by the other boy’s shield. The rational part of my mind was glad for that, as it meant neither boy was harmed. But my heart? My wolf soul shifted inside me, rising and peering out of my eyes to watch the cubs play.

This kind of thing made sense to her. Wolf pups played together. They wrestled and bit and tumbled and pounced for what felt like hours on end, learning the skills they’d need as adults, finding their place within the pack. So she was not concerned that our pup was tussling with another. She caught the ways he mastered certain skills and faltered with others, saw the moments when he grinned in triumph or his brows pulled down in frustration and she thought them good. It was the only way for him to become strong, something she felt confident of when Del finally swiped the other boy’s legs out from under him, leaving the lad panting and lying there, staring up at the sky for a second as he fought to suck air back in. She watched him walk over and offer his hand to the vanquished and thought this good pack behaviour.

But while his back was turned, while he was acting as a fellow warrior should on a training ground, the swords still thundered against the shields. What did they beat for? I was about to see, as several boys, bigger boys rose to their feet, the others closing the gaps they made in the circle as the four of them advanced.

“No…”

The wolf and the girl stiffened then, her eyes everywhere. On the boys as they raised their shields and their swords, Del only just realising they were there, the boy he’d been helping up smirking, then yanking Del forward so he joined him on the ground. A growl formed in my throat as the other boys advanced nonetheless, not caring as Del scrambled to get to his feet. A foot landed on his shield, stopping him from picking it up, but his hand whipped out to grab his sword. He gripped it with both hands, standing now, but he was spinning around aimlessly in a circle, not knowing which enemy to face.

“What…?”

I had a question, insistent and demanding, rising in my chest, wanting to know what the fuck was going on, but when I looked at the other adults, the general and my mates, I saw something I hadn’t expected to see. My people called them beasts and worse, describing the wargen brutality in almost salacious detail, but I hadn’t really seen evidence of it outside of court or the battlefield. But right now, I saw five men standing there, cruel smiles on their lips, their eyes going silver as they were about to see four boys beat the stuffing out of another.

“No,” I snapped, moving to go in and break things up, but Axe’s hand shot out, grabbing my shoulder and hauling me back.

“You can’t interfere now,” he hissed. “This is the moment when he becomes a man.”

“A man?” I struggled against his grip and when that didn’t work, I began throwing my elbows around with gay abandon, trying to connect with as much soft tissue as I could, preferably something painful. “What kind of thing is a man that the only way you can become it is through brutalising someone else?”

“He has to learn to take a hit,” Weyland insisted, not looking away from the fight. “He has to learn to get hurt and not let it break him.”

“And if it does? Then what? He’s not a man?” I let my claws form then sank them into Axe’s arm until he yelped, forced to let me go. I took a step towards the fight, catching a glimpse of Del’s white face right before a hail storm of blows descended.

“He wants to become a soldier,” Rath told me in a hard voice as he watched the fight. “If this war goes the way I think it will, he could be on the bloody battlefield before he’s got hair on his balls. What good will babying him do? He’s got no apron strings to cut. He’s got nothing but his own strength of arm to protect him and his sister.” His eyes jerked back to me. “And what do you think Prince Callum is doing to the boys he finds?”

Noooo…

My response was not verbalised, because, at his words, something snapped inside me. Del, the training ground, everything dropped away and there was only ... A clearing of sorts, in amongst burned-out and broken trees. It was a wasteland, which was an appropriate name for it, because within it the Reavers laid waste. They lurched in half wolf form towards a group of men and boys standing clustered together, claws outstretched, drool falling from their open jaws. Men thrust their sons behind them when they could, putting themselves between them and the beasts, but not all had fathers. Other boys, some little more than toddlers, milled like frightened dogs at the edges of the cluster, whining their distress.

“I took as many accounts as I could from those who were present that day,” Rath said, jerking me back to the here and now, just in time to hear Del’s cry cut through the air. Somehow I could still hear his voice as I strode onto the sand. “When your emotions are high, when you feel like you have something to protect, that’s when your abilities kick in, don’t they, Darcy?”

The boys had obviously been told not to move for me, making me wonder how long this whole thing had been in play. They just looked up at me when I demanded they shift out of the way, thudding their swords against their shields like savage creatures. I growled out my disgust, then threw myself over the wall, landing in the inner circle.

“By some freakish accident of birth, the one girl I need to help me win this fucking war is one born of the very people who seek to enslave us. One with no knowledge of what we are or love for our country,” Rath continued. “One content to play at queen in the prince’s citadel, but one without the balls to do what’s needed.”

“Get away from him!” I snarled, shoving the boys aside and then landing on the sand beside a crumpled up Del.

He vibrated with pain and anger, his whole body shaking as I scooped him up into my arms.

“You care for this whelp. One boy from a place no one knows the name of. But what of all the other boys? The women and the children? And when the entire country going up in flames? You convinced me with your arguments. Callum is a product of a Strelae that has died, but he’s not willing to accept that. He’s going to take it back, back to the place it was before. Devoid of humans, Strelan and Granian both, and then he’ll find himself a queen of his sister’s blood from somewhere and place her on the throne.”

I held Del close, too close, his body straining against my death grip, but I struggled with myself to let him go. Because as I did so, as I heard the ragged gasp of his breath, in my head it became the equally coarse caw of a raven. The sand of the training grounds gave away as we rose higher and higher, able to see perfectly now the path of destruction the Reavers had created in the forest, a raw and open wound in amongst all that green.

38

I didn’t know how I used my power. I wished I did, but as I screwed my eyes closed and focussed on my breathing and Del’s, I tried my best to reach out. Out of my mind, away from the Reavers and back to Del. Del, Del, Del, I thought over and over, and with that came a realisation. While the raven only showed me death and destruction, that was an easy thing, because it took very little effort to find evidence of ruin around you. But what I wanted was far more fragile: life, healing, health… love. My eyes flicked open, and that’s when I saw Gael crouched down beside me, those blue flames of healing in his hands.

“This will hurt, lad, before it gets better, but it will get better, I promise you,” he told Del in a low voice. “You going to be able to tolerate that?”

Just a sharp little nod from the boy, my grip loosening enough for him to wipe away the blood pouring from his nose, right before Gael laid his hands on the child’s arm.

“Shh… shh… shh…”

I was a terrible fucking mother substitute, my tears bleeding through as I tried to soothe Del through the pain. But he thrashed against me, stiffening until his cries only came out as a strangled yelp, right before he went limp. When Del’s breathing had evened out, when he turned around and burrowed his face in the curve of my shoulder and I hugged him tight, that’s when Gael reached out and put his hand on my arm.

“You can’t heal me,” I bit off. I dashed my tears away, furious at them, at every man here for causing them.

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