Page 2 of The Wolf Queen

The world was quiet at this time, the point between night and dawn. Wet grass swallowed our footsteps as we walked over to the cooking fire. Someone had left the coals burning, ready for it to be awakened and fed with wood when the camp came back to life. And it was our job to provide something for them to cook. A pot of water had been left to simmer over the coals, and I scooped some hot water up in a cup to make a morning brew, adding leaves that left a strange astringent aftertaste in the mouth. Not tea, but it was all we had. I made the same for Axe and he took it with a nod.

We sipped the bitter drink as the world came back to us in the sounds of birds calling and leaves shifting in the breeze. I shuddered at the reminders of my nightmare. But as I scoured the darkened tree line, I saw no hint of ravens and that was comfort enough. I stood up and tossed the dregs of my cup onto the grass. Axe followed, as he always did now. Each one of them had reacted differently to our loss and this was his way. He was my very big, very attentive shadow.

“The east wood?” I asked him, once we were away from the tent city we had created.

“Been there too often. The pickings are getting slim,” he responded, with a shake of his head.

Pickings were getting slim everywhere on the border between Strelae and Grania. We needed to move on, move beyond the borders to the soft lands of my birthplace. The wheat in my father’s fields alone could keep my people going for some time. My fingers tightened around the grip of my bow and then I stepped forward.

“The north then.”

We didn’t allow our people to hunt north, deeper into Strelae. Callum had gotten what he wanted. He’d taken the capital as his and installed his dread Reavers. We knew this because we got news each day as more and more groups of refugees found their way to us. More mouths to feed, more people to care for. As Axe and I set out, I shook my head free of the last vestiges of my nightmare, knowing that the message it had portrayed was wrong.,

Iwasa mother. I was mother to Del and Jan, a relationship I accepted with all of my heart. But then there was everyone else. Everyone who’d been forced from Snowmere. Everyone who’d been driven from their homes, having had their lives and their families shattered. Everyone I’d failed to keep safe. I’d dreamed of being queen, of dragging a heavy, heavy coronation mantle down the aisle, the weight of a crown pushing down on me, but I hadn’t understood the significance of that weight until now when I had the responsibility for all these lives on my shoulders. That was what drove me to be out, hunting, before the sun was up.

But wasn’t that what every mother did?

Pushed aside her own pain and sleeplessness and went out into the world, determined to bring back everything her children needed. I felt that deep ache, one that had hollowed out the life inside me and replaced it with pain, and knew that was exactly what I had to do now.

I’d crept out onto the moors the morning I’d met Axe and the rest of my mates, full of youthful confidence and enthusiasm. I’d been ready to prove something to myself, and I’d done it, in taking down that stag. But I felt so much older now. Looking back to that morning, my aims, my hopes, my dreams all seemed so childish. I’d felt like I was poised on the edge of greatness without any idea of what was to come. But as I crept through the trees now, placing my feet precisely so as to not snap twigs or crunch leaves, Axe my silent shadow, I felt an echo of that. A sense of something greater that burned inside me. Something that wouldn’t be denied—despite my father’s attempts to cow me. It made sense that I would become Strelan and two-souled, because a wolf had ever lived within me.

And now, my feet became her paws, my nose was as sensitive as hers as we scoured the forest, looking for our prey. We halted and stood in place with a predator’s implacable patience when we heard heavy steps further in. We glanced at each other, Axe and I, sharing that strange pack sense that came naturally to our wolves and, then, we saw him.

Kings of old had used the stag as their emblem and it was easy to see why. He was a magnificent creature, standing at the river’s edge, his muzzle dripping, a full rack of horns on his head like a crown as he scanned the forest, looking for threats. But I couldn’t see his beauty, his majesty, not right now. My belly was empty enough to ache with it and so were many others’, I was willing to bet, so I raised my bow in a fluid movement that barely made a sound. Axe appeared noiselessly at my shoulder.

“That’s it, lass,” he said in barely a whisper. “You can take him. You know just where to hit the big bastard.” His voice was the perfect opposite to what my father’s would have been if he had stood by me on the moors that day. “Just breathe out and let that arrow fly.”

I knew, Axe knew, that I would hit the stag. It was an innate sense in myself I hadn’t trusted until pressed, but Nordred had given me at least one thing and that was this. I was a machine, as men typically were, and I could engage all my cogs and wheels and use my body as a weapon—

To kill.

I heard the Morrigan’s snicker and it almost queered my aim, my arm jerking up slightly, but I corrected at the last minute before I let the arrow fly.

Killer.

The deer reared up, ready to fight off an unseen enemy. That enemy was me. But it collapsed down in a messy heap, the arrow having struck true and hit him straight in the heart. It didn’t stop the beast from gasping out its last breath as we ran over, or its long legs flailing as I got close.

The bright red blood staining its pelt caught at me and I paused for a second, staring, transfixed, as memories overlapped with reality.

Blood on my hands, on my armour, seeping from between my legs. Too bright a red to be my courses. This was the blood of—

“A quick death, lass,” Axe prompted, breaking the terrible spell I was under. “That’s all we can give him, but it’s a gift we must make.”

My gift was death—it seemed to have become my constant companion—so his words made sense. I put my hand on the knife sheathed on my belt and approached.

“Morrigan, dread queen…”

Nordred had taught me these words on the battlefield and I said them again now.

“Gift me strength of arm, so I might reap the souls of the unworthy in your honour.” I jerked my knife free. “May my sword cut through my enemies like this knife does the wheat.”

The stag’s head thrashed, like he’d rally and deprive me of my sacrifice, but I knew it was the last moment of fight before the end.

“Make me your vessel, death dealer, slayer. Let me litter the battlefield with corpses as offering to your divine beak!”

I fucking despised the dark goddess and I threw that spite into my words, right as I sliced the knife across the stag’s throat, sending my hatred up with my prayer as I stepped back. Then staggered, feeling a rush of… something. The sound of wings fluttering filled my ears as I fought to stay upright, my head light, my body filled with something that throbbed and pulsed. Axe leapt forward to steady me, but that just made it worse. When he gasped, I looked down, saw the blue light that glowed from our skin, growing brighter and brighter until I forced myself to pull away.

Reality came slamming back in.

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