The world snapped back into focus with a violence that held Fenris down on his knees. The wind of the Deep Water sentries' passage roared over him as they launched themselves in pursuit, a blur of dark fur and snapping jaws. Howls of outrage and the crashing symphony of their chase through the undergrowth faded rapidly into the distance; following the white streak that had vanished into the trees.

  Albi was attempting to outrun them.

  Hroth, still in his man-form, watched them go, a faint, considering smile on his lips. He took a long, deliberate drag from his rolled leaf, the ember glowing bright in the dim light; its smoke following the sweeping wind of his wolves.

  Through the Imprint, Fenris felt... nothing.

  A void. A numb, hollow silence where her presence had been a constant hum. No fear, no rage, no plan—just a blank, walled-off emptiness. It was worse than any pain. It was as if the earth had opened beneath him and swallowed everything but this cold, sickening anticipation of death. He knew, with a certainty that felt like a stone in his gut, what would happen next. The Deep Water wolves were driving her uphill. She was new, strong, but they were experienced, and they knew this land. They would run her down and they would rip her apart; and he would feel all of it with her.

  The sharp, rhythmic sound of clapping cut through the silence.

  Hroth was applauding, slow and menacing. Each smack of his palms was a lash against Fenris's spine.

  "That," Hroth said, his voice brimming with amused admiration, "is my sister. Damn, she's good. None of them saw her coming. Did you even? She must have played the wind; that is....a once in our lifetime kind of wolf. If she wasn't my own blood... and I say this with all respect to you, brother, I'd marry her myself."

  Fenris had no strength for anger. He lowered his head until his brow touched the cold, damp leaves of the forest floor. He was not Fenris, Alpha of Black Rock. He was just a vessel, flooded with the distant, pounding rhythm of Albi's heart as she ran, the coppery taste of Obin's life still hot in her mouth, the burn of exhaustion beginning to scream in her limbs. Her sprint was slowing. The closing snarls of her pursuers grew louder in his mind's ear.

  If he called an attack, it wouldn't matter. It would be too late for her. It would be an attack of vengeance and not of rescue.

  He didn't hear Hroth approach. A heavy hand, calloused and warm, came to rest on the bare skin of his back, between his shoulder blades.

  "I have heard of the pain you are about to feel," Hroth said, his voice almost conversational. "The Old Stories speak of it. The death of an Imprint is a limb that dies but remains attached. It rots. It festers. It poisons you from within, forever. You will never be whole again. You will never be strong again."

  Hroth squatted beside him, bringing his face level with Fenris's. The scent of his herbal smoke was cloying. "You Black Rock wolves have put that retched curse up on a pedestal because you think it makes you strong. It makes you weak. Pathetic. It makes you selfish. And I will prove it to you." Hroth leans, blowing smoke into Fenris's eyes, "I could call them off. My warriors know Obin was a cruel bastard. His end was coming, one way or another. If not from Albi, then from another one of his slave sluts, hell, I thought about killing him myself," He paused, letting the offer hang in the air. "I could call them off for you, Fenris. If you give me what is mine. Your Alpha-ship. Or I can wait. Let them finish their work. Let the rot of her set into your soul. And then, when you are weak and grieving, I will challenge you for it anyway, and I will win. And she will be dead. The choice is yours." He leaned even closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper in his ear, "The truth is, I wish to bring my people to Black Rock. The riverlands are crawling with those human filth. Deep Water is no longer safe. We could be one pack again. One people with one enemy. As the Great Mother meant it to be. All you must do is give the howl. Let your wolves hear it. Let your people up on that lonely rock know their true Alpha is coming home."

  From the direction of the chase, a howl pierced the forest—a deep, triumphant bay. They had her cornered.

  "Hurry, brother," Hroth murmured, standing, and not unkindly. "Decide now."

  Fenris could feel it through the bond—a stumble. A lurch in her rhythm. Her strength was failing. The gap closing. He felt hot, heavy tears well in his eyes from Hroth's smoke, from the emotion, from the defeat; spilling onto the earth, pathetic and silent.

  He knew then he had been cursed, just as Asger had said; and that he was no Alpha any longer.

  "Ok," he whispered, the word torn from a place deeper than any shame. He pushed himself up, his body leaden. Forcing the Change was an agony. His flesh resisted, his spirit rebelled, but the need—the desperate, screaming need to save that numb silence in his soul—drove him. Bones cracked, fur sprouted, and he stood once more as a wolf, his chest heaving with a pain that had nothing to do with the transformation.

  He threw back his head and howled.

  It was the long, low, falling note of surrender. The sound of a king stepping down from his throne. It echoed through the clearing, through the trees, a message to every wolf of Black Rock, near and far.

  Before the last note had faded, Hroth Changed. In a shimmer of gold and muscle, the man was gone, replaced by his massive, golden-furred wolf-form. He lifted his own muzzle and issued a sharp, commanding series of barks and yips into the air. The call to break off the hunt.

  Through the bond, Fenris felt it. The moment Albi heard the twin calls—the surrender, and the recall. A wave of something hot and sharp—betrayal, fury—flashed from her direction, so intense it was like the ray of the sun through the trees. Then it was gone, swallowed again by that terrifying, numb resolve.

  He knew, with a sick certainty, that the pounding pursuit had ceased. He could sense through Albi that the Deep Water wolves were turning, their purpose abandoned, and loping back toward the clearing the way they came.

  A snarling blur of grey launched itself at Hroth.

  Asger. His grief for Vgar, his loyalty to Fenris, his sheer, undiluted rage finally found its target. He flew at the golden wolf, teeth bared for the throat.

  Hroth moved with a casual, terrifying grace. He sidestepped the furious charge, letting Asger's momentum carry him past. Asger twisted, snapping, but Hroth was already inside his guard. The fight was brutal, fast, and utterly one-sided.

  Hroth was nearly twice Asger's size, a creature of pure, refined power. He batted aside attacks, his own strikes precise and devastating. He knocked Asger onto his side, then pinned him, a massive paw on his chest. Asger thrashed, snarling, but he was trapped. Again.

  Hroth lowered his head. For a second, he seemed to hesitate, his pale blue eyes meeting Fenris's across the clearing. Then he sank his teeth into the side of Asger's neck, finding the vital artery just beneath the fur.

  There was a wet, final sound. Asger's thrashing ceased. His body went limp.

  Hroth released him, stepping back, his golden muzzle stained dark. He lifted his head, his gaze sweeping over the remaining Black Rock wolves—Fenris's warriors, who stood stunned, their ears flattened, their tails tucked.

  One by one, under the weight of that pale, imperious stare, they lowered themselves. First to their bellies, then onto their sides, exposing their throats in submission. A chorus of low whines filled the clearing.

  Hroth, turned his bloody muzzle toward the south, towards Black Rock, and let out a long, victorious howl that shook the very leaves from the trees.

  ????

  The smell woke him before the cold did. It was the stench of Obin's death—copper-rich blood and the foul, earthy odor of opened bowels—thick in the still night air. Fenris was naked, curled on his side on the cold, damp forest floor. The clearing was empty, silent but for the whisper of the wind through the pines and his own deep breaths. His wolves, Hroth's wolves now, were gone. They had left him there as a discarded king. He had been too hollowed, too defeated to move. The Change had left him spent, and he had fallen into a black, dreamless sleep right there in the gore.

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  He woke shivering. For a moment, he didn't know why he'd woken. Then he heard it: the angry, deliberate crunch of a footfall on a twig.

  He turned his head.

  Albi stood at the edge of the clearing, a pale ghost in the moonlight. She was naked, her skin sheened with sweat and dirt, her silver hair a tangled mess. Her chest heaved with ragged breaths. She was looking at him, her eyes dark holes in her face.

  "Why?" Her voice was raw, spoken aloud. It scraped against the silence.

  Fenris pushed himself up onto his elbows, the movement aching. The first true emotion since the numb void of the afternoon surged through him, hot and acrid. Rage. At her. At everything.

  "You did this," he said, his own voice a dry rasp. He didn't just say it. He shoved the memory at her through the bond—the golden wolf before him, the ultimatum, the howl of the hunters closing on her, the impossible choice. He was going to take it either way. I saved your life. If you hadn't killed Obin— The thought was a snarl, unfinished, but the accusation hung between them, clearer than words.

  She didn't flinch.

  "I told you," she said, each word a stone dropped into still water. "I was supposed to die. That was what was supposed to happen. I kill Obin and they kill me. That was the end of my story."

  Fenris closed his eyes, the weight of it all pressing him back down into the earth. He heard her footsteps, soft on the moss. Then she was there, lying down beside him on the cold ground, her body not touching his. He felt the tremors start in her before he heard the first, choked sob. Then it broke—a flood of grief and guilt and shame so violent it tore through the bond and into him, a riptide of emotion that was not his own. He saw flashes of her memories: the feel of Obin's fur in her teeth, the hot rush of his blood, the cold, empty triumph, and beneath it all, the tiny, swaddled form of her first son, gone forever.

  He turned and pulled her into his arms. She didn't resist. She collapsed against him, her face buried in his neck, her tears hot on his skin. He held her, his own anger dissolving in the salt of hers. Hroth was right. He was weak for her. This was his rot, his festering limb, and he was cursed to carry it; and cursed, it seems, to feel at peace doing so.

  A long time later, her weeping subsided into shaky hiccups. She settled into the circle of his arms, her breath warming his chest.

  "It's not the end," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "You can challenge him. You can take it back."

  "If I challenge him and lose, he'll kill me and kill you," Fenris said, staring at the black branches overhead. "If I challenge him and win, he has already commanded his pack to kill you, his pack will divide with him again, they'll return to Deep Water, and the packs will go to war. Deep Water has no observance for the Old Laws. And we will fight until one is ash; and it will likely be us, Albi."

  She was silent for a moment. Then she shifted, propping herself up on one elbow to look down at him. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears, but her eyes were clear.

  "I can leave," she said, the words simple, final. "I can run. I can hide. He'll never find me."

  Fenris reached up, his thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. It was a gesture of unbearable tenderness in the midst of the ruin. "It's too late for that," he said softly. "

  She looked away, toward the distant, unseen bulk of Black Rock. "We have to go back. We have to get to Isangrim."

  Fenris nodded, but the motion felt leaden. "I don't know how to face them."

  A memory, not his own, surfaced in the quiet space between their thoughts. Albi's voice was quiet. "That night. After my First Change. I was in our chamber, but I was listening to your thoughts in the mead hall. Jorik was talking to Torin. He said... It is an honor to Challenge, and an honor to fail at it. It is only a defeat if we do not have the strength to Challenge against what we do not believe in." She looked back at him, her honey-smoke eyes searching his in the dark. "I know you do not believe Hroth should be the Alpha of your pack. I know you don't believe that you are too weak to lead."

  "I want Black Rock and Deep Water to be one again. That is what the Great Mother would want. Perhaps that is why this has happened.."

  "We'll find a way, then, not like this," She whispered the promise, "I'll help you."

  He sat up slowly, the chill of the ground seeping into his bones. "It is too late, Albi" he breathed sadly, the word a surrender to his own broken pride, to the fight of it.

  Through their bond, he felt the unspoken question in her, a shape of dread and need. He felt her gathering the words. "My mother," she began, her voice barely audible, "never told me who my father was. I didn't know. I didn't know I was......" She gestured vaguely at her own body, at the wolf sleeping in her blood. "What Hroth said... about the village, that was true. I just...I didn't tell you, and it didn't matter. It was a wolf-hunters village. I killed wolves. When I was a girl, I trained with the boys and I was raised to hate them. But it was the Deep Water wolves that we hated. We had been at war with them for decades now. All the human villages on the Southern bank of the river have been at war with them. They are the nightmares of our dreams. They are the villains in our stories. And Lukas, he was the youngest son of the Southern King. That part is true too. That is not why I loved him. He was strong. He was a good man. Alot....alot like you. And Finn was....was well loved. The whole Kingdom celebrated his first birth-day."

  She drew a shaky breath and a small smile at that. "But none of that matters anymore. That woman died with her babe." She reached out, her fingers finding his in the dark. "I was reborn here. With you. Today. In this blood and this shit. I have paid my debt to them. And I will do whatever I must to pay mine to you. To help you get your pack back. You saved me, so many times, Fenris of Black Rock. And I am going to save you. I swear it."

  She swallowed away the emotion trembling in her voice. Her hand in his was cold, but her grip was iron. He gently lifted her hand and pressed his nose against the inside of her wrist, inhaled. Then, closing his eyes, he sent the thought into the quiet space between their minds, a clear, gentle wave washing against the shores of her darkest fear.

  I have already forgiven you.

  He felt the shudder that went through her, the release of a tension in her shoulders and spine; she hadn't known she was holding it, but Fenris did. The silent question she was afraid to ask him, that he could feel bristling in her the moment he opened his eyes to the dark forest—could he ever forgive this, the ruin I have brought upon him?.

  And how could he not? When he had known what it meant to be her?

  With a soft sound, she pushed herself into his lap. Her warmth settled over him, her thighs framing his hips. His body was slack with exhaustion, his manhood soft against the junction of her thighs. She leaned in, pressing her lips to his forehead, his closed eyelids, the bridge of his nose, his stubbled cheeks. Each kiss was a quiet affirmation, a reclaiming. She breathed him in—the scent of pine, of sweat, of defeat—and let her presence soothe him like a salve. His hands came up slowly, tracing the line of her spine, feeling the knobs of her vertebrae, the strength in the cords of muscle there; over and over, until the tips of his fingers tinged with the sensation.

  Her lips found his, tentative at first, small, searching pecks. Then she lingered, brushing, and he felt the desperate ache in her, not for her own pleasure, but to give, to offer. He cupped her face in his palms, his thumbs brushing the tracks of her tears, and deepened the kiss. He inhaled her essence—wild thyme and woman and the faint, sweet trace of milk.

  As their tongues met, a spark ignited low in his belly. He felt himself stir against her, the blood rushing back. His cock thickened, hardening where it lay against her damp, warm flesh.

  She broke the kiss, her breath coming in quick, hot puffs against his mouth. Her eyes, dark in the moonlight, held his. Without a word, her hand slid down his chest, over the hard plane of his stomach, and found him. Her touch was sure, her fingers wrapping around his length, guiding. She shifted her hips, positioned him, and then, with a slow, deliberate roll of her body, she sheathed him inside herself.

  He gasped, a sharp intake of breath that was part shock, part profound relief. She was hot and tight and wet, a silken fist closing around him. Then she pushed against his shoulders, gently but firmly, until his back met the cold earth. She rose above him, a pale goddess in the moonlight, her silver hair a tangled curtain around them.

  She began to move with a deep, purposeful rhythm. She rode him as if she could transfer her own fierce will into his body through this joining. He could feel it in her—the shaking desperation to give him strength, to armor him against the world, to remind him of what he was. That he was still her Alpha. That the spirit of the Alpha of Black Rock was not a title given by a howl, but a fire that burned in his blood, and she felt it, she knew it.

  The clarity was immediate, like a fog lifting. The crushing weight of his shame, the hollow ache of his surrender, began to recede, burned away by the heat of her, by the absolute certainty of her faith in him. He felt stronger. Clearer. A resolve, hard as iron, in his core.

  He pushed himself up onto his elbows, then to a sitting position, never breaking their connection. His mouth found her breast, swollen and tender. A bead of milk had pearled at her nipple. He licked it away, the taste sweet and rich and profoundly intimate.

  She cried out, a soft, broken sound, and her rhythm faltered, then became more urgent. Her hands clutched at his shoulders, her nails biting into his skin.

  Their climax took them together. It rolled through them like a ground-shock, a raw, shaking thing that had them clutching each other, braced against the storm of sensation.

  As the tremors subsided, leaving them panting and entwined in the cooling night, Fenris pressed his forehead to hers. He kissed her, softly, once more.

  "You are a wolf of Honor, Fenris. That is why the Great Mother will pave the way for us to get back what you've lost."

  "Then don't take it away again, wolf of rage." He replied on her lips.