Anwen
'Wake up!' Candace yells through mind-link. 'Right fucking now!'
I shoot up. Candace doesn't curse. She's never cursed before.
'I'm here. Who are you, and what did you do with my sister?'
'Shut up. I had a dream. You need to move everyone.'
'Your dreams are bullshit,' I reply. 'You can't see the future.'
Drowsy, I rub my eyes and look at Estrella, curled naked on the blankets we pulled out of our packs and wound into a lazy nest.
'We don't have time to argue. Just answer me one question: are you willing to be wrong about this?'
Estrella's skin is warm and golden in the pre-dawn light. Vulnerable.
But Father always said Candace made up the shit about her dreams because she wanted to feel special. There were a few spooky coincidences, but nothing more.
'I-'
My ears prick. There, just barely audible. The rhythmic ka-thump, ka-thump of paw pads over dirt. Someone's running toward us.
Fast.
I grab Estrella by the shoulder and begin shaking her. "Get up!"
'Aldritch, everybody, get the fuck up!'
She blinks up at me and frowns. "Hush. You kept me awake too late."
"We're being attacked." The words scratch out of my throat.
Instantly, the tiredness disappears from her face, replaced with the distant haze of a conversation happening through the mind-link. People start rustling behind us, in the camp we abandoned.
I meet her gaze. "Don't be a hero. People need you."
She scoffs. "Can you make the same promise?"
I grit my teeth. There's no good way to say, not if you're the one in danger. At least, not one she'll accept.
A howl splits the air, and I throw myself into a shift. Fur sprouts, claws and teeth extend, and I hit the ground running.
Aldritch and the other guards sound off as they wake up. Daz, who slept in the same tent as Dowager Suniva, is already dead. I heard the second team arriving.
My own howl pierces the morning.
Side-by-side, Estrella and I skid into the clearing we left behind. A dozen or more strange wolves brawl our group. And judging by the reek of blood in the air, someone is already losing.
I'll be damned if it's us.
I leap for the nearest wolf I don't recognize, a mottled silver-white, and catch him in the side. We tumble over each other, scrabbling for purchase.
'The wolf on top is the victor,' Father says in my memory. 'Always.'
He lost to Kieran. Just like I always used to. And I don't have the fucking time. Before we roll to a stop, I wrench one of my legs back, time the angle, and slash my claws across his throat. Blood sprays, and he goes limp underneath me.
One down.
I slam my body into another coming to check on his fallen friend. He skitters backward into the low fire the night watch maintained. His tail catches becoming a bright brush of flame. His yelp hurts my ears.
My shoulder burns, but nobody's hitting me. I whip around, looking for Estrella.
A reddish-orange wolf sinks his teeth into her shoulder.
The exact same goddamn color as Dorian Meadows' hair.
I launch myself across the clearing, heart hammering in my ears. He's fucking dead. Saliva drips from my maw, and the rest of the carnage fades away. Nothing matters but the bastard who thinks he can take a chunk out of my mate.
A dust-gray wolf collides with me, and the guard who tackled him hits a second after. We tumble to the ground in a scratching, biting pile of limbs. Someone sinks teeth into my flank. I try to angle my claws again, but the guard is always just in the way.
'Get his fucking ass,' I snarl. 'HIs head is mine.'
He obeys immediately, twisting away from the rogue's slavering jaws to catch the gray tail between his teeth. The rogue whines and loses focus. I tear his throat out with my teeth before he can regain it.
'Prince Anwen!' Aldritch calls. 'Southeast tent. Defending the Dowager Luna.'
I'm gone before the dead rogue hits the dirt.
Father trained Kieran, Finn, and I nearly every day to be able to defend ourselves. But where normal soldiers went on their first missions at thirteen or fourteen, he insisted princes didn't need to face bloodshed to understand it. To conquer it. I didn't kill anyone until I was eighteen, when Baz and I snuck out and got in a bar fight that went south when the dickhead recognized me.
I've never killed as much as I am right now. Never as quickly. The air around me goes red with gore. I catch sight of my own side at one point and nearly mistake it for a stranger's. The pink tint of my fur is unnatural. I don't know if I'll ever escape the metallic taste of blood. But every Goddess-damned time I turn around, someone else needs my help. Someone yells, or I see them through the fighting. Castor's strong, and he's fucking angry, but he's obviously never been in a real fight before. Dowager Suniva is visibly out of practice, off balance without her magic to rely on. Tess isn't a fighter, so her father devotes most of his energy to protecting her. The guards do their best, but they were at the front when the ambush hit. Most of them are already injured.
The clearing becomes my racetrack, and I'm darting side to side, slaughtering one rogue only to dodge a vicious attack from another.
And I haven't seen Estrella since that rogue knocked me off course. Or Dorian Meadows.
She's not injured, I think as I suck in a deep breath. I would know.
The tide of battle shifts, and her smell wafts toward me in a gust. I whirl.
At the center of the clearing, Estrella brawls with a group of challengers. Her fur shines. Red spittle coats her teeth. Her eyes glow. She lacks technique, but whoever taught her obviously knew how to lean into her strengths. She's fluid, fast. She doesn't push her advantage when she's not sure she can keep it. Her enemies fall for every feint like they've never seen it before.
Cuts and scrapes line her pelt. She's not killing anyone, and she's not good enough to survive this unharmed. But she's a fucking miracle of movement all on her own.
A reddish pelt appears at the back of the pack, and I snap back to focus. Dorian's fucking sneaking away!
Coward.
I lower myself below the height of the scrum and creep along the ground. Blood smears in the dirt. I fill my lungs with Dorian's scent. He can't escape me here. These are my fucking woods. And for all he thinks he's so Goddess-damned smart, he's still slower.
By the time he reaches the tree line, I'm within striking distance. His muscles bunch under his coat. He's about to take off.
I remember Estrella shaking in my arms after Nessa finally told us the truth.
Never again.
I throw myself at him just as he leaps, when his weight is most off-center, aiming for a thick pine behind him. He can't escape, but he's not my kill either.
We slam into the tree. My ears ring, and my vision shakes. Dorian hacks out a breath and snarls up at me, fury in his eyes.
He's still conscious. For now.
I twist then pound my back paws into his skull, smashing him into the tree. He rips at my hold, tears chunks out of my ankles, but I don't release him. I can't.
Estrella's smell intensifies. I look over my shoulder, and there she is. Backlit by the morning sun. I nod at Dorian, display his neck to her. We don't need to use the mind-link for her to know what I'm telling her. She looks at me, then at the weak, bleeding Dorian in my grasp. The sounds of battle dim behind us.
She shifts back into human form, and my heart hammers. She's so vulnerable like this. Blood oozes from the bite on her shoulder.
"No," she says.
I cock my head to the side.
"I do not-" She shakes off her hands, flinging droplets of clinging gore. "There is no relief in killing. Certainly not a hired hand, and one who hasn't done anything to me yet."
She didn't kill anyone. Even though they attacked us while we slept. Even though they were all hired by the same motherfucker who killed her father in the first place. She just looks down at Dorian in my grasp with something like pity.
The towering mass of her mother looms over her shoulder, no reluctance on her face. I present Dorian's neck again.
Dowager Suniva tears his throat out with a vicious snarl.
Everything falls silent, except for a couple of birds in the distance. People shift back slowly. None of the ambush party lived. Daz is dead, and one of the other guards is seriously injured. Estrella heals him while everyone else watches.
The energy of pure life spills from her hands. It's just as incredible as the first time I saw it.
After that, there's nothing to do but clean up. Almost everyone has a few injuries. Estrella's shoulder is the worst, and she smacks me when I try to kiss it. My ankles are a wreck, but somehow, I'm still in the wrong for playfully smacking her when she heals them.
Everyone is injured except for Tess and Nessa that is. Cristofer's worse off than most, obviously from protecting his daughter, and Nessa... shit, I didn't see her. But it's not like the ladies of the castle are raised to be these incredible fighters. I doubt she's ever been in anything like this before.
We use the ripped tents to bury the rogues-they're not good for anything else anymore. As I stand next to Estrella, holding her hand and looking down over the corpses, a mind-link comes through.
'Everything's ready,' Kieran says. 'Come home. It's time for your wedding.'