Ryan
“You’re sure there’s no way out of this?” Jacob asks Andrew two hours later. We’re sitting around a campfire roughly a half mile outside of the village.
Andrew nods, glancing at me before hugging his knees. “These tribes are steeped in tradition, guys. I don’t know what else to say. If Alpha Ryan refused the girl, he would have been offered another, and another, and if he’d refused to marry outright, she would have been given as a… concubine, perhaps.”
I close my eyes for a moment and sigh around the rim of my water jug. The sweet, heavy wine and mead I’d been served over and over again, my cup never empty, has my head pounding already.
But the second I close my eyes, I see her. Aviva. What a name. It dances over my tongue like a song, and it seems fitting for her.
She’s a very strange woman, and I mean that in the nicest way. She has a glare that could slice through glass and make mountains tremble in fear. And those eyes? The darkest shade of brown I’ve ever seen. They seem depthless, unending.
It was easy to spot her in the crowd when I arrived. Her wolf had been a sight to see earlier in the day with its bright red, curly fur. Her hair matches that fur perfectly, falling over her shoulders and back in thick, tangled curls with little braids throughout. Aviva seems untamed, wild, and sharp.
But I’m not looking for a wife.
And she certainly didn’t seem happy with the arraignment, either.
“Did anyone know the significance of the pelt we gave Jerrod?” I ask the group of men sitting around the fire. No one speaks. I let out my breath. “Andrew, what is hand-fasting?”
“Uh, I believe it’s like… an engagement, maybe. Or a less formal approach to marriage.” He looks around, and I feel utterly out of place, not for the first time.
We know so little about these people. The terrain in the Deadlands has been one thing. Learning the culture and customs of those who call this place home has been tricky to navigate, more challenging, in my opinion, than setting up a new territory and trying to survive our first few hard winters.
“It might not be a bad thing,” Jacob says with a shrug. “We could use someone like her in our pack. She knows the tribes. She grew up here in the Deadlands.”
He’s not wrong. “I’m being forced to take a woman away from her family because her father traded her for a pelt I meant to give as a gift.”
“These people don’t trade and barter like we’re used to. And… It's obvious Jerrod has wanted an alliance with us since we arrived. They have bride prices for their women, and the pelt… Well, it was worth a whole hell of a lot more than a few bags of grain and a keg of mead in return.” Andrew blows out his breath. “We do need access to the Harvest Festival,” Andrew says slowly, meeting my gaze. “This is the alliance we were lacking.”
“He’s right,” Jacob breathes. “We need to be able to trade with the other tribes and barter our own wares, otherwise we risk another winter with minimal supplies.”
“We can trade in the Roguelands,” another man, Turner, cuts in. He’s young, single, and headstrong. He was also in attendance when the patriarch of Navvan basically chased us off their territory with a spear.
“It would take us over a month to reach the Roguelands with carts laden with wares to trade. It’s not a feasible option.”
Another man on the other side of the fire adds, “We need to be more careful about what we trade, otherwise all of us will end up with wives.”
A ripple of laughter echoes around the fire but it’s not enough to break through the tension in the air.
Me marrying this perfect stranger is a solution to our problems. That’s the unfortunate truth. They’re right about her being our way in, our way to get comfortable with the three tribes of the Deadlands. In the future, I’m hoping more Alphas will bring their people here to spread out and pave their own territories, and I want the tribes on my side when that happens.
Aviva is from Endova, the largest tribe. “I do have to marry her,” I tell them. “For more than one reason. We need to stay allies with Jerrod and the Endovians. We need her help back home, if I’m being honest.”
“Then you’re doing it?” Jacob asks.
“I don’t see that I have much of a choice. Plus, you’re right about the Harvest Festival. That’s our only opportunity to mingle with other people. For trade, of course. But also to beef up our own numbers. We have several single men who need to find wives and start families of their own. We need to integrate ourselves, and my wifeis how that’ll happen.” The words taste strange on my tongue.
The men confer quietly as I rise and dust off my pants. It's night. The stars are out and thick overhead, and the moon is nearly full. I should be going to bed to prepare for the upcoming hunt, but I walk past my tent and out into the cool night air.
The forest around the village is sparse and open. I wanted to explore it before we settled in at our camp, but the night took a turn. Several of my men are drunk, most of them against their will. Food and drink had been flowing freely and those who came to the meeting hall couldn’t leave without trying a glass of each of the numerous wines and meads.
We’d been fed like kings. I step over a few of my men in their wolf forms as they sleep on the cold, hard ground; totally full of food and wine.
Eventually, the soft murmuring of conversation fades, and I’m alone in the woods, my hands stuffed in my pockets as I pick my way along a dry creek bed.
I need to clear my head enough to think this through. I had no intention of marrying. Having a child? Well, perhaps. I do need an heir, but they’re ways to do that that keep me separated from the woman bearing said child. I could use a breeder like my grandfather, and just… not fall in love with her like he did. I could adopt, sure. I could say fuck it and let my pack fall to James and whatever sons he has with Dahlia.
The thought of James sends a pang of guilt ringing through my chest.
Hadley pops into my mind. The memory of that night in the car when I drove her away from Sydney’s house comes rushing back, flooding my senses. She unbuckled her seatbelt and kissed me while I was sitting at a stoplight. I’d been so surprised I didn’t know how to act, but it didn’t feel… right.
Everything from that moment forward was confusion. I wanted her, but I didn’t. I felt the bond but it was all wrong, upside down and twisted. Now I know why. She was working with the enemy, right under my nose. It was like our bond was trying to show me that so I could help her get out of the mess she made.
Instead, I killed her.
I felt our bond snap when I took her life. I felt like I was being torn to pieces when she took her last breath while my jaws were still closed around her throat.
I left Crescent Falls hoping to leave her ghost behind, but I can still feel her here, right now, watching me through the shadowed woods. It’s like she’s tugging me along, luring me deeper into the woods where the creatures from my wildest nightmares reside.
I turn to the left and follow the creek again. The water is calm and shallow enough that I can see the rocks beneath glimmering in the moonlight. A structure comes into view. An old, toppled stone building rises between the trees. In the moonlight, I catch glints of silver littered throughout, or metal, or something of the like.
I take another step toward the building, which is missing its roof and nothing more than a stone outline of what once stood there, when a soft wisp of movement catches my eye.
* * *
*Aviva*
Alpha Ryan slowly turns his eyes up to meet mine. He doesn’t relax when he sees me standing on the remnants of a stone archway. “Are you going to shoot me?” he asks, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
I hold my arrow in place, my muscles locked and tight. I don’t say a word to him as he lowers his gaze and attempts to peer inside the structure.
“What are you guarding?” he asks. “I was wondering where you ran off to during the feast.”
“You shouldn’t be this far from your camp.” I adjust the arrow so it’s aimed directly at his heart as he moves closer to the building. “There’s all kinds of dangerous things out here.”
“I think you might be the most dangerous of them all,” he says dryly, grunting a bit as he crouches to peer through the gaps in the stone wall.
I keep my arrow locked even though he seems unfazed by it. “I’m actually glad I ran into you again tonight. Third time's the charm, I guess.” He rises, his eyes meeting mine.
This is the third time we’ve encountered each other in the last day but the first time we’ve spoken. The first time, we’d been in wolf form. The second, I’d been handed off to him in the promise of marriage and ran away the second my father had his back turned.
I went home and changed out of the bed sheet dress and into something more comfortable. It’s a pale cream wool that I wove specifically for shifting. A high slit shows off my hip bone as I turn to follow him with my arrow. “What do you want? Are you here to take what you think is already yours?”
He chuckles–a deep, rolling sound. “No. I’m not.”
“Then why did you follow my scent here?”
“I can’t even pick up your scent, Aviva.” My name rolls off his tongue in his accent and it sounds… beautiful. I turn my spine to steel, my arm beginning to tremble from the strain of holding my arrow back and poised to strike. “How do you keep it covered so well?”
“If you were a better hunter, maybe you’d know.”
His eyes meet mine, a soft, dark blue in the moonlight. I can readily admit he’s handsome. He has chiseled features that make him look like some kind of god of old. His beard is neatly trimmed but thick, covering a jawline that could cut glass.
No wonder I ran off against the whispers of disappointment and awe that hugged the meeting hall. Every young woman in that room had been watching his every move while praying he was watching theirs.
“You can ask for my sister instead, you know,” I tell him.
He tucks his hands in his pockets and looks up at me. “The one who shot me through the shoulder? She’s rather young, don’t you think?”
I scowl down at him. “Not Shoshannah. Mercy is my elder sister. She’s single and of marrying age. She’s better looking than I am. You’d be happier with her.”
He rolls his lower lip between his teeth and chuckles again. “What? You don’t want to marry me? Even though we’ve known each other for so long? What has it been now… seven hours?”
“You’re a sarcastic prick,” I shout, and his answering smile works its way up my spine, leaving me slightly dizzy.
“I’ve been called worse.” He paces directly below me, unfazed by the arrow pointed at the top of his head. “You should come down before you break your neck.”
“Then we’d both be out of this marriage.”
“I don’t like this either,” he tells me, leaning casually against the column of the archway. “But I think we both know we don’t have a choice.”
“You’re an Alpha, aren’t you? Don’t your people have different customs? Isn’t that way you’re here? To try to overpower and change us? Simply throw my father off a cliff and take over the tribe like you intend to.”
He frowns at me. “No.” He picks a piece of lint from his shirt and looks up at me. “I’m here because I wanted to be. I’m here, in your neck of the woods, because I need your father as an ally, and he’s been kind to my pack so far. I understand that refusing his gift, his payment for the pelt–”
“The golden elk,” I remind him.
He rolls his eyes. “For the pelt,” he continues dryly, “it would be considered rude to deny him what he offered in exchange. So, you’re to be my wife unless you call it off.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not up to me.”
“You’d be the one marrying. You don’t have a say?”
“Of course I don’t.”
He furrows his brows. Gods, this man knows nothing about our kind, does he?
I scoff and relax my arms, sliding my arrow back in the quiver. “Did you really come here blind, with no notion of our culture and how you would be welcomed by the tribes who inhabit this land?”
With practiced grace, I jump down ten feet to the forest floor and rise, looking up at him with my hands planted on my hips. He gapes at me for a moment as he looks up at the stone archway, then down at where I now stand.
I dust off my dress even though it’s immaculate. “What? You’ve never seen someone jump before?”
“What are you?” he asks, taking a single step in my direction.
I let myself feel smug for a split second. “Just a hunter.”
His gaze sweeps over me in a way that makes every downy hair on my body stand on end. “You seem like a lot more than that.”
It’s the first time anyone has ever said anything like that to me. I bury the warmth rising in my chest, banishing it. “Ask for Mercy instead. I’m doing you a favor.”
“And would me taking your sister over you be doing you a favor?” His eyes light on mine and hold. “Do you have ties here, a lover–”
“I don’t cook.”
“I don’t need a cook.”
“I don’t like sewing unless it’s for myself.”
“All right–”
“I don’t like you,” I say pointedly, and he smiles.
“I don’t like you either.”
We stare at each other knowing this is pointless. Alpha Ryan doesn’t understand why it’s impossible for me to call this off myself. I’m just a woman. The tribes are patriarchal. I have no standing. What my father and the elders say goes.
But he does understand one thing about the tribes. When you’re given a gift, you keep it. When you’re given a blessing, you cherish it. When you’re given something you don’t like, you suck it up and accept it.
Because it’s the only way to survive in a world that's dead set on killing us.
A low growl echoes in the distant forest in emphasis. “Go back to your camp, Alpha Ryan. It’s not safe out here.” I shift before he can reply and run off in search of the noise.