Aviva
Alpha Ryan shifts back to his human form, cloaked in shadows. He’s breathing heavily as he lumbers through the camp, crouching to rip into a clothing cache.
I watch his shadow in silence, my heart beating out of rhythm. I only look away when the wind parts the treetops and allows moonlight to spread over the clearing again, illuminating the hellhound lying broken and in pieces at the very edge of the tree line.
It takes two shallow breaths before it starts to fall in on itself, turning to ash that’s carried away by the wind.
I slowly turn my gaze back to Alpha Ryan who is standing now, wearing a pair of pants that don’t fit him at all, the button holding them in place undone. Moonlight ghosts over his frame. Instead of tight, wiry muscles, he’s just… huge. There’s nothing lean about him. I can see the outline of his abdominals as he turns slightly to face me. The muscles in his chest and shoulders flex as he pulls on a shirt, tugging it down over dark chest hair that trails down to his navel and down… further.
I’ve never seen a man like him before. A man who can kill a hellhound with his claws and fangs. I’m used to being both predator and prey while in these woods. I’ve killed rogues. I’ve fended off rival packs’ people.
Alpha Ryan might be the most dangerous thing in this forest right now. I doubt he’s ever been prey in his life.
My eyes slowly slide back to the swirling pile of ash.
“Are you hurt?”
“No,” I whisper. I’m not sure he can hear the word. My throat aches, and my lungs burn.
He stalks toward me then stops, his eyes narrowed and nearly black in the moonlight. But his expression is fierce–furious. “That was impressively idiotic,” he snaps, his voice dripping with malice. “I watched you fall a fucking hundred feet, Aviva. You could have died! You should be dead, actually. I can’t believe you made it.”
“I–”
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he roars, and every fine, downy hair on my body stands on end at his tone. Anger, yes. It’s clear that he’s fucking furious right now. But there’s something else, something raw and broken that laces through his words and fills the empty space with questions, and I’m not sure I want the answers. “We could have been hunting deer, Aviva. That was the plan. Instead, I watched you scale a fucking mountain and then nearly fall to your death!”
“I was always planning on coming here and hunting a goat,” I snap, but my voice trembles. “This had nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me. You came at me before the hunt began. You taunted me. When I made our wager I thought–” He sucks in a breath, still standing several yards away. “This was my fault.”
I clutch my broken arrows in my hands and squeeze. “What are you talking about? How is this your fault?”
“I pushed you–”
“I agreed to the wager!”
“You’re a show off!”
“I wasn’t showing off for you!”
“Then what was this about?” he growls, teeth bared, his hands curling into fists at his sides. Another blast of cold wind comes down the mountain and rushes over the camp, ruffling the thick wool of the dead goat separating us. “Do you even understand what it was like watching you fall, Aviva? Knowing that I’d find you here in pieces and have to take you home to your father with your blood staining my hands? I didn’t shut you down like I should have. I should have dragged you back to the village the moment I realized what you were hunting. I let you do this. I made the wager knowing it would set you off because I–” He hesitates to finish, closing his eyes for a moment. Again, a raw, empty emotion fills his voice as he says with remarkable, heartbreaking calm, “I have enough blood on my hands already. I would have never forgiven myself if anything had happened to you.”
I look down at the goat, saying, “It’s customary in my culture, when a woman marries, to give her parents something as a parting gift.” My throat nearly closes around the words. “When I was young and training as a hunter, I knew that one day I’d have to marry, and I promised myself that when that day came, I wouldn’t give my father a new tapestry or berries I’d picked in the glen. I’d bring him a golden elk pelt, or I’d bring him a goat. You beat me to the golden elk, so I decided I’d go to Fell Valley, where our ancestors are from, and I’d bring him a goat so he could have the pure white pelt and horns, and every time he looked at them, he’d be reminded that his daughter trained for years, spent every night in the forest, just to bring him back a piece of our history before I left our pack forever. I was going to do this whether it was you, or some other man, standing beside me at the temple.”
He holds my gaze, steady and unwavering.
I lick my lips, finding them dry, and say, “You won, Alpha Ryan.”
He furrows his brows, his mouth ticking into an angry sort of smile. “I didn’t win.” He motions to the goat, but I shake my head.
“I didn’t make a clean kill. That was one of your terms. The rock that fell struck the goat. I fell on top of him. You…” I look back at the ashy remains of the hellhound, still wondering if this is some sort of weird dream or uncanny vision from the Goddess Herself. “You killed a hellhound on your own. You made a clean kill. You win.”
Silence falls between us–thick and heavy. So heavy I could cut through it with my blades if I had the strength to move my arms.
“It doesn’t count. I have nothing to show for it.”
“You have me. I’ll go willingly.” I barely recognize my own voice. It’s a total, complete submission. It’s a soft version of myself I don’t understand, but it feels right, at least right now. Maybe it’s because we both just stared death in the face, but Alpha Ryan also softens, his shoulders slumping, his eyes sweeping over me as he inspects me for injuries I haven’t mentioned or noticed.
I wince and curl into myself as another gust of bitter wind bursts through the camp.
“Come on,” he says steadily, closing the distance between us. “There’s a small cave nearby. I saw it when I was trying to find a way up the cliff.”
“You were going to try to stop me?”
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.” He bends to gather my scattered weapons. I move on unsteady feet. I watch him make his way through the camp, gathering supplies in a leather bag leftover from the hunters who got the hell out of here for obvious reasons. He steps through the pile of ash leftover from the hellhound and pulls two bedrolls from what used to be the tent then tilts his head toward the trees.
“I have to process the goat.”
“I’ll come back for it,” he says quietly. Without a word, I follow him out of the clearing and through the trees, following the base of the cliff. I don’t bother glancing up. I don’t need to be reminded of how far I fell. I feel it in each step I take. My bare feet ache, and my toes are practically frozen.
I deserve it. It was stupid. What had he said? Impressively idiotic. That’s a new one, but it’s fitting. I refuse to admit I’d been showing off because I don’t believe that was the case, but he’d said impressively… so…. he might have been impressed.
Actually, why do I care?
I huff a breath, and he looks over his shoulder at me. I refuse to meet his gaze, focusing instead on the cliff, watching the shadows play over its jagged gray surface.
Within a few minutes, we reach the cave he mentioned, which is little more than a cleft with a narrow open space within. It doesn’t stretch into the cliff more than twelve feet, but it’s enough space to work with. He dumps the bag and bedrolls inside, then leaves without a word. I also leave, gathering dry sticks and stones to build a fire ring at the entrance of the cave, and have a small warming fire started by the time he returns with the goat resting over his shoulders, carrying it like it weighs nothing.
“Thank you for starting the fire,” he says by way of greeting as he sets the goat down. He tosses me a pair of rolled up socks he must have found at the camp.
I accept them, rolling them on as I continue to warm myself in front of the flames, working on one of my knives. “Aren’t you going to say it’s not safe to have a fire in case there’s more danger lurking in the woods?”
“Like I said before, you’re the most dangerous thing out here,” he smirks, and I feel like a weight is being lifted off my chest. Whatever raw, icy emotion he’s conveyed earlier is gone, replaced by his usual slightly aloof friendliness.
I meet his eyes and quickly look away, going back to sharpening one of my blades with a rock. The moon hangs overhead as we start to skin the goat. I wordlessly guide him through the process, and he follows my lead, neither of us speaking until the moon is starting to fade from view, and the sky is turning from inky black night to a deep violet, the stars beginning to dim.
The silence starts to become too much, so I finally speak, my voice raspy from lack of use. “How did you kill that hellhound? No one has ever done that before.”
He shifts his weight as he rolls up the goat skin into a tight bundle. “Like a wolf would. I tore out its throat.”
I shiver even though I’ve done the same thing to numerous rogues. “But it was a hellhound. No one has ever killed one before. And the witches–”
“They’re no witches left in the Deadlands, at least any witches that don’t bend the knee to the queen in Moonrise. Any hellhounds left are just roaming aimlessly,” he cuts in, moving on to packing up the meat.
I shift my weight. “How do you know that?”
“Because I didn’t just come here to set up a new pack territory.” He looks at me, his eyes shining like raw sapphires in the faint light of early morning. “What have you heard about me, Aviva?”
I frown, not liking the tone he just used. He arches a brow. I blow out my breath, leaning my head against the rock face at my back. “That you’re cursed.”
“Well, that’s a new one. I was thinking you’d say who my family is–”
“I heard that you murdered your own mate, that you were cast out of your homeland by the king, and now your heart is made of stone.” I look at him and instantly regret my words. His eyes are on the sunrise, his expression unreadable but set and cold.
A chill runs up the length of my spine as I straighten. “Did you do that?”
“It’s complicated.” He clears his throat and rises.
“Alpha–”
“My name is Ryan,” he says coldly. “To you, it’s Ryan.”
“Okay….” I hop to my feet as he kicks dirt over the fire and starts shrugging out of his shirt. “Hey, you were the one who asked what I heard about you. I answered.”
His eyes sweep over my face. “I know.”
“Then why–”
“Nothing matters more to me than my pack and my family,” he says, holding my gaze. “Nothing. I’ll do what I need to do to keep them safe and secure. Even if that means hunting every rogue and ancient creature still plaguing the Deadlands.” He pauses, his lips parting slightly as if he’s rolling his next words over his tongue, debating. “Even if it means marrying a stranger because I need the alliance with her father and can’t promise I’ll ever be able to love her.”
I don’t know why this affects me so much. I’ve never looked at marriage as an act of love. It’s survival. It’s the act of carrying on our kind. Of aligning our packs.
But hearing Ryan say it… well, it doesn’t feel good.
“I did kill my mate,” he confirms without so much as blinking, and takes off his shirt. “So, now you know. The rumors are true, and I’m giving you the choice now. Am I marrying you, or your sister?”
I watch the way the sunrise plays over his features, illuminating him in gold. “Did she deserve it?” I ask in the very same way he asked me that question yesterday morning at the creek after Mercy slapped the hell out of me, when I’d told him I’d considered hitting her back.
He scans my face, and as the sunrise bathes us in gold, I swear I see one corner of his mouth tick into a smile despite the raw pain behind his eyes.
“You–or your sister?” he asks again, softer this time.