Aviva
“What’s your name?” I ask in the old tongue as I lead the boy through one of the pastures, shoving chest-height strands of wheat to the side to give us a path.
He doesn’t speak for a while. I don’t press him for information, either. The fact that he’s following me is enough.
“Logan,” he says after a moment, his voice calm and cool like the breeze coming off the rolling hills in the distance.
“How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
“I thought so.” I look at him over my shoulder, smiling, but he doesn’t return the gesture. Dark circles line his eyes, and he’s incredibly thin, even for a boy his age, who all seem to be gangly and lanky. His dark, nearly black hair is pin straight and sticks up at all angles, rustling in the breeze, and he’s pale with freckles across the bridge of his nose.
A scar wraps from his left temple, over his nose, and across his right cheek. It’s… horrific, honestly. Wide and gnarled.
“How’d you get your scar?”
“I don’t remember. I’ve always had it.”
I nod, turning back to the field, squinting into the darkness as the first hill begins to rise before us. He dutifully follows as I trudge forward up the incline, my legs burning from lack of use after spending the entire day bedridden.
When we reach the top of the hill, I turn back to the village, plopping down on my ass with a dramatic sigh.
“This is what I wanted you to see.”
He stands beside me for several moments before sitting down a few feet away, his eyes reflecting in the moonlight. Silverhide sprawls out in a wash of soft, flickering amber light and raised stone buildings nestled in fields of wheat and barley that shimmer in the light of the moon. The mountains rise around the village, the highest peaks still topped with snow, and above them?
Stars fan out across the night sky in shades of the purest white to the richest blue. Violet waves of light dance against the backdrop of stars like ribbons of silk.
Logan takes a shallow breath beside me that edges on a sob.
Poor kid.
“I came here last year after leaving my homeland,” I tell him, slipping into the old tongue to the best of my ability. I’m sure the accent is off, and I’m messing up words, but so far, he seems to understand me.
“Why?”
“Because I got married,” I answer, wrapping my arms around my knees. “I left everything and everyone I knew behind. I didn’t have a choice. I was terrified. I was lonely. I wasn’t sure what my future held.”
“Did you try to leave?”
“No,” I whisper, meeting his gaze. “I had someone here keeping me tethered to this place. But he was a stranger back then. Now, he’s my family, and these are our people. I’m the Luna.”
He goes pale and glances away from me.
“You don’t have to be scared of me. I’m Aviva, but you’ve probably heard my name already. I’m Alpha Ryan’s mate.”
“He’s the big one.”
“Yes,” I laugh, resting my chin on my knee. “That’s him. He’s a kind man. A good man, and you’re safe here… but I wanted you to see the valley, to see the mountains and road leading back into the Deadlands before you make your decision.”
“You’d let me leave?”
I roll my head to look at him. I can already tell he’s a smart kid. He has a certain kind of sharpness behind those big eyes of his–something honed and deadly, perhaps, that will develop more as he gets older.
Something that tells me he’s already fully aware of the severity of his situation.
“You can’t cross the sea and go home,” I tell him. “No one has… you’re the first person to ever show up on our shores. You are in a new place, but you don’t need to be here alone. Silverhide is a friendly pack. You can stay here. If you don’t want to live with a family, we can set you up with your own house, if that would make you more comfortable.”
He picks at the grass between his legs.
“You could go to school,” I continue. “There’re boys your age in the village. They’re always causing mischief. Once their chores are done, they run wild and free through the valley. You could join them.”
He licks his lips. “I don’t know how.”
“How to what?”
“Play.”
It feels like I have a rock stuck in my throat, and it’s not because of the illness I’m trying to fight off. I should ask him the questions I have… things everyone is dying to know. Things like, “Is Emberfyll a threat to us? Are you a threat?”
But he’s just a kid.
“What do you like to do, Logan?”
“Draw,” he says quietly.
“Okay… I have paper and pencils at my house…” I roll my lip between my teeth. “What if you stayed with me?”
“And the Alpha?”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“No,” he says in a near whisper, refusing to meet my eyes. “But–the other one. Who has–” He motions toward his face and then looks at his hands.
“Alpha King Ryatt,” I say under my breath, nodding, his facial scars and numerous tattoos coming to mind. “You met him?”
“He came to…to…”
“Teshka,” I say, and he nods.
“I couldn’t understand what he was saying.”
“He was just concerned about you. We all are–”
“Because you think I’m dangerous,” he says, point black. He finally meets my gaze, holding my eyes without so much as blinking.
“No. I think you’re just a kid who lost his parents and went through an incredible tragedy. A kid who ended up here, with strangers, in a land far away from his home. I think you’re just a kid, Logan. A kid who wouldn’t survive very long out there by himself, but one day, when you’re older, you can go find your people again.”
I rise, looking down at him. He curls into himself, tucking his head between his knees. He’s likely crying and doesn’t want me to see. There’s not much else I can do or say to the boy. My heart breaks for him, though.
So, I start walking home, deciding he’s old enough to spend the night outside if he really wants to. Hell, I was out hunting at his age, spending my nights under the cover of stars. But when I reach the village, I’m not alone. He follows several paces behind me, sniffling and rubbing at his eyes. Wordlessly, he follows me up to my house where I let him inside, and quietly, almost silently, take him upstairs to the so-far unused bedrooms Ryan built this spring.
We already have a bed ready for him. He’ll have a dresser he can fill with the clothes I’m sure Freya will knit and weave for him. He stares out the window at the village below as I leave to gather some extra blankets and the paper and pencils I promised, setting them on his dresser before going down to the kitchen to rummage through the cabinets, coming up with a snack of bread, dried meat, and fruit for him.
But when I return to his room, he’s curled up in the bed, already fast asleep, tear stains on his pillow.
I back out of his room and carefully close the door, leaving it open a crack, turning the hallway light on in the event he’s scared of the dark.
But the moment my feet reach the bottom step, Ryan turns to me, stepping out of our bedroom. “Is everything okay?” he asks, running a hand down his face. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I whisper, trying to smile, but my lips only twitch. “Uhm, Logan… the boy? He’s asleep upstairs.”
Ryan raises his brows and blows out his breath. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“I know.” I walk to the couch and sit down, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep, so I went out on the deck to get some fresh air and saw him scaling the side of a house and trying to run away.”
Ryan sits beside me, stretching out with his arm roped over my shoulder. I lean against his chest, breathing in his scent, and explain the conversation I had with the boy.
He quietly listens as he draws little circles across my shoulder.
“He followed me home, so I set him up with a bed. I think he trusts me, especially since I can understand him.”
“He can stay here, of course,” Ryan says. “Poor guy. You said his name is Logan?”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s what he said. But… he could be lying about that. He’s got this scar on his face…. It’s horrible, but he told me he’s always had it.”
“Yeah, the Patriarch of Teshka was weary of that.” Ryan chews his lower lip in thought. “They tried to tell me he was a sea creature, some type of water shifter, a demon, and we should take him back out to sea, but I… obviously don’t believe that.”
“He’s a shifter, a wolf, I can smell it.”
“Me, too.”
Silence falls for several heartbeats. Then, Ryan asks, “Ryatt’s concern is that if the original story is true–that he was on a boat leaving Emberfyll, wherever that is, whatever it is, and his parents died fleeing some conflict there–there could be more people coming.”
I sit up a little straight at his tone. “What’s happening?”
“Evander is sending some of his forces to the coast, just for surveillance. He’ll be in the Deadlands for a while, it sounds like, which is great, honestly, seeing as I could use some extra help around Silverhide.”
“But he’d be at the coast, near Teshka.”
“Evander is a commander, not a grunt soldier. He’ll be here. I’m sure he’ll bring the whole family after the conversation I had with Kenna. We’ll figure out what to do with Logan–even if that means he joins our pack.”
“And he stays with us?”
We look at each other, and I think we’re both asking ourselves what we know about teenage boys–nothing, honestly, from a parenting perspective. We have an infant daughter who continuously kicks our asses, metaphorically, of course, but still.
Can we be what he needs?
“He’ll stay with us as long as he’s comfortable with it. It’ll actually be a good thing for him, I think, when it comes to integrating into our pack. He’ll have me, and you, the Alpha and Luna as backup if the other boys give him any trouble… which they will.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just like wolves, Logan’s going to have to find his place in our pack, even if it’s just temporary. That might mean getting roughed up and roughing up in return.”
“You’re not serious,” I laugh, but he’s dead serious, it seems.
“I was twelve once, remember?”
“I don’t. I didn’t know you then.”
“Well, you likely wouldn’t have recognized me, given that I was always covered in bruises from scrapping any chance I got.”
“You haven’t changed much,” I tease, leaning closer and resting my head on his chest.
“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“Thank the Goddess,” he groans, sighing deeply.
“Thank Misty,” I correct. “Her tears actually started to work.”