Chapter 3 Already inside.
Chapter Three
Already Inside
The smell of blood hit me before the screaming did.
Thick and metallic like it carried something that had no business being in Ironblood territory. I stopped at the tree line and pressed myself against the nearest trunk and looked out at the village.
It was in chaos.
Warriors were shifting mid-run, fur bursting through skin, bones cracking as they dropped to all fours and launched themselves toward the eastern fence. Women were pulling children inside. Someone was shouting orders I didn't need the alarm bell to know it was,
The Ashgrave wolves.
They looked bigger than I expected. Not just in size but in the way they moved. More like animals that had been trained rather than born. They had come through the eastern fence clean, without trouble or searching for a way in. They had known exactly where to breach.
My stomach turned as I realized that
They knew because someone told them. Someone inside the pack.
I pressed harder against the tree and forced myself to think. I had no weapon. I had no wolf. I was the Alpha's last born daughter who could not shift and had just been publicly humiliated in front of her entire pack less than twenty four hours ago. Every logical part of my brain was telling me to get back inside Maren's house and wait for the warriors to handle it. But I couldn't bear to.
Then I heard my father's voice cut through the noise.
He was somewhere near the center of the village, still in his human form, trying to direct his men. His voice was steady but I could hear the effort it took to keep it that way. He was holding the line with words because his warriors were outnumbered and he was aware.
I stepped out of the tree line.
I did not have a plan. I have to be honest about that. I did not walk out of those trees with some strategy in my head. I walked out because standing still felt like dying slower and I have never been good at slow.
I grabbed a fallen branch from the ground as I crossed the open ground toward the village.
The first Ashgrave wolf I encountered was crouched over a fallen warrior near the well at the center of the square. The warrior was still breathing, I could see his chest moving, but he was not getting up. The Ashgrave wolf had out powered him so he won't get up.
I did not think so. I swung the branch.
It hitted the side of the wolf's head hard enough to knock it sideways. It turned toward me, lips pulling back, a deep growl coming out of his mouth that was more machine than animal. Yellow eyes locked onto mine.
I held the branch in both hands and stood my ground.
It lunged at me.
I moved left and it caught my shoulder instead of my throat, claws dragging four lines across my arm as I hit the ground and rolled. The pain was sharp and immediate. I came up swinging and the branch cracked across the wolf's snout and it fell back.
Before it could recover one of our warriors hit it from the side and drove it away from me.
I did not stop to catch my breath or regain strength. I grabbed the fallen warrior by the collar and dragged him backward toward the nearest house. He was heavy. My shoulder screamed. But I still dragged him anyway.
I got him through the door and left him with the woman inside then turned back to the square.
There were more of them than I had first counted.
The next twenty minutes were the longest of my life.
I was not a warrior. I had no wolf. I only had basic training, every Alpha's child did, but I had never fought a real battle . I stayed out of the direct lines of engagement and did the things no one else was doing. I pulled injured wolves clear of the fight. I found weapons that had been dropped and got them back to the people who needed them. I blocked, I dodged, I took hits I could not avoid and kept moving because stopping meant dying.
My arm was bleeding steadily. I stopped noticing it after a while.
but I didn't notice my father.
He had finally shifted, his large grey wolf moving through the fight with the authority of an Alpha who had been doing this for thirty years. The Ashgrave wolves gave him space instinctively, that bone-deep reaction that other wolves have around a dominant Alpha. But there were too many of them and they were not retreating.
They were pushing forward Slowly and steadily, like they were not trying to win a battle so much as exhaust one.
Like they were waiting for something.
The thought settled in my chest like ice.
They were not here to destroy the pack.
They were here to keep us busy.
I turned and ran back toward Maren's house.
The door was open when I got there. I remember I never left it open. I had pulled it shut behind me when I ran out.
I pushed inside. The two cups were still on the table. The herbs were still hanging from the ceiling. The chair where Maren had been sitting was empty.
Maren was on the floor.
She was alive. I could hear her breathing before I even crossed the room, shallow and uneven but at least there was breath. I dropped to my knees beside her .
"Maren. Maren, look at me."
Her eyes found my face slowly.
"They came for me," she whispered. "They knew I was about to tell you."
The ice in my chest spread.
"Who? Who did this to you?"
She lifted one hand and I took it. Her grip was weak. Without the strength she had shown me earlier.
"Listen to me carefully," she said. "The name I give you will change everything. You cannot unhear it. Once you know, you are in danger. Real danger, more than what you saw today."
"Tell me," I said.
She pulled me closer. Her mouth was at my ear.
She said a name.
And the world I had know
n for eighteen years cracked straight down the middle.
