I was filled with a pride so fierce, so profound, it was a physical ache in my chest. This was my mate. This was the mind, the spirit, the steel I had seen on the battlefield. She was magnificent.
Kazgar was the first to speak, a slow smile spreading across his face. It was a smile of pure, predatory admiration. “The little wolf has claws,” he said, his voice filled with a new respect. “And a sharp mind.” He rose to his feet. “The decision is made. Urzog, you will see to our dead. Double the patrols in all outlying territories. Ghorza, you will oversee the cleansing of the poisoned springs.”
His dark eyes, so like my own, settled on me. “And you, brother. You were the one who took the city. You will be the one to hold it. You will return to Grayfang Pass. Not just as a general, but as itschieftain. My governor in the new territories. Stabilize the population. Fortify the walls. Prepare it for the war that is to come. Take whoever you need.”
The duty settled on my shoulders, heavy and familiar. Another war. Another front. But this time… this time felt different.
As the council dispersed, the chieftains filing out with new purpose in their steps, Kael and I were left alone with Kazgar. He walked over to her.
“You have a good head on your shoulders, sister,” he said, using the honorific for the first time. “You will be a fine mate for my brother. You make him stronger.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Go. Make our new city unbreakable.”
We walked back to our longhouse, the weight of the new reality settling between us. We were going back. Back to the city where I had captured her, the place where she had lost everything.
“Are you truly willing to return there?” I asked, my voice low. “After everything?”
She looked up at me, and there was no fear in her eyes, only a steady, resolute certainty. “That city is part of our territory now,” she said, her voice firm. Sheglanced down at the wolf-bone bracelet on her wrist. “Ourterritory. If I can help make it work, I will.”
Chapter 18
Kael
The journey back to Grayfang Pass was a different world than the one we had traversed a few short weeks ago. Then, she had been a silent, rigid captive at my back, a prize of war whose future was a terrifying unknown. Now, she rode a wiry mountain mare at my side, her seat sure and steady, the wolf-bone bracelet a stark white circle on her wrist. She was not behind me. She was beside me. An equal. A partner. The visible truth of this fact was a statement more powerful than any banner.
I led a column of two hundred of my best warriors, a force meant not just to conquer, but to hold. To govern. As we rode, I found my gaze drifting to her constantly. The way the wind caught the fiery strands of her short hair. The set of her jaw as she stared ahead, her stormy eyes taking in the landscape with a soldier’s practiced assessment. A fierce, possessive prideswelled in my chest so often I felt it might crack my ribs.Mine.Not by force, but by will.
We crossed the old, crumbling demarcation wall, leaving the vibrant, living forests of my people behind and entering the scarred, weary lands of hers. The sight of the gutted hills and the poison-sheened rivers filled me with the familiar, cold rage, but this time it was different. It was not just an anger at a historic crime against my people. It was a fury on her behalf, as well. This blighted, dying land was the world that had made her, the world she had been forced to fight and lie and bleed just to survive in. The Orcs had been a threat to her life. Her own people had been a threat to her soul.
As the formidable, ugly walls of Grayfang Pass came into view, a new tension settled over our column. This was no longer Orc territory by ancient right. This was a conquered city, a bleeding wound, and we were the salt.
The Orc garrison commander, a grim-faced brute named Harg, met us at the shattered gates. His relief at our arrival was palpable.
“General,” he grunted, his fist thumping his chest in salute. His eyes flickered to Kael, his expression amixture of awe and confusion, before returning to me. “It is good you have returned. The city is… restless.”
As we rode through the main thoroughfare, I saw what he meant. The city I had conquered had been a half-empty military outpost. This was something else entirely. The streets were choked with people, their faces pale and pinched with hunger and fear. They were refugees, their threadbare clothes and gaunt faces telling a story of outlying farms and tiny villages abandoned in a panic. They had flooded into Grayfang, seeking safety in its walls, only to find themselves trapped in a conquered city.
They parted before my war beast, a sea of silent, resentful humanity. And they stared at Kael. I
A man, his face familiar from my memory of the battle—one of the grunts who had fought to the last—stepped forward. His eyes, burning with a venomous fury, locked onto Kael. He spat on the ground at the feet of her horse.
“Traitor,” he hissed, the word a poison dart in the tense silence.
I felt a low, murderous growl build in my chest, the beast rising, demanding blood for the insult to my mate. My hand tightened on the handle of my axe.
But Kael… she did not even flinch. She did not look at the man. She did not acknowledge his existence. Her gaze remained fixed forward, her chin high, her expression unreadable stone. She was untouchable, refusing to be stained by the mud he had thrown at her. Her strength was a cold, sharp thing that cut through my rage and left me in awe. I made a mental note of the man’s face. His reckoning would come, but not here. Not now. Her dignity demanded a better stage.
We dismounted at the command tower, the stone edifice now a symbol of Orcish authority. I left my warriors to see to their billets and strode into the main hall, Kael at my side.
I formally relieved Harg of command, assuming the title that my brother had given me: Chieftain of Grayfang Pass. My first decree was swift.
“Send riders to the outlying settlements that have not been abandoned. Inform them they are under my protection. Any who swear fealty will be given food and seed from our stores. They are our subjects now, not our enemies.” Harg looked shocked but nodded. It was not the Orcish way of old. It was my way. “And send criers through the city. There will be a publicassembly in the main square in three days’ time. All residents, Orc and human, will attend. The new laws will be read.”
I looked at Kael. “You will stand with me. You will translate my words. They need to see a human face, hear a human voice, delivering Orcish law. They need to see that this is not a slaughter. It is a new beginning.”
She simply nodded, her expression serious.
After the commanders had been dismissed to carry out my orders, Kael and I were left alone in the vast, cold strategy room. The great oak map table still dominated the space. It was the same room where my warriors had thrown her to her knees, the same room where I had executed the cowardly merchant before her eyes. The air was thick with the ghosts of what we had been.
She walked to the center of the room, to the very spot where she had knelt. She ran her hand over the cold stone floor.
