He stopped ten paces from the edge of the camp. Close enough to be heard without raising his voice, but far enough away that there was space to fight if it came to that. I truly hoped it wouldn’t. His wolves fanned out behind him, settling into a loose semicircle that mirrored our defensive crescent. They didn't shift. They stayed in wolf form, a deliberate choice—it kept the threat visible, kept the teeth on display, and it meant that when Karik spoke, he'd be the only voice. The only one who mattered. The silence between the two formations was thick enough to choke on.
"Rivik. You look well, old friend. The winter must have been kind to Hanging Rock as you’ve been able to provide for new faces."
I didn't respond immediately. Let the silence stretch. Let him stand there in the cold with his wolves behind him and wonder whether I was going to speak at all. My father had taught me that too—the value of making a man wait.
"We are not old friends, Karik." I let the words drop into the space between us, flat and cold. "And you are standing on ground that does not belong to you."
Karik smiled. It was the kind of smile that never reached the eyes—a baring of teeth dressed up as warmth. "Such hostility. I come in peace, Rivik. Merely to discuss a matter of mutual concern."
"You come with twenty wolves in battle formation. That is not peace. That is theatre."
A ripple of something moved through the Broken Ridge wolves behind him—not quite a growl, not quite a shift in posture, but an acknowledgement that their alpha had been challenged. Karik raised one hand, casual as swatting a fly, and they settled.
"A precaution," he said mildly. "The wilderness is dangerous. Surely you understand." His eyes moved past me, scanning the line of my wolves, the shelters behind them, the cluster of noncombatants pressed against the inner caves.
Then his gaze stopped.
I saw the exact moment he found them. His head tilted slightly, the way a predator's did when it caught movement at the edge of its vision, and his lips curved into something that turned my stomach.
"Ah," he said. "There they are." He took a step forward, casual, as though he were simply strolling through his own camp. Two of my wolves on the line growled, low and simultaneous, and he stopped. The smile didn't waver. "You shelter what belongsto me," he said, his voice carrying clearly in the still air. "Two females. One wolf, one human. Both taken from my hunting party before they could be properly claimed."
"Claimed." The word tasted like ash. "You attacked four travellers in neutral territory, wounded two of them, and left them to die. That is not a claim. That is savagery."
"They were on the edge of your territory, not within it. The boundary stones are quite clear on that point, as I'm sure your elders have reminded you." Karik's smile widened. "And I did not leave them to die. I was in the process of collecting them when your wolves interfered."
I didn't turn around. I couldn't afford to take my eyes off Karik. But I heard Ellie's voice, low and strained, translating in quick, clipped speech flavoured by her unusual accent. Nathan's response, louder, angrier, the words I couldn't understand but the tone I read perfectly. Outrage. Fear wearing the mask of fury.
Karik's eyes tracked the exchange with open amusement. "The weak male speaks loudly for someone who could not defend his own female." His gaze settled on Nathan with the idle contempt of a wolf watching a rabbit puff itself up. "I remember him. He went down before my wolves had even finished their approach. Pathetic."
"They were within a half-day's walk of our western boundary," I said. "Closer to our territory than yours. And your wolves weren't claiming them. They were brutalising them. One of the humans had a broken leg. You nearly injured the females when you went after them.”
"Unfortunate." Karik didn't sound remotely troubled. "My wolves can be... enthusiastic. But the outcome would have been the same. They were found, they were taken, and they would have been brought to Broken Ridge. You intercepted. That makes this a dispute between alphas, and I am here to resolve it." He paused, letting that settle. "Civilly."
Behind me, I heard Ellie's voice again translating for Nathan and Megan. Her words came quickly, stumbling slightly over the more complex phrases, but she was keeping up. I hadn't known she'd progressed this far with the language. The knowledge landed somewhere between pride and anguish.
Nathan's response was immediate and explosive. Even without understanding the words, every wolf on both sides of the line read the tone—raw fury, barely leashed, the sound of a male who knew he was outmatched and hated it with every fibre of his being. Ellie's voice followed, translating his words into our tongue, and I heard the strain in it, the way she was trying to smooth the edges of what was clearly something far less diplomatic than what came out.
"He says... Megan is his mate. He will not give her up."
Karik's eyebrows rose. He looked past me toward the sound of Nathan's voice with an expression of such thorough, dismissive amusement that even I felt the sting of it on Nathan's behalf.
"The weak male claims a mate bond?" Karik said. "How touching. And yet, when my wolves came, he could not protect her. Could not even stand. He lay in the dirt while she screamed." He tilted his head, eyes bright with malice. "A true mate would have died before allowing that. Perhaps the bond is not as strong as he believes."
A snarl came from behind me as Nathan was told what Karik had said. The Broken Ridge wolves behind Karik shifted, a ripple of aggression moving through the formation like wind through grass. Several of them stepped forward, hackles raised, lips peeled back from teeth that gleamed. The message was clear. Nathan's outburst had been noted, and it had not been appreciated.
I heard Ellie translating again, her voice tight and quick, and then Megan's. I caught the movement in my peripheral vision. Megan's hand on Nathan's arm, drawing him back. Not gently.The grip of a woman who understood the situation far better than the man she was trying to save. Good. Someone needed to control him before he got them all killed.
Karik watched the exchange with the lazy satisfaction of a cat watching mice argue amongst themselves. Then his gaze slid sideways, past Nathan, past Megan, and settled on Ellie.
Something in my chest went very, very cold.
"The wolf female," Karik said, his tone shifting to something almost conversational, "may indeed be mated to the weak male. I will concede the possibility, however unlikely. Mate bonds are sacred, even when they are wasted on the undeserving." He paused, letting the insult land, then continued with the careful precision of a man laying a trap. "But the human female is not mated. Not claimed. Not protected by any bond recognised under pack law."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.
"She has no pack," Karik continued, his voice carrying with practiced ease across the space between us. "She carries no bond. She bears no mark. She belongs to no pack, no male, no one." His eyes stayed on Ellie, and the hunger in them was not the kind that had anything to do with desire. It was the hunger of acquisition. Of ownership. "She is unclaimed. And by the old laws, an unclaimed female found in disputed territory may be taken by the pack that found her first."
Behind me, I heard Ellie's voice falter mid-translation. Just for a heartbeat—a catch in her breath, a stumble over a word—before she forced herself to continue. The sound of her voice breaking, even that fractionally, made my wolf spirit throw itself against the inside of my ribs so hard I nearly staggered.
