Anassa moves closer to me and I put my hand up on her silver-white fur, using her form to steady myself. Gazing upward, I look into her yellow eyes. Suddenly, it’s like another wall has flown open in my consciousness, one that I didn’t even know was there. A vast library flows through it—ancient knowledge passed through the direwolves, given only to the leaders of each pack.
My knees start to shake. I can’t evenbreatheunder the crushing weight of it all.
Anassa’s carefully maintained distance has disappeared. Either she’s chosen to fully forgive me for the other night… or she has no choice, now that we’re an alpha pair.
“There must…” I swallow, trying to pick my own words out of the chaos. “There must be some mistake,” I finally manage. The shivering echo of my voice sounds small even to my own ears. Pleading, almost. “I’m just a Rawbond. I don’t even come from a Bonded family, and I barely know how to?—”
Siegrid’s hand cuts through the air like the swipe of a claw. “Enough.”
Cold sweat causes my shirt to cling to my back beneath my jacket as I stare at her like a woman awaiting her sentencing.
Siegrid lowers her hand, resting it calmly on the table. “Do you accuse the direwolves of making amistakein choosing their leaders?” The danger in her voice is evident, but the sound of her massive wolf’s low, warning growl drives her point home.
There will be no resistance.
“This is not a debate, girl. The wolves have convened, they have chosen, and Anassa will lead Strategos. Which means you, as her rider, will serve as Strategos Alpha.” Siegrid’s voice is frigid with finality.
I resist the urge to hold myself, to dig my nails painfully into my palms, to turn andrunall the way back to the Eastern Quarter.
Instead, I reach for Anassa, hoping for comfort. Some wisdom or encouragement, perhaps, considering she’s the one who’s truly been chosen here. Instead, I’m plunged back into that endless ocean of suffocating knowledge. It presses on my mind like waves against a shore, threatening to drag me out to sea and drown me.
Siegrid continues to stare. I can feel the steady eyes of the other Bonded soldiers on me. Siegrid’s wolf lowers its head, gaze violating.
And I stand here, not even entirely certain as to what an alpha is meant to do.
What does this mean for me, truly? I’ve been so focused on surviving and finding Saela that I’ve barely had any energy left to understand the nuance of pack politics.
I tighten my hands into fists and square my shoulders. “Why me? Why us?” My voice carries more steadily this time.
Siegrid’s expression shifts away from that unfeeling, authoritative intensity. It’s replaced by something bordering on pity. “The wolves see things that humans cannot. They know what’s coming. And for whatever reason,” she says, “they believe you—and Anassa together—are what Strategos needs.”
The massive doors behind me burst open with a crack, the knockers rattling against wood. Egith strides past a breathless messenger. She’s somewhat scattered herself, but she drops into a formal bow before Siegrid seamlessly.
Or she would have, if she hadn’t frozen mid-motion the moment she saw me. Egith’s sharp eyes dart between me, Siegrid, and our wolves, analyzing the palpable tension in the space between us.
“Rise, Beta Egith,” Siegrid commands. “We have much to discuss.”
Watching Siegrid explain the wolves’ decision to Egith is like sitting back and letting someone wrap a noose around my throat. I watch her expression tighten with every word, pinches of barely suppressed emotion breaking through her stony front with the words “alpha” and “final.”
It’s shock, initially. Then disbelief, with an incredulous look thrown in my direction. Then something harder to parse in its nuance. Butdespondentwould be a very charitable word for it.
She’s heartbroken that she’s been passed over for the likes of me.
A Rawbond who begged to be let free at the beginning of the Trials. A pack member who recently shut out her direwolf and packmates during a moment of crisis. A ladder-climber sleeping with a royal.
And a commoner, at that.
“May I speak freely?” Egith says. Her entire body looks like it’s made of stone. She’s eerily still.Calm before the storm, I think to myself.
Siegrid nods, and I prepare myself for a verbal evisceration. And maybe a physical one, right after.
“This is unprecedented,” Egith says. She does not raise her voice. She addresses Siegrid directly, gaze unflinching. “The pack is already destabilized by Alpha Markos’s death. To put an untrained Rawbond in charge now, when we’re so crucial to the war effort?—”
“The wolves have chosen,” Siegrid interrupts.
Egith doesn’t flinch. She only bows her head.
“Though you do raise a valid point about the war,” Siegrid continues. “I’m not sure how we’re going to have this… neophyte… leading Strategos at the front when she hasn’t even passed her Trials and graduated.” Her terrifying gaze returns to me, and tension knots up my shoulders. “Well,Alpha. What do you propose?”
