Page 25 of Claimed By the Wolf Heir

His left hand closes into the loose fist I've been tracking from the first night he collapsed against my threshold, the fist that holds whatever he isn't saying.

"Tomorrow, then," he says. And the way he says it makes the word sound like a promise I didn't agree to and can't refuse.

My hands are steady.

My pulse isn't.

I turn back to the worktable. The mortar and pestle sit where they've always sat. The herbs hang where they've always hung.

The infirmary is exactly the room it was yesterday, and the woman standing in it is not. The distance between those two facts is the width of a hand pressed against unmarked skin, a mouth that almost smiled at Leif's dry observation, a heartbeat accelerating for reasons no compound in my pharmacopeia can address.

The pestle finds the mortar again. The sound fills the stone.

And behind me, close enough that I can feel the heat of him without turning around, Eirik hasn't moved. His breathing has changed, slower and deeper, carrying the cadence of someone who isn't going anywhere and has no intention of making this easier for either of us.

I grind. He breathes. And outside the fortress, on the northwestern ridge, wolves in Drakfell colors are watching the tree line.

8

EIRIK

Ican't stop thinking about her mouth. This isn't a productive state of mind for a packless alpha who should be focused on the Drakfell scouts on the northwestern ridge, the uncle who wants him dead, and the borrowed fortress whose tolerance of his presence has quietly outgrown the medical excuse that got him through the gates. But I've never been good at should, and the memory of Signe's mouth is louder than strategy.

It's been days since she put her mouth on me in the infirmary, and we haven't talked about it. We haven't talked about much of anything, but last night she said 'I'll see you tomorrow' in the voice she uses for wound care and discharge notes, and when I asked her why, she couldn't answer.

She didn't need to. The answer was in the way her scent pushed through the suppressant hard enough that I could taste the omega beneath the alpine bloodroot.

My wolf paces inside me like an animal in a space too small for what he's carrying. I need air. I need fire. I need the forge.

Leif is already at the anvil when I arrive, drawing out a piece of flat stock with the steady, unhurried rhythm of a wolf who treats iron the way Signe treats injuries: with the kind of attention that doesn't tolerate interruption.

The forge chamber sits at the base of the western tower, the ceiling blackened from years of smoke, the walls carrying a patina of soot and mineral deposits that give the stone a dark, oiled sheen. Tools hang from iron hooks along the walls, each one positioned where the hand expects to find it without looking.

Leif doesn't look up when I walk in. He nods toward the second anvil, where a half-finished bracket sits cooling on the face, and the nod is the only invitation I'm going to get.

I pick up the bracket. I find the tongs. The coal bed is running hot enough that the heat pushes back against my face when I lean in to seat the metal, and the push is the first honest sensation I've had since leaving the infirmary.

The forge strips everything down. The corridor politics, the scent management, the careful calibration of how much space I'm allowed to occupy in a pack that isn't mine. None of it survives the fire. There's the metal, the hammer, the anvil, and the question of whether the next blow lands where I intended. The simplicity is a mercy I didn't earn.

I work the bracket for a while before the silence gets too heavy. Leif's rhythm on the other anvil is steady, his strikes landing with the clean accuracy of someone who has done this particular task so many times that the motion lives in his shoulders instead of his head.

He isn't going to ask. That's the arrangement we've built over the days I've been spending here. He provides the fire and the work. I provide the noise. The exchange suits us both.

"She's in my head," I say, and the confession comes out between hammer strikes, timed to the impact so the words hit the air with the ring of steel behind them. "Every corridor. Every meal. Every time I close my eyes. I can't get clear of her, and the not getting clear is getting worse."

Leif's hammer doesn't change rhythm. He draws the flat stock another inch, flips it, draws again.

"She put her mouth on me," I say, because the forge is the only place in this fortress where the truth doesn't echo. "In the infirmary. She decided to cross a line she'd drawn, and she did it with the precision she brings to sutures. I've been replaying it ever since. Every time my mind should be on Balric's scouts, it goes back to her."

The bracket glows. I pull it from the fire and set it on the anvil, and the first strike sends a spray of scale across the stone floor.

Leif sets down his hammer. He picks up the tongs, turns his piece on the anvil, and examines the edge with the focused attention of a wolf deciding whether the metal has earned one more heat or needs to cool.

"Your bracket's crooked," he says.

I look down. The bracket is crooked.

"Your strikes are landing off-center because you're not watching the face," he says. "You're watching the fire, and the fire doesn't care where your hammer falls." He picks up his own hammer and goes back to work. "Watch the face."