Page 39 of Claimed By the Wolf Heir

12

EIRIK

My wolf scents them before the patrol captain's report reaches the training yard. The scent carries a signature I'd know blindfolded in a blizzard: Drakfell mountain soil, volcanic mineral, glacier runoff, the cold stone of the passes I grew up running. They're on the northwestern ridge, closer than yesterday. The recent patrol reports say they've been testing the perimeter approaches after dark, probing the gaps in the coverage.

My wolf doesn't flinch from the recognition. He leans into it with the focused hunger of an animal who has been waiting for the wolves who killed his father to come within reach. The hunger has nothing to do with fear. It has everything to do with unfinished violence.

I'm running combat forms in the yard when the horn sounds, the pattern signaling visitors at the gate rather than the alarm sequence. The forms aren't idle exercise. Gunnar put me in the regular training rotation and the patrol wolves have started adjusting their spacing to account for my position, which means I've crossed from guest to variable in the fortress's defensive thinking.

I drop the training blade and head for the courtyard. I make it as far as the archway before I see him.

Balric walks through the fortress gates with the easy stride of a wolf who has never questioned whether the ground beneath him belongs to someone else. He looks older somehow than the man I remember. Memory is unreliable when the last time you saw a face it was lit by the blade that killed your father. What hasn't changed is the expression, warm and approachable, the kind of face that makes wolves lean toward it before they've decided to.

He wore that face at my father's council table while they discussed patrol routes and border disputes and the cost of grain shipments from the lowlands. He was wearing it when the blade came out.

My body remembers before my mind catches up. The scar tissue across my shoulder pulls tight, the claw marks Balric's wolves left when I fought my way out of the hall. The pull reaches down through the muscle into the place where the three-step gap lives.

Three steps between me and my father's chair. Three steps I didn't cross in time. The distance was nothing. The hesitation was everything.

Three wolves flank him, diplomatic escort rather than soldiers, though the distinction is cosmetic and Balric knows it. He looks at the fortress walls with the practiced appreciation of a man who knows how to make admiration feel like a compliment rather than an assessment. He's good at this. He's always been good at this.

The wolves who followed him into the council chamber didn't follow him because he threatened them. They followed him because he made the decision to kill his own brother sound like the responsible choice, and the worst part is that some of them still believe it was.

My left fist closes. My wolf goes still, and the stillness is the kind that ends with blood on the ground.

Gunnar's hand catches my arm before I clear the archway. The beta's grip is economical, precise, delivering the warning through force instead of words.

"Stellan's order," he says. "You don't go near the hall."

"That's my uncle."

"I know who he is." Gunnar's voice doesn't soften. "The forge. Now."

I go to the forge because the alternative is the courtyard. If I get within arm's reach of Balric before the urge to kill him burns off, Stellan's diplomacy dies with whatever I do next.

Leif is at the anvil. He looks up when I come through the door, reads whatever is on my face, and nods toward the second station without asking. The coal bed has fresh fuel. The tongs are laid out.

He knew I'd be here before I did. Either instinct, or the fact that Leif pays attention to the same things I do: the horn, the tension in the corridors, the silence that falls over a fortress when the threat walks through the front door.

I pick up the hammer. The weight is right.

The first strike lands harder than the metal needs. Leif doesn't comment.

"He's here." I hit the stock again. Scale flakes and scatters across the anvil face. "Balric. In the great hall. Shaking hands and making arguments and charming the room with the same warmth he used the night he killed my father, and I'm supposed to stand here and reshape scrap."

Leif draws out his piece with measured strokes. The rhythm doesn't change.

"He cut my father's throat while I stood there and watched." The stock warps under the force. I flip it and try to correct. "And now he's up there charming wolves who took me in, while I'm down here because Stellan decided I'm too dangerous to be in the same room."

Leif turns his piece. Examines the edge with the unhurried focus of a wolf deciding whether the metal has earned another heat. Sets it back in the fire.

"Stellan's right," he says. "You are."

The words land with the flat accuracy of a strike that hits exactly where it's aimed. I want to argue. The stock on my anvil is warped past correcting, and the evidence of what I'd bring into that hall is sitting between us on the anvil face.

"Your uncle will leave," Leif says, pulling his piece from the fire. "You'll still be here. Don't give him a reason to take that away."

He goes back to work. I find fresh stock. The hammers settle into their rhythm, mine rough where his is measured.