Page 40 of Claimed By the Wolf Heir

The roughness smooths over the next hour as the worst of the fury burns off with the scale, and the metal takes shape under strikes that gradually remember to aim for the face instead of the fire.

My father would have handled this differently. My father would have sat in that hall and made Balric look small without raising his voice, because that's what my father did. Balric killed him for it.

What I want to do right now is walk upstairs and put my hands around my uncle's throat and squeeze until the charm stops working. What Stellan needs is a wolf who stays in the forge and hits metal. I hit the metal.

I hit the stock. The hinge takes shape. Leif stays quiet. The hammers fill the chamber. It's enough.

The meeting lasts longer than I can track from the forge. The great hall is on the opposite side of the fortress, the stone between us carrying nothing except the sound of two hammers and the hiss of the quench trough.

I don't know what Balric is saying or whether Stellan is buying it. I don't know if Signe is standing against the wall reading Balric's body the way she reads mine, stripping him to his biology and filing whatever she finds under a designation she spent years hiding. One I spent time pretending I hadn't scented.

The not-knowing is worse than any information could be.

Gunnar finds me at the forge afterward. The beta who sent me here leans against the doorframe, composure holding but not hiding much.

"Your uncle is impressive," Gunnar says. The admission costs him. I can see the price in the careful way he chooses the word.

"He always was."

"He complimented the fortress before he said anything else. The walls, the defenses, the patrol discipline. He addressed Stellan with the exact deference an alpha shows on another alpha's territory, and the deference felt genuine because Balric doesn't perform what he doesn't need to." Gunnar crosses his arms. "Then he made Stellan laugh. Not a courtesy laugh. A real one, surprised out of him. I know the difference, and your uncle found it before the first round of mead was poured."

The information hits the place where the grief lives. Balric made Stellan laugh. My father made wolves laugh too.

The Valdisson warmth runs in the bloodline, easy and disarming, and the family resemblance between the uncle and the nephew is probably the first thing Signe would see because she sees everything. My father used the warmth because he couldn't help it. Balric uses it because he can.

"What did he want?"

"The same thing the emissary wanted. Your return. Trial under Drakfell authority." Gunnar pauses. "The arguments were better. Reasonable. He acknowledged the violence of the succession. Called it regrettable."

"Regrettable?"

"His word." He holds my gaze. "He made the case that a divided pack creates a vulnerable border, and that the northern territory can't afford instability. He didn't threaten. He didn't posture. He talked about governance and responsibility and the cost of sentiment, and half the wolves in the hall were nodding before Stellan shut the discussion down."

"Stellan refused?"

"Stellan deferred. Told Balric he'd consider the proposal and respond through formal channels." He straightens from the doorframe. "Balric left believing he'd made progress. Whether Stellan actually gave him anything is a different question, but I've watched that wolf run negotiations before, and I couldn't read him today."

The words land in the same place the forge couldn't reach. Stellan might actually be considering it. The alpha who gave me shelter, who told the emissary that he doesn't honor legal frameworks built on fratricide, might be weighing whether to hand me back to the wolf who built those frameworks on my father's body.

The political reasoning is sound. A packless alpha in the fortress creates instability. Balric's arguments about vulnerable borders aren't wrong. The trouble with pragmatists is that they're usually right about the numbers. The numbers didn't have to watch my father die.

The forge heat sits heavy at my back. The cooling hinge ticks on the anvil.

My wolf, who has been pacing since the horn sounded, goes still again. The stillness is worse than the pacing. The pacing was energy looking for a direction. The stillness is the direction found.

"Your uncle noticed Signe," Gunnar says.

My jaw locks. "Noticed how?"

"Not the way the emissary did. Nothing overt. He looked at her the way he looked at every wolf in the hall, which is what made it worse. He was reading the room, cataloging who matters, and he spent a fraction longer on the healer than the position warrants." Gunnar watches me process this. "Balric doesn't waste attention on wolves who aren't useful to him. If he lingered on Signe, he's already working out how."

The protective response isn't a decision. It doesn't go through the part of me that weighs options or considers consequences or respects the fact that I'm a guest in someone else's fortress with no standing to protect anyone, including myself. It goes through the part of me that stood three steps from my father and didn't move fast enough, and the part carries a debt I'll pay for the rest of my life.

Balric looked at her. My uncle, who kills with courtesy and calls it governance, turned his attention toward the woman whose omega bleeds through the suppressant every time I stand close enough. If the emissary caught even a trace of what I catch, Balric already has the information.

I'm not staying for asylum anymore. I'm staying for the woman in the infirmary with steady hands and a failing compound and no idea how much danger she's in. That's the reason now.

It's been the reason since I put my mouth on her body and didn't bite the bonding site because I want her shaking for it before I do.