Page 67 of Wolf Trial

Iron and ash and power.

Magic.

He didn’t freeze me in place like last time blood magic was used against me. This time, it reached through my skin, past muscle and bone, into the very heart of me. He ripped my wolf out of my grasp. Instead of lulling her into sleep the way I had, this was like a hand on the top of her head, shoving her into black waters until she drowned. Forced suffocation until she blacked out.

When I blinked, it was with bleary human eyes, and I could no longer taste the drops of rain on the leaves around us. On the plus side, I could no longer smell the worst of the stench emanating from the hag’s pit.

Something hit the ground beside me with a thud, and then there were hands in my hair, wrenching me up. I scrabbled to get my feet under me, tears streaming down my face.

“Release my grandmother, or I will snuff out Sadie’s pathetic life,” he commanded. When he pivoted to keep all wolves in his line of sight, I saw that Leander and Verne had the hag on the ground, using their weight to keep her pinned.

Leander was one second away from ripping out her throat when Beaufort spoke, but I watched him freeze. Silence choked the clearing for a moment before Beaufort’s smug laughter distorted it.

Fuck, Verne snarled. Sadie, hold on. We’ll get you.

I could… hear him. Even as a human. I wished I could have faith in his promise, but I’d been let down far too many times to rely on anyone but myself.

But I knew I couldn’t save myself. I was naked, overpowered, and I’d had weeks of training to Beaufort’s decades. Maybe centuries. And that was before the cool silver of a knife found my side. It didn’t press in a warning like it had to Rogue’s throat; it sank through tissue and muscle, bit as deep as the small blade would go.

Breath left me in a rush, cold the first thing I felt, the icy touch of the knife. And then hot, searing agony.

I pressed my lips flat, trying to trap my scream, refusing to give him the satisfaction. But he twisted the knife, and a guttural roar forced past my pressed lips.

Beaufort ripped the knife free, carving another cry from my lips, and said, “Next time, it goes in her throat. Let my grandmother go.”

Verne snarled and lifted his weight off the hag, her eyes—burgundy, Fioranna’s eyes—roving as she fought her way free of Leander. I saw what would happen next when she rose to all fours and began to run, possessed and horrifying, towards us. She’d come to kill me, to harvest my body for parts of her own. A whimper joined my ragged cries, a haze of tears blurring my sight.

All I saw were shapes and colours. The rotted, unhealthy grey of the hag’s body. The warm tan of her stolen arms. And then: russet brown. A warm, earthy streak tore across the dark green of the trees, driving into the hag before she could reach us.

A wolf? I blinked, trying to force my eyes to clear even as pain made more tears flow. The shape looked like a wolf, but all my pack were pale. Yet when the figure took down the hag, I swore four paws hit the ground.

Who is that? I asked, my voice slurring and weak. And inside my head.

I’ve never seen that wolf before, Verne replied, unease in his voice. Sadie, can you throw an elbow into his gut to get him off balance?

I tried to move, but Beaufort knocked my arm down, and I screamed as the knife sank into my other side. Pure fire followed it, white-hot, annihilating every one of my senses. My knees buckled, the motion gouging the blade inside me.

Not my throat, I told myself, shaking so hard my teeth knocked together. Not my throat. He hadn’t cut my throat.

Lainsz, for fuck’s sake! Leander snarled, heavy paws hitting the ground. Did I hear them inside or outside my head? Do something!

How? Lainsz snapped. He’s got her—

My vision cleared for a single blink between tears, and my blood turned to ice as I saw an unfamiliar brown wolf with blackened legs pin the hag to the ground and rip her arm off at the seam. The hag howled, a sound of pure rage.

“Fine,” she hissed to the wolf. “I will have your arms.”

The wolf didn’t rise to the bait, latching onto her other arm and then diving for the hag’s torso, every attack so quick that it had hardly been a second. But when the wolf’s head dipped to maul the hag’s stomach, the hag surged upwards, using remarkable strength to push the wolf aside.

I blinked again, my vision stolen by blurs and pain, but there was no mistaking the whimper of a wolf.

“Grandmother!” Beaufort yelled, so close to my ear that my head swam full of pain, my body frozen over. I was beginning to suspect the cold wasn’t because of my panic, but the blood leaving my body from two matching stab wounds.

Now would be the time to attack Beaufort, while he was distracted. But my arms were heavy, and all they did was twitch when I tried to ram my elbow into his gut and free myself.

Someone must have had the same idea, because the knife ripped a scream from me as it sank an inch deeper before ripping free. The blur of my eyes caught a pale, feminine hand moments before the knife streaked through the air into Beaufort’s throat.

Blood gushed; I didn’t see it but the heat of it slapped my face, poured down my neck.