Page 5 of Claimed By the Wolf Prince
The patrol route unspools beneath my paws without conscious direction. Years of running this perimeter have grooved it into a knowledge that lives below the brain, in the joints and tendons, in the placement of each stride on rock I could navigate blind. I take the northeastern ridge first, where the tree line thins and the wind carries scent from the valleys beyond. Then I run south along the cliff face, through the narrow pass. East to the river crossing. North again, climbing, untilthe fortress appears below like a grey fist clenched against the mountainside.
The territory reads mostly clean. I catch elk in the lower timber and a fox den near the southern outcrop. The snow runoff carries mineral from the upper peaks, cold and metallic against my tongue when I drop my head to drink at the stream crossing.
Then, on the northeastern ridge, I find something that doesn’t belong.
The wolf sign is fresh, days old rather than weeks. The scent signatures carry Blackridge territorial markers, which I expected. What I didn’t expect is the second set of markers layered underneath. These belong to foreign wolves carrying a signature I don’t recognize. The scent isn’t Blackridge. It’s not Northern Pack. It doesn’t match any of the allied territories whose profiles I’ve memorized.
Someone else has been in these mountains. Recently. Alongside the Blackridge survivors Gareth told me about.
I mark the location, commit the scent signatures to memory, and run the remaining perimeter at a pace that burns the unease into my legs where it can be useful.
The mist takes me back between one stride and the next. I dress in the cold air with the efficiency of a thousand mornings, and the human form settles over me like armor.
The corridor to Stellan's study takes the same route I’ve walked since I swore service to this pack. I take the stairs two at a time from habit, my hand trailing the wall where centuries of palms have worn the stone smooth. Dag's forge has not started yet, and the absence of the hammer's rhythm leaves a gap in the morning that I note the way I’d note a missing sentry.
I knock once. Wait the standard pause. Let myself in.
Iris sits in the chair by the hearth, a blade balanced across her knees while she cleans it with a strip of oiled cloth. Her dark hair falls loose over one shoulder. The bonding mark at thejunction of her neck and shoulder is still fresh enough to carry color, the bruised purple of teeth that broke skin not long ago. She glances up when I enter, and the look she gives me carries the clear-eyed knowledge of a she-wolf who knows I compiled dossiers on her habits and weaknesses before she ever arrived at this fortress. She’s forgiven me because she understands that duty in this pack has teeth.
"You look like you haven't slept," she says.
"I spent the night processing captured wolves. Sleep wasn’t on the schedule."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is."
Stellan stands at the window. The first light catches the peaks outside, turning the snow to copper and the sky to something cold and luminous. He’s not looking at any of it. He’s watching Iris clean the blade, and the expression on his face is one I observe without intending to. The complete absence of the alpha. Something unranked, unarmored, carrying no strategic value. The raw attention of a newly bonded male whose mate is sitting in his study with steel in her lap and his mark on her throat. The weight of what that costs him to feel is visible only because he does not know I am reading it.
I note it. I set the observation aside in the place where I keep things I don’t examine.
Iris finishes the blade, sheathes it at her thigh, and stands. When she passes Stellan, his hand settles at her hip. She leans into the contact for a breath before continuing toward the door. The bond between them is days old, and already the way they move around each other carries the unconscious choreography of something that has reshaped them both at the cellular level.
The gesture shouldn’t hold my attention. It does.
Then Iris is gone, and the expression on Stellan's face changes back to alpha with the efficiency of a man who has had years of practice at the transition.
"The Blackridge capture," he says.
"Complete. All wolves from that column are in custody. Injuries are minor. No casualties."
"The war strategist?"
"Revna Kassdóttir. In the eastern barracks with her wolves."
"And?"
"She held a knife on me during the capture. She was the last to go down. She was directing a tactical defense from a rock outcrop when we took her, using terrain features to create a choke point." I pause for exactly the length of time it takes to be certain of what I’m saying. "She’s good."
Stellan turns from the window. The motion carries an authority that has nothing to do with rank and everything to do with the wolf behind his eyes. "Good is why Korren kept her. Good is why she’s a problem."
"There is also a secondary issue." I lay out the dawn patrol findings. The unfamiliar wolf sign in the northeastern passes. The foreign scent markers layered under the Blackridge signatures. "Someone’s been operating in our territory alongside the Blackridge survivors. The scent doesn’t match any allied pack."
Stellan's jaw sets. The motion is small, a degree of tension that most wolves would miss. I don’t miss it because I’ve spent years reading this man's jaw the way I read terrain.
"The northeastern passes border Ashvald territory." He says it like a man confirming what he already suspected. "Grimnir." He says the name the way he says the names of wolves who have not yet earned his anger but are working toward it. "The Ashvald alpha has been making noise about the new borders since the war ended. Territorial claims he says predate Korren's expansion. His emissaries have been polite. His patrol routes have been less so."
Stellan moves from the window to the desk, where the territory map sprawls across the surface with its borders freshly redrawn. The Blackridge lands sit in the northeastern quadrant, and the Ashvald territory presses against them from the east. The boundary between the two has been contested for longer than either of us has been alive.
"The holdout integration needs to happen fast," Stellan says. "Every day those wolves sit in the barracks as a separate unit is a day Grimnir watches and calculates. He sees overextension. He sees opportunity." Stellan plants both hands on the desk and leans forward, his pale eyes carrying the focused weight that has made stronger wolves than me lower their heads. "I need the Blackridge wolves absorbed or broken before the Ashvald alpha decides to test whether we can hold what we took."
