Throwing the Gauntlet

Chapter 3

Frey coughed and spat out the blood in his mouth. He pressed a hand to the wall as he bent over.

“I gave you a task to do!”

“Go to hell,” Frey rasped. He grunted as his father landed another hit across his mouth. He felt a hand grip his arm and shove him, hard. His feet tangled and he fell to his knees on the floor.

His father bent close to his ear. “You will complete the task I have given to you, or you will take his place. Do you understand me?”

Frey refused to answer, turning his head away.

A hand fisted in his hair and pulled, forcing him to look up. He gritted his teeth to stop himself from crying out as he looked into his fathers’ cold eyes.

“Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Frey said, the words tasting like dirt in his mouth.

“Yes, what?”

Frey tried to get free from the hand that was threatening to rip his hair out but the grip only tightened. His father wrapped a hand around his throat and squeezed.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, sir.” Frey wanted to spit the words at his father and make him choke on them. He was shoved away and he fell onto his hands, gasping out a breath.

“Get out of my sight.”

Frey shoved the hands of the guard trying to help him up. He didn’t want any f*****g help. He curled his hand into a fist on the concrete wall for a moment, before he walked out of the room, his back ramrod straight.

--

“Get the f**k out,” Frey ordered the guards who were standing just inside the wolf’s room. He figured they must have been put there to watch it after it’s escape stunt.

He waited until the door shut behind him before he turned to the wolf chained to the wall. He wasn’t in wolf form anymore, instead a man was chained by his wrists and ankles to the wall.

Golden eyes stared at him. Frey looked away and circled the creature.

Its wrists were chained at waist height, and Frey wondered why it had been done that way. He noticed a metal band was also around the waist. It wasn’t tightened on the skin, it looked like it hovered over it.

Frey saw the burn marks on his flesh and realised that the metal was silver and stopped it from trying to move too far from the wall.

He eyed the creature, trying to match it with the vicious wolf that had almost ripped his jugular out. It was twice the size of Frey, if not more. He’d never seen a werewolf and wondered if the size was normal.

Even after almost a week of starvation, it still looked strong, healthy. His clothes were tattered, ripped, and looked filthy. But underneath Frey could see that he was pure muscle, not an ounce of fat on him.

He had no bruises, or cuts on him from his escape attempt. A jagged scar ran down the left cheek. It didn’t look recent, but it was ugly and looked painful. Not even the full black beard covering his face could hide it.

Frey growled and stalked forward. He threw a punch, feeling vindicated as he heard the snap of a breaking jaw. His anger flared when the creature didn’t make a sound.

He leaned forward until he could almost feel the creature’s breath on his lips. “Feel that, you f**k?” He punched him in the stomach, and then again when it still didn’t make a sound. “How does that f*****g feel?”

Frey wrapped his hands around its neck, stroking hard enough with his nails that it began to bleed immediately, running down its chest. He hated the way it was watching him.

He used his thumb to push the jaw back into place with a sickening crunch. Still nothing. Not even a flicker of emotion. It just continued to stare at him.

“Stop looking at me!” Frey shoved off him and moved to the far side of the room, as far as possible from the large entity chained up as he could get. He crossed his arms and continued to study it.

What the f**k was he supposed to do with it? As satisfying as having a personal punching bag would be, he was sure that’s not how the taming worked.

“Do you recognise me?” Frey asked it. “You almost took my arm off. You were going to rip out my throat like an animal.”

Nothing. The golden eyes didn’t waver.

“What’s your name?”

After a few minutes of silence, Frey cursed and stood. “You know what? f**k you!” He stormed from the room, slamming it shut behind him.

He pointed at the door. “No one goes in but me, understand?”

He didn’t wait for their acquiescence before he stomped down the corridor.

--

The next day he walked in, and didn’t bother to look in its direction, knowing those eyes wouldn’t look away from him. He sat on the cold stone floor and opened the book he had brought with him.

Half an hour later he glanced up. It was still watching him. He ignored it and went back to his book.

He was interrupted an hour later by a knock on the door. He threw his book on the ground and flung it open. “What?”

“Lady Lain has asked for you in the training room.”

“Tell her I’m busy.” He slammed the door shut. He kicked the book but didn’t pick it up. He looked at the wolf. “Plan on talking today?”

Nothing.

“The silent treatment, huh? My favourite game.” Ordinarily that would be true. His fondest memories occurred when his father ignored him. This time, however, he didn’t like it. Its broken jaw was already healed and Frey knew they could talk just fine.

“I’m supposed to feed you, I guess. I don’t know a lot about werewolves, what do you eat?”

His father would probably see it as a weakness that he would confess to not knowing something about his enemy to his enemy. But Frey didn’t care. He wouldn’t become a pawn in their games and he would do as he wished.

Frey huffed and slid down the wall. He bent his knees and rested his elbows on them. “Stop looking at me,” he said, “if you aren’t going to speak to me.”

The wolf sneered but didn’t turn away. Frey sighed and rolled his eyes. It figured the first movement it made would be one of derision. And it wasn’t like Frey was surprised it didn’t listen to him. He supposed at this point he should punish him, or something. He rolled his neck and rested his head back against the wall. He couldn’t be bothered.

“If you don’t tell me what you want I’ll give you a salad,” he said to the ceiling. There, that was kind of torturous, wasn’t it? He suspected they really liked meat. They were still beasts at their core.

Frey grimaced into the silence. He was going to be stuck babysitting this? He guessed he should take a visit to the library and work out how the hell taming worked and what he was supposed to be doing.

“Right. Salad it is. Nice juicy tomatoes.” That went in salad, didn’t it? He’d never eaten food before.

When, surprise surprise, the wolf didn’t answer; just continued to stare at him with that unnerving gaze, Frey left the room.

He gestured for a servant who was hovering nearby. “I need food for the werewolf.”

“Of course, Prince Freyr, what would you like?”

It figured they’d ask him that. He couldn’t actually give it salad, could he? Maybe they ate that too. He was not going to ask a servant; heaven forbid it get back to his father that he didn’t know what he was doing.

“Steak: one cooked, one raw. And a salad.” He said he’d bring salad, so he would. Heaven forbid someone add dishonest on top of the list of things he was accused of being. “And some blood for me, warmed.”

The wolf’s head was hanging down when he re-entered the room. It gave Frey a moment to watch him unnoticed. His hair was black, slightly curled and hung below his shoulders. It was tangled in so many knots Frey figured they’d probably have to shave it off. Shame.

He sighed when those golden eyes locked on him again. He wished it would get bored already and stop f*****g staring at him.

Frey paced the room as he waited for them to bring the food. He wished he had thought to bring a chair or something so he could sit. The whole room was dreary with no windows, stone walls, stone floor and the only light was coming from candles burning on the walls.

What an archaic piece of s**t room. Dungeon was certainly apt. Frey wished he was back in his room with his paints.

He stopped pacing and leant against the wall, bending one knee so that his foot rested in the wall, and waited. The wolf didn’t move, and neither did he.

He let the servants in without a word when they came a few minutes later. They handed him a warm mug of blood and he returned to his spot at the wall whilst they laid out of the wolf’s food on a trolley.

When the lid from the cooked steak was lifted the wolf looked away for a moment, eyeing it. Frey said nothing as the eyes came back on him, and took a sip of his drink. The warm blood spread through his veins, soothing him.

He held the mug up. “It’s warm blood, would you like some?” He smirked. “No?”

The wolf looked from the human servant setting out his food in to the cup Frey was holding and Frey could see the question in his eyes. “I don’t drink from the vein. It’s very personal, and I don’t do personal.”

It wasn’t much of an interaction but at least the wolf had done something other than stare at him.

Once the servants left it occurred to Frey that he wasn’t sure how the wolf was going to eat. The chains it was held by didn’t seem like they had any give in them. And there was no f*****g way he was letting even one hand free.

He moved closer, trying to ignore that piercing stare, and sat his mug next to the plates. Cutlery had been left, and he picked them up, one by one. He’d never used cutlery before and didn’t even know where to begin on how to use them.

Did they use cutlery? He barely knew anything about werewolves. He’d heard stories of mindless creatures with no will of their own, once tamed. Born to do the bidding of the vampire. He guessed they must have all started like this, crazed animals that needed a firm hand.

He locked eyes with it again, and dropped the knife back onto the tray. If asked that first night, he would have definitely said crazed. Now? No, there was intelligence behind that unsettling gaze. But it hadn’t said a word to him, maybe it didn’t know the language?

No, that couldn’t be right. It had understood him when he had spoken.

Frey sighed. “Are you hungry?”

He was hoping for some kind of answer, but wasn’t surprised when none was given. It must have been hungry though; it wouldn’t have eaten since it had been brought in.

“Should I leave this here for you to smell, then?” Frey growled. He wanted to shake the stupid wolf. “Maybe I should move it closer; so close yet so far away? How would you like that?”

It growled and pulled against its restraints. The liquid eyes seemed to harden as they stared at one another.

Frey smirked. Well, that had certainly pulled a reaction.

Frey cut a piece of the cooked steak, looking at it curiously. He wondered what it would taste like…he had never tasted food before. He had never even seen food before. It looked…weird…

Warriors that went beyond the castle grounds would have experienced life among humans, among the cities and towns that they populated. They would have seen all of those things, experienced all of it. They would have eaten the food, learnt about the world and explored the vast openness of it all.

Frey had never been beyond these walls; in one-hundred years he had never even wanted to. He had his paints, and he had Lain. He had never wanted more.

He brought the meat to his nose, and sniffed. It was strange…Nothing like the mouth-watering copper scent of blood, but not entirely unpleasant.

Frey looked up and locked eyes with the wolf. It was looking at Frey like he was a particularly dissatisfying puzzle, one he wasn’t sure he wanted to unlock perhaps.

Or maybe he was trying to figure out how to get out of the chains and finish what he started. Frey put the meat down, no longer interested in it.

“Can you speak? Are you illiterate?”

A raised eyebrow. Well, it had definitely understood him.

Frey crossed his arms. “I can play this game all day.” Although honestly, he could think of a million other things he would prefer to be doing. He wanted to order some new paints and brushes, and work on his newest work.

He poked at the salad, watching curiously as a small round tomato moved around the plate.

The chains rattled again as the wolf pulled on them and Frey stopped fiddling with the food. He picked up his mug and went back to his place against the wall. He sat cross legged on the ground as he drank.

Every time his gaze wandered back to it, it was staring at him, so he tried not to.

What the hell was he going to do in here all day with it? He was supposed to be taming it. How did you tame it? Frey figured saying ‘heel’ wasn’t going to accomplish much here.

Feeling frustrated he threw the mug, still half full, at the wolf. It hit just above his head, dripping blood down into his hair. It didn’t even flinch.

“f**k this shit.” Frey stood and left the room without looking across at it. He needed to talk to someone about this. Someone who wouldn’t go running to his father.