Mate To The Feral King

The blood on my hands isn't mine. Not yet, anyway. I stare at the crimson smears across my palms, remnants from when I caught Elise after she fainted, her nose gushing red when they called her name. My name came three draws later, and now we're both chained in the back of this iron cage on wheels, rattling toward the border like cattle to s*******r. "They say he eats them alive," Margot whispers from the corner, her voice thin with terror. "Starts with the fingers, works his way up while you're still screaming." "I heard he keeps their bones," another girl adds. "Builds sculptures from them in his cursed palace." I don't tell them to stop. Fear is honest, at least. Better than the lies the King's Herald told our families: "An honor to serve the realm. A tribute to ensure peace." Peace. As if feeding young women to a monster qualifies as diplomacy. The wagon hits a rut, and my shoulder slams against the bars. Pain flares, sharp and clarifying. I welcome it. Pain means I'm still alive, still thinking. I've spent twenty-two years in the Royal Archives reading about survival, about wars and monsters and the collapse of kingdoms. I've translated accounts of the Feral King in seven languages – each more horrifying than the last. Ash Blackthorn. The Wolf King who went mad fifteen years ago and slaughtered his own mate. They say his howls can be heard for miles, that his territory is carpeted with bones, that his golden eyes are the last thing you see before darkness takes you. I've read every account. Studied every theory. None of it tells me how to survive the next hour. "Why us?" Elise whimpers beside me, her face pale as moonlight. "What did we do to deserve this?" Nothing, I think. We were simply inconvenient. I was inconvenient the moment I was found on the Archives' steps twenty-two years ago, a squalling infant with grey eyes and a silver pendant, no note, no explanation. I was inconvenient when I learned to read at three, when I corrected the Head Archivist's translations at seven, when I absorbed information faster than anyone could explain why a foundling had such gifts. When the lottery was drawn yesterday, I watched the magistrate's hand hover over the wooden balls. I watched him palm one, slide it back, select another. My name wasn't chance. It was convenience. Finally, their eyes said. Finally, we can be rid of the strange girl with the unsettling stare and the questions that make us uncomfortable. The wagon lurches to a stop. My stomach drops. "We're here," the driver calls, his voice carefully neutral. He won't look at us. Easier to forget what you're delivering if you don't see their faces. Through the bars, I glimpse the thorn-gate, a massive arch of twisted blackthorn and iron, pulsing with a sickly red glow. Beyond it, mist curls through dead trees like grasping fingers. The Feral Territories. The place where girls go in and only screaming comes out. Elder Torvald appears, his weathered face grim beneath his ceremonial furs. He's Border Pack werewolf, though he maintains human form for the ritual. His amber eyes hold something that might be sympathy as he unlocks our cage. "Come," he says quietly. "Quickly now. Dawn approaches, and he's most active at dawn." Margot starts sobbing. Another girl vomits. I climb down on shaking legs, clutching the only possession they allowed me a slim volume of Old World poetry, its leather cover worn smooth from years of reading. If I'm going to die, I'll die with words. They've been my only friends; they'll be my last comfort. "You first." Torvald's hand lands on my shoulder, and I flinch. But his grip is gentle, almost apologetic. "The king requires tribute at sunrise. You were drawn first; you enter first." "How long?" My voice sounds steadier than I feel. "How long do we usually last?" His jaw tightens. "Minutes. Sometimes less. I'm sorry, child." At least he's honest. The thorn-gate groans open, and the mist beyond writhes as if alive. The smell hits me – copper and rot and something wild, something that raises every primitive instinct screaming predator, run, flee. I don't run. Where would I go? "Any advice?" I ask Torvald, surprised by my own dark humor. "For dying well?" His amber eyes widen slightly. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: "Don't fight the fear. Let it make you still, not stupid. And..." He hesitates. "Speak. He was human once. Perhaps something remembers." Before I can ask what he means, his hand presses between my shoulder blades, and I stumble forward into the mist. The gate slams shut behind me with terrible finality. Silence. Thick and absolute, broken only by my ragged breathing. The mist is cold against my skin, and visibility extends maybe ten feet in any direction. Trees loom like skeletal sentinels, their branches clawed and bare. The ground beneath my boots is soft with decay. I take one step. Another. My book clutched to my chest like a talisman. A twig snaps to my left. I freeze. Through the mist, I see them – eyes. Red eyes, glowing like embers, floating at wolf height. One pair. Two. Five. Ten. They circle me slowly, deliberately, and I hear the soft padding of paws, the whisper of breath from massive lungs. The feral pack. My heart hammers so hard I think it might burst. Every survival instinct screams at me to run, but I remember Torvald's words: Don't fight the fear. Let it make you still. I close my eyes. I can't watch my death approach; I'll meet it on my own terms. My lips move, and words spill out, not prayers, but poetry, the first passage I ever memorized: "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." My voice shakes, but I continue, each word a small rebellion against the dark. The growling stops. Silence again, but different now. Expectant. I open my eyes and immediately wish I hadn't. The wolves have parted like a living curtain, and through the gap walks something that stops my breath entirely. A wolf. But not just a wolf, this creature is massive, easily twice the size of the others, with fur black as midnight and silver scars crossing its muzzle like lightning strikes. Its eyes burn gold instead of red, and they fix on me with an intelligence that's terrifying because it's not animal. It's something more, something trapped, something that recognizes me in a way that makes my skin prickle. The Feral King. He moves closer, each step measured, and I realize I'm going to die now. This is the moment. I should be terrified, I am terrified but beneath the fear, something else stirs. Curiosity. Because he's not attacking. He's approaching, head lowered, those impossible golden eyes never leaving mine. He stops inches away. I feel the heat radiating from him, smell earth and blood and something else, something that triggers a memory I don't have, a recognition I shouldn't feel. His massive head dips toward me. He inhales deeply, his breath stirring my hair. Then his entire body convulses. I stumble backward as the Feral King begins to shift but wrong, all wrong. His form ripples sickeningly, bones cracking and reforming, fur receding in patches to reveal scarred human skin, but stopping halfway. His hind legs remain wolf while his torso twists into something humanoid, his face caught between man and beast in a grotesque partial transformation that must be agony. And he's staring at me with those golden eyes, human eyes now, wide and shocked and, somehow, more frightening than the wolf's ever were, because there's recognition in them. Knowledge. His mouth opens. For a moment, I think he'll speak. Instead, a sound emerges that's half-howl, half-word, broken and desperate: "You." Then his eyes roll back, and the Feral King collapses at my feet, unconscious, his body still locked in that horrible half-shift. I stand frozen, poetry book clutched in trembling hands, staring at the legendary monster who supposedly kills everything that enters his domain. The monster who jus t recognized me. The monster who is now completely vulnerable before me, and I have absolutely no idea what happens next.