Mate To The Feral King

Chapter 2- The Beast's Burden

I should run.

Every rational thought in my brain screams it.

The gate is behind me, maybe fifty yards through the mist. The feral wolves have scattered into the shadows, confused by their king's collapse. I could sprint, pound on the iron until Torvald opens it, beg for mercy.

Except I've read enough to know there is no mercy. The tribute has been given. The gate won't open again until sunset, when they'll check for remains.

And something else keeps me rooted here, staring at the massive creature collapsed in the dirt.

He's suffering.

Even unconscious, his body trembles with the strain of the partial shift. His human torso, God, it is human, scarred and powerful and utterly wrong attached to those wolf haunches, spasms every few seconds. His breathing is labored, rattling in his chest like something's broken inside. The scars across his visible skin tell stories of violence I can't begin to imagine, silver lines crisscrossing his shoulders and ribs like a map of pain.

His face, caught between forms, holds an awful beauty. Strong jaw shadowed with dark stubble, high cheekbones, a straight nose, all of it marred by the wolf features trying to dominate. His hair, long and matted with forest debris, falls across closed eyes that I now know are gold as autumn leaves.

Fifteen years, I think. Fifteen years trapped like this, in madness and isolation.

Before I can talk myself out of it, I drop to my knees beside him.

"Stupid, Mira," I mutter, setting my book carefully aside. "Monumentally stupid."

But my hands are already moving, checking for injuries with the clinical efficiency I learned from medical texts in the Archives. There's a gash along his ribs, older, half-healed but infected. His breathing suggests cracked ribs on the left side. The partial shift seems stuck, his body literally frozen between forms, and I can see the tremors of pain even in unconsciousness.

I need water. Bandages. Something to bring down what might be a fever, is that even possible for werewolves?

A soft whine makes me jerk back.

One of the feral wolves has crept closer, smaller than the others, grey with intelligent amber eyes that lack the red glow of madness. It watches me carefully, then looks at the Feral King, then back to me. It whines again, a questioning sound.

"I... I don't know what to do," I whisper to it, feeling insane for talking to a wolf. "I don't know how to help him."

The grey wolf tilts its head. Then, deliberately, it turns and lopes into the mist.

I'm alone again with the unconscious king and my racing thoughts.

He recognized me. That single word, "You" spoken with such shock, such impossible familiarity. But we've never met. I've spent my entire life in the Archives. I've never even seen a werewolf until today, let alone the Feral King himself.

So why did he look at me like he knew me?

And why did something in my chest respond, a flutter of recognition I have no right to feel?

I'm still puzzling over it when his eyes snap open.

Golden. Burning. Fixed on me with predatory focus.

I freeze, hand still resting on his scarred shoulder. This is it. This is when he tears my throat out for touching him, for daring to

But he doesn't attack. His gaze travels from my face to my hand on his skin, then back up.

His partially-formed mouth works, struggling around wolf teeth and human tongue. The sound that emerges is broken, painful:

"Why... still... here?"

Three words. Barely intelligible. But words, not animal sounds.

"Because you're hurt," I hear myself say. "And I'm... I'm apparently too stupid to run when I should."

Something flickers in those gold eyes.

Confusion? Surprise? It's hard to read emotion in a face caught between species.

He tries to move, and agony contorts his features. The partial shift ripples again, his body trying to complete the transformation but failing. A sound rips from his throat, not quite human scream, not quite wolf howl, but something that combines both into pure anguish.

"Stop," I say sharply, pressing down on his shoulder. "You're stuck. The shift is stuck somehow. You'll hurt yourself worse if you keep fighting it."

He stills under my hand, breath coming in harsh pants. Those eyes pin me with an intensity that makes my stomach flip.

"You... touch..." He struggles with the words.

"Not... afraid?"

"Oh, I'm terrified," I admit. My hand is shaking against his skin. "But fear doesn't make you less hurt. Stay still. Let me think."

I don't know why I'm doing this. Don't know why I'm not curled in a ball waiting for death.

But something about his pain calls to mine, all those years of isolation, of being the strange one, the unwanted one. I recognize suffering when I see it.

The grey wolf returns, carrying something in its jaws…. cloth, I realize. Torn strips of what might have once been clothing. It drops them at my feet, then retreats a few paces, watching.

"Thank you," I tell it, feeling increasingly mad. To the Feral King, I say: "I'm going to try to clean that wound. It might hurt."

"Everything... hurts." His voice is getting slightly clearer, though still rough as gravel.

"Always."

Those two words break something in my chest.

I work in silence, using the cleanest cloth strips and water from my leather canteen to clean the infected gash. He tenses but doesn't pull away, watching me with an expression I can't decipher. When I press too hard on a particularly bad spot, his hand, human hand, I note, shoots out and grabs my wrist.

Not violently. Carefully, though I can feel the tremor of restrained strength.

"Sorry," I whisper. "Almost done."

He doesn't release my wrist. His thumb moves slightly, tracing over my pulse point with something like wonder. Then his eyes widen, and he drops my hand like I've burned him.

"Your... scent..." He struggles upright despite my protest, swaying dangerously. "You smell like... impossible. You smell like..."

"Like what?"

But he's not looking at me anymore. He's staring past me, at something in the mist, and his expression shifts to something primal. Protective. Dangerous.

A slow clap echoes through the trees.

I spin around to see Elder Torvald emerging from the fog, but he's not alone. Three Border Pack wolves flank him, and his expression is grim satisfaction mixed with something that might be pity.

"Remarkable," he says, amber eyes moving between me and the Feral King. "Absolutely remarkable. Three minutes in his presence, and not only are you alive, but he's partially shifted for the first time in fifteen years. And he let you touch him."

"What do you want?" My voice sounds braver than I feel.

"To explain your purpose, girl." Torvald steps closer, and the Feral King's growl intensifies.

"You weren't sent here to die, though that was certainly a possibility. You were sent here to tame him. To bring him back to sanity, back to his human form." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "Or to confirm he's beyond saving, so we can finally put him down."

"Put him, you want me to tame him?" Incredulity makes my voice c***k. "He's not a pet. He's a person trapped in…"

"He's a threat." Torvald cuts me off. "His territory expands yearly. His pack grows. Soon, he'll threaten not just the border, but human settlements, other packs. We can't allow that."

"So you send girls to die testing him?"

"We send tributes hoping for a miracle." His gaze softens slightly. "You're the first miracle we've seen. You have three months, Mira Thorne. Three months until the Hunter's Moon. Either restore Ash Blackthorn to sanity and his human form, or we'll be forced to exterminate him and you with him, as you'll be considered too contaminated by proximity to the feral."

Horror washes through me. "That's…"

"The law. Pack law, ratified by your human king." Torvald turns to leave, then pauses.

"For what it's worth, I hope you succeed. I knew Ash before. He was a good king. A good man." His voice drops. "But if you fail, I'll kill him myself. Mercy demands it."

The Border Pack vanishes into the mist, leaving me alone with the Feral King and impossible choices.

I turn back to find him watching me with those burning gold eyes, fully aware now despite his pain. The partial shift is receding slightly, still wrong, still stuck, but less agonized.

"Three months," I say quietly. "To make you human again, or we both die."

He holds my gaze for a long moment. Then, with obvious effort, he forces out more words:

"Then you... already dead. I've been... lost... fifteen years. No... coming back."

"Maybe." I retrieve my poetry book from the dirt, brushing it off. "Or maybe you just needed someone too stupid to run. Too stubborn to give up." I meet his eyes. "I've spent twenty-two years surviving people who wanted me gone. Three months with a feral wolf king? I've faced worse odds."

It's a lie. I've never faced odds remotely like this.

But something in his expression shifts. The hopelessness wavers, replaced by the faintest flicker of something else.

Interest. Curiosity.

Maybe even hope.

"Your name?" he manages.

"Mira. Mira Thorne."

"Ash," he says, and hearing his name in his own broken voice does something strange to my chest. "I'm... Ash."

"I know." I offer him a tentative smile that probably looks as terrified as I feel. "I've read about you. All the legends, all the stories."

"All... lies."

"Maybe. But I'm good at finding truth in lies. It's what I did in the Archives…. translate, interpret, find what's real beneath the myth." I take a breath. "So here's the truth: I don't know how to tame you. I don't even know if that's possible. But I know how to survive, and I know how to learn, and I know…"

A bone-chilling howl cuts through the air, close and getting closer.

Ash's entire body goes rigid. His lips pull back from sharp teeth, and he forces himself fully upright despite the obvious agony. The partial shift surges again, muscle and bone cracking, and this time when he looks at me, there's raw terror in his gold eyes.

"Run," he snarls, the word barely human.

"Palace. Run. NOW!"

"What…"

"ROGUES!" The word tears from his throat as his form finally completes the shift back to full wolf—massive, terrifying, and positioning himself between me and whatever's coming through the trees. "RUN, MIRA!"

And then they explode from the mist, wolves with red eyes and foam-flecked muzzles, easily a dozen of them, moving with the coordinated precision of a huntin

g pack.

Not feral. Not mindless.

This is an attack.

Ash launches himself at the first one with a roar that shakes the trees, and I do the only thing I can.

I run.