CHAPTER EIGHT: The Name Valdris
602 Words
Same study. Same fire. Same desk.
Cord stood by the window, arms crossed, doing his impression of architecture. Damien sat across from Mira and leaned forward slightly — the posture of a man who had organized something difficult and was now going to deliver it straight.
"The vote to expel you from Ashveil," he began. "Unanimous. Including two council members who had previously blocked motions to downgrade your status. That kind of unanimous reversal doesn't happen organically. Someone moved them."
Mira looked at him steadily. "How."
"Information. Money. Possibly both." He held her gaze. "Someone told the Ashveil council exactly what you were carrying. Told them that a wolf whose gift could neutralize any other wolf in the pack was a liability, not an asset. That the safest move was expelling you before you understood what you had."
The fire crackled. Outside the window the compound had shifted to full defensive rotation — she could hear the cadence of it in the footsteps crossing the yard, the calls between patrol units.
"They expelled me," Mira said slowly, "because someone made them afraid of me."
"And then pointed Greer at this gate the moment you crossed the border," Damien said. "Because they want you located and unprotected before you're trained. Before you understand what you can actually do."
"Who," Mira said. One word.
Damien and Cord exchanged a look.
"His name is Valdris," Damien said. "Alpha of Norrskov pack. Four territories north." He paused, and in the pause she heard the weight of what was coming. "He has been hunting Voidblood wolves for thirty years."
The room was very quiet.
"Not recruiting them," Mira said. "Not protecting them."
"Hunting them," Damien confirmed. "Finding wolves who carry the gift — wolves who don't understand what they have, wolves without protection, wolves who test as powerless on standard screening and so go unguarded — and extracting what they carry for use in his own pack."
Mira sat with that.
Thirty years. Wolves like her, one after another, who had spent their lives being told they were nothing and had died without ever knowing what they actually were. Hunted by a man who understood exactly what they carried and used that understanding against them.
"No one has stopped him," she said.
"No one has been able to." Damien's voice stayed even but underneath it had turned to iron. "Until now, no Voidblood wolf has survived long enough — with sufficient protection and sufficient development — to represent a real threat to him. He finds them before they find themselves." He held her gaze. "You are the first one who crossed a border in the right direction before he could move."
The implication settled over her like cold water.
Until now.
"You're saying I could be the first threat he's actually faced," Mira said.
"I'm saying you could be," he said carefully. "If we train fast enough. If we're precise about how we move." He paused. "Valdris is coming for you. Not Greer — Greer is a message. Valdris himself, eventually. That's not a possibility. It's a timeline."
Mira looked at the fire.
She thought about the girl in the white dress at the fire circle. The six-hour walk in the dark. Every year of training twice as hard to close a gap that was never a gap to begin with. Every year of her father's careful neutrality and Ryden's formal distance and a pack that had managed her rather than known her.
Thirty years of Valdris hunting wolves like her.
She looked back at Damien.
"Then we don't waste time," she said.
She meant every word.
- Writer
