Rejected by the Alpha, Claimed by the Lycan King

Chapter 15: The Slope

We walked up the slope at dusk.

Seven of us at the front Kael, Vael, Tarn, Oryn, two warriors I had just learned the names of (Maren with the long red hair, and Brann with the scar across his mouth), and me. Twelve more Lycans came twenty paces behind. The older ones manned the inner walls of Ashenveil with bows and shadowsteel.

The sun was setting. The slope glowed orange. The rowan trees at the eastern flank were already in shadow.

I felt the ring on my right hand with every step.

Kael walked on my left, a heavier coat thrown over his bare chest. He looked the way ancient kings looked in the old stories bloodied, scarred, walking up a hill with calm in his face.

He glanced at me. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like a girl who is about to lose me."

"I'm not going to lose you."

"No," he agreed. "You are not."

We crested the ridge.

Below us, the slope sank two hundred yards to the valley floor. And from the southern hills, the vakhar came up the old road like a tide. They did not run yet. They were saving themselves for the slope.

Oryn had said forty.

It was closer to fifty.

Kael breathed out beside me. "Senna's disruption hit them. Two dropped from the back. The binder is feeling it."

"Will it stop them?"

"No. But it will slow them. Which is why we are going to do this."

He stepped to the edge of the ridge.

He shifted.

There was no clothing left to save. He simply changed the coat falling in pieces and the warriors of Ashenveil saw their king stand at the crest of the slope in his full ancient form, and every one of them lifted their weapons.

The vakhar in the valley stopped moving.

Kael threw back his head and roared.

It was not a wolf's howl. It was not a man's scream. It was older than either of those a sound the land itself remembered. It rolled down the slope and into the southern hills, and the vakhar cowered for a fraction of a second before the binding forced them upright again.

The Lycans behind me answered. One at a time. Vael first, her sharper howl cutting in alongside Kael's. Then Tarn. Then the rest. Forty-two voices declaring they were still here.

I did not howl. I could not. But I lifted the shadowsteel dagger in my right hand the silver ring catching the dying sunlight and the warriors saw it.

The sound that went up from them next was not a howl.

It was a word.

Their old word. The one I did not know yet.

The word for queen.

The vakhar reached the bottom of the slope.

They came up in a long uneven line. Not a charge the binding pulled each of them on its own thread. But they came fast.

The first six hit our line. Vael took two. Tarn took one. Maren and Brann took one each. The sixth came at Kael and Kael was on it before it had finished its lunge, his claws through its spine, the body crumpling sideways.

The second wave was already on us.

I moved before I had decided to move.

The bond did it again. Kael was on my left and I was on his right and a vakhar was coming at his blind side, and I was there before it reached him shadowsteel up under its chin in the same motion that had killed the first one in the courtyard.

Throat.

Always the throat.

It dropped.

Kael turned, saw the body, saw me and his silver Lycan eyes burned bright for half a second with something that almost looked like joy.

We fought.

I do not know how to describe what it was. The bond moved us together. I would step left and Kael's claws would already be there. He would lunge right and I would already be turning to take the small fast one peeling off from his attention. Eight vakhar fell to us in the first three minutes.

Vael was a blur on our left. Tarn and Brann held the right. Oryn was calling orders from the second line.

But the line was bending.

It was bending in the middle, where Maren was.

I saw her go down.

It was fast. One moment she was standing red hair catching the last of the light, two short blades flashing and the next moment a vakhar three times her size had her by the ribs and lifted her off the ground.

She did not scream.

She drove her left blade through its eye before it dropped her.

She hit the grass.

She did not get up.

I shouted her name. I do not know why. I had only known her name for forty minutes. But the cry tore out of me, and Kael's head turned, and he saw what I saw.

Two of the bigger vakhar had broken through the line where Maren had been.

They were not coming at me.

They were going for the gate.

For the kingdom.

For the children behind it.

Kael moved before I could speak. He was a black blur down the slope and I was running after him. The first vakhar saw him coming. It turned to meet him.

The second one kept going.

Thirty yards from the gate.

Twenty.

Ten.

I was not going to catch it. I was fifty paces behind Kael and Kael was twenty paces from the first vakhar, and the second one was ten paces from the gate. I knew with cold clarity we were one heartbeat too late.

And then

From the gate itself, something stepped out.

Not a warrior. Not Oryn.

It was Senna.

The old witch. Her grey eyes were dark. Her hands were raised.

She said one word short, hard, in a language I did not know.

And the vakhar froze in mid-stride.

Senna closed her hand.

The vakhar collapsed into itself like a coat falling off a chair. There was no body. Only a damp patch of grass where it had been, and the smell of wet stone, and silence.

The witch lowered her hands. Her face was very pale.

She looked at me, fifty yards up the slope, and her eyes were grim.

"I cannot do that twice tonight," she called.

Kael finished the first vakhar with one stroke of his claws and turned and roared again.

The line was holding.

We were winning the slope.

But Maren was dead.

And there were thirty vakhar still coming up the hill.