His Darkest Craving

Walls

I woke before dawn and started working.

Not because there was anything urgent requiring my attention. Unfamiliar territory made me restless, and this restlessness had always led me to observe my surroundings. I dressed, walked the east wing corridor twice, mapped the distance from my rooms to the three nearest exits, and was at the window with a cup of tea I had made myself before the compound below me had fully come to life.

What came to life was impressive.

I would not have expressed that thought aloud. However, I kept that thought to myself, which felt even worse.

The Blackthorn pack ran with the precision of something that had been refined over years into its most efficient form. The morning watch rotation happened without a single spoken order, wolves moving into position and out of it with the quiet coordination of people who had done the task so many times it had become instinct rather than an instruction. The training yard filled at first light with warriors who pushed themselves with a focused intensity that had nothing performative about it. No one was training to be seen. They were training because this pack had decided that excellence was simply the standard and anything below it was unacceptable.

I recognised that decision. I had made the same one for my pack years ago.

I finished my tea and went downstairs.

Kael found me in the east courtyard an hour later. Or I found him. The geography of the encounter was deliberately ambiguous on both sides, and we both knew it.

He fell into step beside me without announcing himself. I didn’t react to his arrival, which I suspected he noticed, which I suspected he filed away the same way I filed things away. We walked the perimeter of the courtyard in silence for approximately forty seconds before he spoke.

“Your pack settled well,” he said.

“They’re adaptable,” I said.

“I noticed.” A pause. “Rynn ran drills with three of my units this morning. They responded well to her.”

I glanced at him sideways. “You watched the drills.”

“I watch everything in my territory.”

“I also pay attention when I’m in someone else’s territory,” I said.

Another silence. This one had a different quality than the ones at the summit: less loaded and more careful. It felt as if we had mutually agreed, without discussing it, to try something that wasn’t sparring, and we were proceeding cautiously to see if we remembered how.

“Your wolves are loyal,” I said. “Not just disciplined. There’s a difference.”

He looked at me. “Yes.”

“Discipline you can train into anyone. Loyalty means they believe in something.” I kept my eyes forward. “What do they believe in?”

He was quiet for a moment. “That this pack protects its own. Without exception. Without condition.” Another pause. “It took years to build that.”

“I know,” I said. “I built the same thing.”

We walked another circuit of the courtyard without speaking. The compound moved around us wolves training, working, and moving through their morning with that same quiet, disciplined efficiency I had cataloged from the window. Several of them tracked our progress around the yard with careful peripheral attention and then looked away when I noticed.

They were watching their Alpha walk with the visiting Alpha and trying to work out what it meant.

I was doing the same thing.

I found the door at half past ten.

East wing, third corridor past the main staircase. The door appeared unremarkable from the outside, featuring dark wood, iron fittings, and a construction style identical to every other door in this part of the building. I would have walked past it if I hadn’t noticed the guards.

Three of them. Stationed with the particular stillness that meant standing post rather than passing through. Armed in a way that was subtle enough to miss if you weren’t looking and obvious enough to register if you were.

I was always looking.

I kept walking at the same pace. Didn’t slow. Didn’t look at the door longer than the half second it took to count the guards and note the placement and file everything away in the part of my mind that collected things that didn’t have explanations yet.

Three guards on one door. More than his war room. More than anywhere else I had mapped in this building.

Every castle had its secret.

I had just found where Blackthorn kept his.