FREYA
It is over fast.
My father's men come down out of the dark and they are not a raiding party, not frightened boys sent to make a point. They are something else, something I have not seen since I was a girl watching the old warriors drill, battle-hardened in a way the pack's young men are not, and they go through the wolves who had me the way a scythe goes through standing grain.
There are fewer of them than there are attackers and it does not matter at all. It is not even close.
I am on my knees in the road with my hand pressed to the tear in my side, the blood hot between my fingers as my wound begins to close and I watch my father's men kill the thing that was lifting me a moment ago, and the road goes from chaos to stillness in the space of a few minutes.
Then he is there.
C
