Chapter 7: The Wolf King’s Daily Humiliation
1500 Words
In the slum alleys of southern Silver Moon City, the morning mist hung heavy with a biting damp chill.
An enormous, ostentatious solid black carriage wedged itself down the narrow dirt lane, pulled by two monstrous Black Rock aurochs whose heavy huffs billowed into white clouds in the frigid air. The velvet curtains of the carriage were drawn tight, shutting out the world entirely.
Kaelen sat in the furthest corner of the carriage, clad in his signature black leather trench coat, an obsidian wine glass loose in his right hand. The temperature inside the carriage was cold enough to freeze breath, the leather seat groaning under the weight of his rigid frame.
Why had he come here?
Kaelen turned the question over in his mind. That woman had torn up their fated bond in front of the entire continent, made him a laughingstock across every clan. By all rights, he should have sent his men to snap her neck where she stood. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d ordered Bruno to pick out an entire chest of the finest volcanic obsidian jewelry from Black Rock’s royal treasury, and commanded the kitchens to bake two whole crates of the highest grade moon honey cakes overnight.
She was Silver Moon’s worthless orphan, a girl who’d grown up never knowing when her next meal would come. Dumping these riches in front of her would make her see the truth: without Black Rock’s protection, she wouldn’t survive the winter. She’d fall to her knees, sobbing and begging him to take back his words from the ceremony.
That was all this was. A test. Trinkets cluttering up the treasury, traded for the pathetic sight of her groveling at his feet.
Knock knock knock.
Outside the carriage, Bruno stood before the rickety wooden door, and rapped three times, his jaw tight with dread. At his feet sat a heavy ironwood chest, its lid half open, the obsidian jewelry within glowing with potent magical energy, refracting the morning light into brilliant shards. Beside it sat two ornate food boxes, the cloying sweet scent of honey seeping through the cracks in the wood, straight into the small yard beyond the door.
The windows of the ramshackle houses lining the lane were crammed full of gawking neighbors.
“By the gods, that’s volcanic obsidian! Even one of those pieces could buy this entire street!”“Is the Wolf King here with a bride price? I knew it! That stunt Eira pulled at the ceremony was just playing hard to get. She’s about to become royalty!”“Look! The door’s opening!”
With a teeth-aching creak, the rickety wooden door swung open.
Eira stood in the doorway, dressed in a faded grey linen gown, her silver-grey hair tied back haphazardly with a length of hemp rope. She hadn’t even washed her face, and in her hand she clutched a rusted axe, fresh from chopping firewood.
“Miss Eira.” Bruno cleared his throat, forcing his tone into one of cool, official indifference.
“The Alpha says the Black Rock treasury is being cleared out. These rocks are taking up too much space, and the kitchens made more pastries than we could eat. It’d be a waste to throw them out, so we dropped them off here on our way. Do with them what you will.”
The words came out stilted and awkward. Bruno was so embarrassed he could have carved an entire Black Rock fortress into the dirt with his toes.
Eira said nothing.
Her gaze drifted over Bruno’s shoulder, locking onto the black carriage parked at the mouth of the lane. The curtains were drawn, but she could feel the suppressed hum of primal earth magic within it, sharp and unmistakeable.
Her eyes then dropped to the food boxes brimming with honey cakes.
In her past life, on her sixteenth birthday, she’d stood in a blizzard for three full hours, begging for even the cheapest, crumbliest honey cake from Kaelen’s kitchens. All she’d gotten was his ice-cold rebuke: Warriors of Black Rock have no use for such weak, sweet things.
Now, two whole crates of the finest cakes money could buy were being dumped at her feet, dismissed as garbage.
This belated atonement made her stomach turn.
“Serena.” Eira turned her head, calling into the yard behind her.
“Coming, coming! Who’s making all this racket at the c***k of dawn?” Serena sauntered out of the cottage, yawning, half a slice of rye bread still in her hand.
Eira tossed the axe into the corner of the yard, nodding her chin at the chest and boxes on the ground.
“Take this sickly sweet garbage to the orphanage on the corner. They’re short on food.”
Serena’s eyes lit up. She stepped over the threshold, hefting the two food boxes without a single ounce of ceremony.
“You got it! What about these black rocks?” Serena kicked the ironwood chest with the toe of her boot.
“Take them to the smithy in the south of the city. Melt them down.” Eira’s tone was as calm as if she were discussing the day’s weather. “Winter’s coming, and this hovel’s full of drafts. Trade them for a good stock of smokeless coal for the fire.”
Bruno’s eyes went wide as saucers, and he lunged forward a step.
“Have you lost your mind?! This is core volcanic obsidian from the Black Rock mountains! A single piece could buy you a whole estate in the upper city, and you want to melt it down for coal?!”
Eira finally turned her gaze back to Bruno, her ice-blue eyes holding no anger, no hurt—only cold, unimpressed indifference.
“If it’s garbage Black Rock doesn’t want, who are you to tell me what to do with it?” She stared him down, her voice icy. “And as for your master? If he dares park his carriage in front of my door and block my way again…”
She paused, her gaze cutting once more to the black carriage at the end of the lane.
“Every time he shows his face, we’ll throw him out. Now get lost.”
SLAM!
The door slammed shut in Bruno’s face, dust shaking loose from the frame and showering down over his hair and shoulders. From inside the cottage came Serena’s unbridled, roaring laughter, followed by the sound of her calling over the street kids to help haul the heavy chest away.
Bruno stood alone in the cold wind, utterly dumbfounded. He, the Beta of the Black Rock Clan, had just been told to get lost by a woman who couldn’t even awaken her wolf core.
Inside the carriage at the end of the lane, there was dead silence.
Kaelen sat in the shadows, his chest heaving with ragged, furious breaths. He’d heard every single word spoken outside. That woman hadn’t even glanced at the riches he’d sent her, had trampled his charity straight into the mud.
Melt them down for coal.
The five words were a rusted, dull blade, twisting relentlessly against his pride, again and again.
CRACK!
A sharp, shattering sound split the silence of the carriage.
Kaelen’s right hand clenched down with brutal force, and the unbreakable obsidian wine glass was crushed to fine powder in his grip. The sharp shards sliced deep into his palm, blood welling up and dripping through his fingers onto the expensive silk carpet below, blooming into dark red flowers.
He stared down at the bright, searing red of the blood on his fingertips.
A sharp, stabbing pain lanced through the depths of his brain without warning. A blurry, fragmented vision pierced his nerves like a red-hot needle.
It was an endless, frozen wasteland of snow. The wind howled, hurling shards of ice through the air. A silver-haired woman lay crumpled in a pool of blood, her body frozen stiff. A terrible, gaping hole gaped in her left chest. And he himself, in his full wolf form, lay sprawled beside her lifeless body, howling in ragged, desperate grief.
Pain.
It wasn’t physical pain. It was a soul-deep agony, the raw, rending despair of losing everything.
Kaelen clutched at his chest, gasping for air. Cold sweat soaked through the back of his coat in an instant.
What was this? What in the seven hells was this memory? He’d never ventured into the deepest reaches of the Icebound Forest. Who was that woman dead in the snow? Why did the sight of that silver hair make his heart hurt so badly it felt like it would stop beating?
Outside the carriage, Bruno’s hesitant voice cut through his spiraling thoughts.
“Alpha… they took the things. What do we do now?”
Kaelen closed his eyes, forcing down the dull, maddening pain threatening to unravel his sanity.
“Back to the outpost.”
His voice was ragged, gravelly, and laced with a tremor he didn’t even know he was making.
- Writer
