Chapter Five: Wisdom from an Old Man
663 Words
POV Toak Ironroot
Steel rang against steel, sharp and clean in the cold air.
Again.
I pivoted, drove forward, felt the shock of impact run up my arms and settle into my shoulders. The old Alpha did not yield. He never did. His stance was ugly by modern standards. No flourish. No wasted motion. Just balance and inevitability.
“Sloppy,” he said, and knocked my blade aside with a twist of his wrist that had no right being that fast.
I snarled before I caught myself.
“Again.”
We circled on packed dirt darkened by years of blood and sweat. The training ring sat far from the main hall, carved into stone where the mountain swallowed sound. This was where wolves learned who they were when no one was watching.
I attacked harder this time.
He met me head-on.
The clash rattled my bones. Power surged through me, Kaelun’s blessing flaring hot beneath my skin, begging to be unleashed. My mark burned, molten silver threading fire through my chest.
I could end this.
I didn’t.
I pulled the strike.
The old Alpha saw it instantly.
His staff cracked against my ribs, driving the breath from my lungs and sending me sprawling into the dirt.
“Do not lie to your body,” he said. “It knows when you’re afraid of yourself.”
I rolled to my knees, chest heaving, hands clenched in the soil.
“I felt her,” I said.
He did not pretend otherwise.
“I know.”
“In the hall,” I continued, forcing the words out slow, controlled. “Then nothing. Like she vanished.”
“She didn’t,” he replied. “You were blinded.”
I looked up sharply.
“By grief,” he went on. “It dampens Veluna’s call. Makes even moon-kissed wolves deaf.”
My jaw tightened. “Travis—”
“Is loud,” the old Alpha interrupted. “And loud things feel dangerous when you’re holding still.”
I pushed to my feet. My ribs ached where the staff had struck, already healing. Pain grounded me.
“He claimed her,” I said.
“He tried.”
The old Alpha finally lowered his weapon and studied me, gaze heavy with memory. “Tradition favors him. But tradition is not fate.”
“It could bind her,” I growled. “Force her hand.”
“That is why you did nothing.”
I hated that he was right.
“You taught me to earn everything,” I said. “To bleed for it. To wait until the pack chose me.”
“And they did.”
He stepped closer now, close enough that I could see the scars mapping his bare scalp, each one a lesson paid for in flesh.
“But she is not a pack,” he said quietly. “She is not territory. You will not take her by strength alone.”
“I wouldn’t,” I snapped.
His eyes sharpened. “You could.”
The truth sat between us, heavy and undeniable.
Kaelun had made me a weapon. He had taught me how not to swing it blindly.
“She will come to you when she can see again,” the old Alpha said. “Your job is to remain where she can find you.”
“And if Travis moves first?”
The old Alpha smiled then. Not kindly.
“Then he will learn why some wolves are raised in silence.”
I exhaled slowly, reins tightening around the storm inside me.
“When,” I asked, “did you know?”
He looked toward the mountains, where moonlight traced old paths through stone.
“The moment you didn’t kill him,” he said. “Power that can wait is rarer than power that can crush.”
I nodded once.
Outside the ring, the night breathed.
Somewhere beyond the walls, a queen mourned her father.
And I stayed where I was told.
For now.
- Writer
