One

  The Wet Nurse From Deep Water

  The air in the longhouse hung thick, sour with smoke and sweat and the copper smell of old blood. Fenris sat on his wooden throne upon the raised dais of his main hall, the weight in his arms not the sturdy burden of a future Alpha, but the terrifying lightness of its life leaving.

  His son's breaths were shallow, rapid things, each one a claw scraping at the inside of his ribs. The healers had all given up; what wet nurses his pack could spare him had retreated with downcast eyes; their milk insufficient to satisfy the pup. It was his mate's furs that had been wrapped tightly around the boy. They still smelled of her—of crushed pine and meadowsweet—but that scent was now layered over with the cold, metallic odor of her birth-bed death and the sour tang of their son dying.

  A raw, guttural howl echoed from the watch-post beyond the longhouse doors.

  They were here.

  He didn't stir. Let them wait. Let Hroth's wolves feel the chill of Black Rock's silence. He would not let this hour of need make him weak. He would not grovel. The fire behind him popped, sending a shower of embers onto the hard-packed earth floor.

  Only when he'd felt enough time had gone by to remain dignified did he look up and with a slow, deliberate breath that did nothing to calm the storm inside him, Fenris gave a single, sharp nod to Jorik, his old faithful warrior, waiting by the door.

  The heavy oak timbers swung inward, and the frozen night poured in, carrying with it the scent of the outsiders: snow, iron, and the distinct, fishy musk of the Deep Water pack. Two of Hroth's biggest brutes flanked the doorway, their fur-trimmed cloaks dusted with travel. Between them stood the wet nurse.

  She was not small. That was Fenris's first, jarring thought. She was human-sized, dwarfed by Skoltha wolf-warriors the way any human would be, but she held onto her height with a straight-backed resilience, a spine that did not bend, making her seem as tall as the wolf-men flanking her. Her cloak was coarse grey wool, sodden at the hem from her long trek up the mountain. As she crossed the threshold, one of the brutes pushed the hood of her cloak back with a force that nearly unbalanced her.

  Hair, white as the heart of a blizzard, fell around a face that was made of stark planes and quiet rage. Her skin held the pallor of one who rarely saw full sun, pulled tight over high cheekbones. And her eyes—blue and as want for warmth as ice— scanned the room with a swift, assessing clarity before landing on where he was seated at the dais. It was not for him that her eyes looked, but for the bundle nestled against his chest. She heard the boy's weak, mewling cry, and her gaze sharpened, pulling in her pale brows.

  One of Hroth's brutes, a male with a freshly scabbed notch missing from his ear, called out as they came down to the dais.

  "Alpha Fenris. You must pardon us for our lateness. This one here is not as tame as she appears."

  The woman gave the brute a hard scowl, pulling away from the other’s grasp enough to spit over her shoulder at him. He wiped the wetness of it off his cheek with a languid smile.

  "I will not compensate your incompetence." Fenris says only, unamused.

  "I will be sure to let Alpha Hroth know." Said the other, a brute with black hair long enough to brush the ground as he walked. Fenris chuckled at the threat.

  "Is this the best he could give me? A human with white hair?"

  "She is healthy. She is with milk. That is all the letter requested."

  Fenris's voice was gravel. "A slight."

  "We can keep her, if it please you, my lord. If you have better options, my lord."

  "Watch your tongue." Fenris growled.

  The woman is close enough now that he can see her hands, chapped and red from cold, tied loosely in front of her with a length of coarse rope that rubbed the skin near to bleeding. He could smell the sweet tinge of her blood in his nostrils.

  "Why is she bound?"

  The taller one with the long hair chuckled, "Obin would like to keep his other ear whole, if it pleases you."

  Fenris flicked his fingers. "Cut it off."

  A knife flashed, and the rope fell away. She brought her hands in front of her, rubbing the raw marks on her wrists without a sound.

  "Come here," Fenris ordered her.

  She walked forward, her steps heavy on the uneven floor. The fear was there in the tightness of her jaw, but it was a fear she managed, like one manages a tool. Up close, he could see the weariness etched around her eyes, the strength in the line of her neck. She didn't smell of fear-sweat. She smelled of snow, woodsmoke from a journey's campfire, and underneath, the rich, sweet scent of milk.

  "You understand your purpose?" he asked, the words harsh.

  Her blue eyes met his, unwavering. "I understand the child is hungry." Her voice was low, husky from disuse. It was an answer that was not an answer. A statement of fact that bypassed his authority entirely.

  A flicker of something—annoyance, respect—stirred in his gut.

  "His name is Isangrim," Fenris said, the name feeling like a vow and a curse on his tongue. The woman made the short climb up the dais, and before him he could see that she was also strong, fierce, even. That Hroth's wolves were wise to cower before her. He did not hand the child over so much as allow her to lift the pup from his arms.

  She carried him over to the throne beside him with a delicateness that seemed both unnatural and at the same instinctive. She sat, tucking him into the crook of her arm. With her free hand, she undid the cord of her coat, exposing the crude leather ties at the front of her dress, movements efficient and precise, her eyes never leaving the boy. There was no false modesty in her, only the pressing urgency of the task. Her dress parted. The swell of her breasts were pale and full, the skin stretched taut with nourishment. Her nipples were a deep, flushed rose against the pale skin, darkened and pronounced.

  The infant's head nuzzled blindly, his tiny mouth opening and closing with desperate, birdlike gasps. She guided him with a firm, certain touch, her thumb and forefinger positioning her breast. She brushed the nipple against his lips once, twice; a deliberate, patient provocation. Fenris had seen his own wet nurses do the same, and Isangrim had denied them all.

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  With a sudden, instinctive hunger, the baby's mouth opened wide. She pressed him forward.

  And he latched.

  Fenris watched, a captive audience to this most primal of acts. He saw the baby's jaw begin a rhythmic, vigorous working, and saw the strong pull at the areola. The woman's body gave a slight, almost imperceptible flinch at the initial strength of the suck, followed by a profound, settling exhalation. Her shoulders, which had been held in a tense line, dropped a fraction. A faint, pink flush spread across her chest and up her throat. Her eyes closed for a long moment, her lashes pale against her skin.

  When she opened them again, they were fixed on the child's face, watching the faint blue tinge leave his lips, watching the frantic flutter of his eyelids settle into the slow, heavy blinks of contentment. A deep, rolling pulse of milk let down, visible as a slight tremor through the flesh of her breast. The baby swallowed, audibly, a gulping sound that was the sweetest noise Fenris had heard since Ygrid's last laugh.

  One of Hroth's warriors shifted, uncomfortable with the intimacy of the scene. "If it pleases you, we might request lodging for the night. Aye, the tavern will do just fine. We’re in need of taste for Black Rock’s pleasures. We will take our leave at dawn. And as for Hroth’s compensation---"

  Fenris barely heard him. His world had narrowed to the woman, the child, and the silent, screaming contradiction in his soul. This was salvation. This was desecration. This human slave was doing what none of his own kind could. Her strength was not the brutal, transformative power of the Skoltha; it was a stubborn, enduring force of life itself.

  As the baby fed, a warmth began to spread in Fenris's own chest, a warmth unrelated to the fire. It was a strange, pulling sensation deep behind his sternum— a hook that embedded in his ribs, looped by a line that led to this woman before him which was gently, inexorably, drawing taut.

  He shook his head, a low growl building in his throat. Exhaustion. Hallucination born of despair.

  The woman looked up at the sound of him, meeting his eyes over the head of his feeding son. In her blue gaze, he saw no victory from her effort; only a weary, unbroken confidence in her own competence.

  The brutes cleared their throats; Fenris looked then, considered ripping them out. "If it please the Alpha—" one began again.

  "Jorik will see to your arrangements," Fenris said, his voice a low rumble that silenced the man. He jerked his chin toward the old warrior by the door, a gaunt, silent figure who had observed everything before him without a flicker of expression.

  The Deep Water wolves turned back the way they came. Jorik opened one of the heavy doors, and a knife-edged wind sliced through the hall. Fenris watched until they were swallowed by the night beyond, until the longhouse air began to clear of the stench of them. Only then did his eyes settle back to the woman and his son.

  She was adjusting the babe, a slight shift of her hip. The infant's mouth was locked onto her nipple with a relentless, pulsing suction. Her breast, full and heavy, was mottled pink from the heat and the vigorous feeding. A thin trickle of milk escaped the corner of his mouth, gleaming in the firelight, and she caught it with the pad of her thumb, wiping it back to his lips without breaking the rhythm.

  "He is strong," she said, her voice carrying an accent Fenris had never heard—a lilt that rounded the words, made them sound like stones smoothed by a river. "He just needed to be met with strength as strong as his."

  The words weren't meant as a challenge, the way he knew most of his kind might take them to. She has the right of things, Fenris thought. It was the truth in that moment. And in this truth, Fenris felt the first, real crack in the ice around his heart.

  “You will take every last drop from me." The woman cooed, and smiled down at the boy's face, her expression a complex tapestry of weariness and a fierce, private amusement. The baby's eyes, still the hazy blue of all newborns, were open now, fixed on her with an unsettling intensity. "Isangrim the Devourer," she chastised, her thumb stroking his cheek. A long silence stretched, filled only by the fire's crackle and the wet, soft sounds of feeding. Fenris crossed his arms over his chest, the movement taut.

  "What are you called?" he asked her.

  "Albi." She said, without looking up, as if it were a piece of information as irrelevant as the weather. Likely, it had become such. Most wolf-men had little regard for the sentiment of their human slaves' names. Not all, but most.

  "Albi," he repeated, the name feeling foreign. "By my command, you will stay in this longhouse. You will sleep in my bed, for warmth and for my son's needs. You will go where I go. If Hroth sent you with poison in your milk, or if you plan to flee with him into the snow..." He leaned forward until his shadow fell menacingly over her legs. "I know your scent now. I am Fenris of Black Rock. I can run down a stag for three days until its heart bursts. I would find you long before the cold could take you. And what I would do to you then... your imagination, no matter how haunted, could not fathom it."

  Her eyes held him, unflinching. There was no fear, only a deep, resigned knowledge. "I have heard of you. Of the things you are capable of and the things you have done. I am no simple woman. I have no plans to run." She shifted the babe to her other breast with a practiced motion, offering him the fuller side. He latched on again with a hungry grunt. She winced slightly at the new pull, then settled. "The Deep Water wolves raided my village three summers past. They killed my husband while he lived, ripping him limb from limb. They dashed our son against the stones. I was their captive for three years as their wet nurse. I was their cheap pleasure after hunts, favored amongst the other slaves by my hair and skin. I birthed four babes, and watched each one wither and starve while their own fattened on my milk." She swallowed, the muscles in her throat working. "I would not be so quick to judge the depth of my haunted imagination. I already know I will meet my end in one horrific manner or another at the claws of your kind. But if you wish me to care for this babe..." Her eyes flashed, not with anger, but with a cold, clear fire. "You will not threaten me here. Not while it is my milk that soothes your son. You may think my station too lowly to demand anything of you, but I have a power of my own, Fenris of Black Rock.” Aye, he thought to himself, that you do, “ You it is who requested me. Aye, and from the Alpha of a pack who you have fought with for hundreds of years. You it is who is desperate for your son's salvation. You have no other options but I. My death means his death." She nodded at the babe now drowsing against her. "And it makes little consequence to me if I am to die. I am not afraid of doing it myself. Should you or any of your wolves mistreat me. I have no want left to endure the savagery of what you are. I've left that desire behind at Deep Water. So, it is you who should be afraid of me, this weak, lowly human before you.”

  “What is it you want, Albi?” Fenris could hear the sharp command in her voice; a hidden condition set into the stone of her words. It was doing strange, heated things to his chest. For some unfathomable reason, known only to the Great Mother herself, Fenris felt pride for the strength of this slave.

  “You will protect me, Alpha of Black Rock. No harm will come to me here. I will not be used as your warriors' cheap pleasure. I will not feel so much as a whisper of a claw on my skin. And you will not treat me as if I am a blade you must watch for a turning."

  The same impossible sensation tightened in Fenris's chest as he listened to her, a binding pull, a hook set deep behind his ribs drawing taut toward her. It infuriated him.

  He held her stare for a long moment, the only sound the sleepy suckling of his son. He saw the enduring strength of a river stone in her—worn smooth by terrible currents and yet unmovable.

  He gave a single, slow nod. “Your request will be granted, Albi the fierce One," he says, repeating the endeared name, his words grating out like stone on stone through the strange tightening in his throat. He couldn't help but smile. "It is a reasonable thing you request of me."