After a time, when the baby’s sucks had slowed to sleepy, shallow pulls, Albi the fierce opened her eyes from their brief, exhaustive slumber and looked at him tiredly.

  “He is asleep?” she whispered, her voice barely above the fires crackling. She gently ran her thumb over the babe’s nose, as if to make sure.

  Fenris nodded, a stiff gesture; he had been still too long, so as not to wake them. “Come, I will show you to the bedchamber, likely the journey was not an easy one.”

  She did answer, but covered herself, putting the small pup over the curve of her shoulder, lightly tapping on his back. Fenris stood, his legs a shock of nerves from disuse. He reached down and helped her stand, surprised by the solid muscle in her arm.

  He led her toward the rear of the longhouse, the flame of the sconces on their posts flickering curiously as they walked by, past the central hearth and the long table of his main hall, down the long hall whose tapestries stirred with their breeze, to a doorway covered by a heavy woolen tapestry, decorated with the running black wolf of his line. He pushed it aside for her.

  The bedchamber beyond was a small, intimate space, dominated by a wide bed frame heaped with furs—bear, wolf, elk. The air was warmer here than the rest of the longhouse. A circular wooden basin, large enough for a bear to rest in, was set down into the stones near a smaller, secondary hearth where a low blaze glowed. Steam rose gently from the water’s surface. He’d set out garments—a soft doeskin tunic, woolen leggings, a heavier dress of dark green wool—folded on a chest at the foot of the bed.

  “This is my chamber. You will sleep here,” Fenris said walking to the hearth, kneeling down to fix at the fire with an iron rod. “The garments there on the chest are clean. You are.... near the size my mate was. Those clothes no longer serve her. They will serve you, now.” He gestured with the rod toward the chest, then at the bath. “There is the water. You will wash. You smell of your journey. And the stench of them."

  “I will not have my own chamber?” she asked.

  “My son will sleep in his own bed.” He said simply, “and you will not leave his side.”

  “It is truth, then, that his mother perished in childbirth?” Albi asked and even with the softness of her voice the question was a sharp stab in his chest. He could only nod; and pretend to poke at the fire longer so she did not see the weakness in him.

  He turned only when he heard the creak of the boards as Albi moved about. She went to the edge of the vast bed and bent, a fluid motion of spine and hip, and laid Isangrim gently upon the furs. The moment his weight left her arms, his face scrunched and a soft, mewling protest escaped his lips. His tiny fists flailed above the swaddling furs.

  “Shhh, little wolf,” Albi murmured, her voice dropping into a private cadence. “Hush this howling.Be calm.It is only for a moment. ”

  Her fingers, capable and quick, went to the leather ties of her dress. She did not look at Fenris. Her attention was solely on the fussing child as she undid the knots. The rough-spun wool, damp from melted snow, parted damply. She shrugged the dress off her shoulders, letting it pool around her feet on the rushes.

  Fenris did not look away. An Alpha did not avert his eyes. And she did not act as if she were being watched. Her body was the truth of the life she’d told him, a hard map showing clear the cruelty of their kind. The skin of her shoulders and back was the color of fresh cream, stretched over lean muscle. A lattice of old, silvered scars crisscrossed her ribs and flanks—the bite of many slick-whipped lashes and the ragged tear of many gripping claws. Her breasts, freed from the confines of the dress, were soft but heavy; her nipples a dark, flushed rose that were pulled long from his son’s suckling. Her hips were broad, set on strong thighs, bearing the marks of hard childbearing—stretch marks like faint, silvery lightning across her skin. She was not a maid, soft and untouched. She was a woman who had borne young through pain, who had labored in suffering, who had survived it with strength, alone.

  She paid Fenris no more mind than she did the tapestries and wood icons nailed to the walls. Leaning over the bed, she peeled back the swaddling furs from Isangrim. The baby kicked his skinny legs, his ribs showing too clearly beneath his skin. He was thin, frighteningly so, all bird-bone and translucent skin.

  “There now, little Alpha,” she whispered, scooping him up again, his wails cutting off into startled hiccups against her warm skin, “it is not all bad, now is it?”

  She walked, naked to the wooden basin. Testing the water with a toe, then her foot, she stepped in, sinking down with a low sigh that was almost a groan. The water rose to her waist. She settled, leaning back against the curved side, and guided Isangrim to her breast. He latched with a desperate, greedy pull, his tiny body going limp in the warm water, suspended against hers.

  For a long moment, there was only the sound of feeding, the crackle of the fire, and the slow drip of water from Albi’s hair as she scooped handfuls over her head. Then she looked up, her blue eyes finding Fenris where he still knelt, rooted, by the fire that had started to burn his cheeks beneath the beard.

  “You should go,” she said. Her voice was not harsh, but flat, commanding.

  Fenris blinked, stifled a laugh.“Go?”

  “Bring me something to eat. I am hungry from the journey. Your son feeds from me; I must feed myself to nourish him.”

  He stared, the command—for it was a command, however quietly delivered—landed strangely.No one ordered the Alpha in this way.“I will have a cook bring you—”

  “No.” She cut him off, her gaze steady. “And do not look upon me as if I might drown the babe in this water at your leave.”

  “I was not–”

  “It is only you wolf-men of the Skoltha who harm innocent babes. Not I. And I would not trust your she-wolves, or servants, or warriors, or cooks not to spit in my broth. You fetch it for me yourself.”

  A cold pang, sharp as an icicle, pierced Fenris’s chest. It was not anger, though certainly it was, for a slave to command an Alpha such as him in this manner was blatant disrespect, but it was not complete in a real sense. It was the simple, brutal weight of her hatred, distilled and aimed at him. She saw him not as a grieving father, but as a species of monster. Though Fenris understands this is an irrefutable truth for their kind, it hurt, strangely, coming from her.

  The binding feeling in his ribs tightened, a painful thrum. Without another word, he stood, his jaw clenched in anger, and pushed his way out the chamber through the tapestry. He walked with heavy steps until the hot anger subsided, then stood beneath the swinging tapestries of the hall, the sounds of the cooks setting the long table for the nightly warrior feast seeming suddenly hollow and far away, though it was only a couple paces before him.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He turned back to his chamber, his steps quiet, the anger leaving him. He silently pulled the cloth tapestry aside a fraction.

  Within the firelit chamber, Albi had cupped her hand, gathering warm water from the basin. Gently, with a tenderness that belied her hard words and scarred body, she poured it over Isangrim’s head. The baby started, then stilled, his suckling pausing for a second as the warm stream traced over his scalp and down his thin cheeks. She did it again, and again, washing her journey’s grime off of him, her face in profile a mask of fierce, exhausted concentration.

  “Will you have honor, little Isangrim? Will you have bravery,little Alpha? Will you have heart, little babe? Or will you have rage, little monster?”

  Fenris let the tapestry fall closed. He went to fetch her food, the ghost of that image—the white-haired woman bathing his son in the firelight—burned behind his eyes, and the hook in his chest pulled ever tighter.

  ????

  The high table in the longhouse was a scarred length of ancient oak, stained black by generations of spilled mead and blood. Fenris sat at its head, a horn of ale untouched before him. To his right, the bench sat empty where his mate, Ygrid, should have been. The emptiness there was a physical coldness.

  His warriors filled only the upper half of the table’s benches, a diminished gathering that echoed in the vast, smoky space. Twenty warriors where there had once, in the time of his grandfather, been a hundred. They feasted, but the usual roar of laughter, the clashing of cups, the boasts that rattled the rafters, were all muted, dampened like a fire smothered by wet wool. The men tore into roasted venison with a focused, joyless intensity, their eyes occasionally flicking toward the tapestry that hid the Alpha’s chamber.

  Fenris watched them all, in no state to feast, cataloging their moods like a general surveying a field before the start of a battle.

  There was Jorik, gaunt and silent as a grave-marker, picking at his food with long, pale fingers. His loyalty was to the pack, not to the wolf, a distinction Fenris had always understood and respected. Beside him, Bor, broad as a barrel with a beard tangled with old bones, told a story that no one truly listened to; he had not the talent of tongue to compete with the feast for their attention. It had been Bor’s eldest daughter, Elitha, who was one of the first wet nurses his babe had refused. At the far end, the twins, Erland and Erlend, ripped into the fattest portion of venison, their movements perfectly synchronized, their faces identically blank.

  And then there was Asger.

  Asger sat directly to Fenris’s left, the place of the second-strongest. He was a year younger than Fenris, all coiled strength and storm-grey eyes; only a thin ring of gold around it, as if even the wolf could not win against the storm within. His black hair was bound back from a face that was stitched of hard angles and a sharp, prominent nose that had been broken and healed carelessly crooked. He drank deeply from his horn, his throat working, but his eyes fell and rose on Fenris every so often, watching. He looked as if he wanted to say something but held back each time the words formed on his tongue. Fenris could smell the ambition on him, sour and sharp as unripe berries. Asger had coveted Ygrid since they were young pups. He had challenged Fenris for her, years ago, and been left with a subtle limp and scar across his ribs for the trouble of it; neither of which had undermined his brutal strength. The defeat had, though, festered his restlessness. Jorik had told Fenris, just that morning, of whispers Asger had shared by the latrine pits: that Fenris’s seed was cursed, that the pup had clawed its way out and killed its mother, and that this was a sign from their Great Mother that Fenris’s time as Alpha must come to an end; or Black Rock itself will be cursed along with him.A challenge was coming. It was only a matter of moon phases now.

  Asger set his cup down with a deliberate thud that cut through the low murmur. All eyes slid toward him. “The Deep Water curs,” Asger said, the mead showing on the edges of his words, giving him more dangerous confidence, “They made a circuit of the outer huts after they were done having their way with our slaves. They spoke to Lupa and Siv, the tanners’ wives.” He turned his storm-grey gaze on Fenris. “And you know, Alpha, how the tanners’ wives do love to spread talk. I know of no other she-wolves with howls as loud as theirs. They’re saying the wet nurse Hroth sent you, the one warming your furs right now... is a slave. Is that truth, Alpha? Does a human feed the future Alpha of Black Rock?”

  A silence fell, heavier than before. The crackle of the fire seemed loud. Fenris took a slow drink from his own horn, letting the silence stretch, letting Asger’s question hang in the smoky air. He set the horn down and met the stare, his own golden eyes flat and unbothered.

  “It is truth.”

  A ripple went through the hall. Bor grunted. One of the twins set their venison onto the wood plate before him.

  A younger wolf, a hot-blooded hunter named Rusk, slammed a freckled fist on the table. “A slight on you, my Alpha! A fucking humiliation from Hroth! Sending a human bitch to suckle Isangrim? It’s cause for retaliation.”

  Part of Fenris, the part that was pride and fury, agreed. But the hook in his chest, the one that bound him to the woman sleeping beside his son in the next room, gave a faint, warning tug.

  “Isangrim is closer to death than life,” Fenris explained, his voice low but cutting through the mutters. “He refused the milk of every she-wolf in Black Rock. It may be that my son does not want the milk of a wolf who is not his mother.” He paused, letting the mention of Ygrid’s absence fill the space. “Even our most....esteemed human wet nurses, have been refused by him.”

  “Hroth could have sent any quality choice of she-wolves,” Rusk argues, his freckled face the same color as the mead now, “if it be truth that he wishes to mend the alliance between our packs. This just proves that he takes us for fools! And this peace accordance between us a ruse!”

  “Put the mead down, brother.” Bor raised a dark brow at Rusk.

  “This...woman comes with a large supply of milk. His thirst is finally satisfied. He will grow. And he will live.” He swept his gaze around the table, but settled heavily on Asger. “It is not uncommon for us to use human wet nurses for our pups. Do not make this more than what it is, brother.”

  “Aye,” Asger said, a thin smile playing on his lips. He leaned forward. “It is common.Among the lesser ranks. But an Alpha’s pup? The pure ancestry blood of the Black Rock line?” He shook his head, the disdain dripping from his words like venom. “That pup will grow weak.His blood will thin.He will be like a pup raised on ewe’s milk when he should suckle from a she-wolf. He’ll be more man than wolf. Is that the future you want for us, Fenris? A human-soft Alpha? Is that how you honor the gift of Ygrid’s blood?”

  Fenris stood then.

  He did not rise quickly, but with a slow, unstoppable force, like a mountain deciding to move. The chair scraped back on the stone floor with a scream of wood. The hall went utterly still. Fenris loomed over Asger, his shadow swallowing the man.

  “If you mention my mates name again, I will rip the tongue from your throat and feed it to the human-slave who nurses Ygrid’s son.” Fenris said, each word a chip of ice. “Or perhaps, this is only your fearthat even fed from human milk, Isangrim will one day over shadow Torin in strength. That sickly boy you hide like a failure, who barely survived his own refusal of Haggatha’s teets,” He leaned down, placing his knuckles on the table, bringing his face close to Asger’s. He could smell the mead on the other man’s breath, the scent of his simmering rage. “.....I am your Alpha. Or have you forgotten, Asger? Have you forgotten why it is that your leg aches in the cold? Do I need to remind you now?”

  Asger’s face drained of blood, then flooded with a dark, violent red. His hand twitched toward the eating knife on the table. Every muscle in Fenris’s body coiled, ready. The challenge was here, invited, provoked,desired.

  But Asger did not move. He held Fenris’s gaze, the hatred in his eyes a palpable heat. After a long, breathless moment, he stood, shaking with restraint, and walked angrily out the longhouse.

  Fenris straightened, watching the heavy door shut loudly behind him.

  “I will have no more of these whispers. Your future Alpha has chosen the woman’s milk, with the oldest wolf-blood flowing through his veins. Do not question his senses. If any have a quarrel with that, you are free to challenge my status as his father, and as your Alpha.” He let his gaze travel slowly around the hall, meeting the eyes of each of his wolves, one by one. None held his stare for long.

  He turned and walked away from the table, away from the silent, watching warriors, toward the tapestry that hid the chamber where his son, and the woman who fed him, were asleep in his furs.

  Behind him, the silence held for a three-count before the low murmur of conversation began again.