Fenris sat beside Jorik on the bench at the heart of Folkstead. The first true day of spring in Black Rock had finally arrived, a decisive victory of the sun over the lingering vice of winter’s chill. The air was a breath of damp moss and the faint green promise of things stirring forth into the light from underground. Fenris saw the sway of the leaves hanging low from the old bending trees that lined the creek bank and smiled a secret knowing. The old warrior beside him was whittling a stick of their bark now into a bone knife, his movements slow and precise. Before them, in a warm patch of sunlight, Isangrim, Ethel, and a new friend, a young boy of Isangrim’s age with shaggy hair the color of fox-pelt, were all conducting out the serious business of childhood.

  Without looking up, Jovik grunted and nodded toward the creek path, where the sound of women’s laughter trickled over the bubbling of the water.

  “That red-haired babe they’re playing with is Jakoob–” though Fenris never asked, “--he’s Frode’s son, the fishermen.”

  Fenris looked again at the boy, Jakoob, who stood with his back straight, observing Isangrim closely and with a solemnity too grave for his months, his untamed hair falling into eyes that were the color of new grass.

  Jorik continued, the knife scraping. “His woman went south with Albi’s caravan. Frode wouldn’t follow, and, if the story be true, told her he’d be damned if he’d let her take the boy, and so, kept him here. Lives in a good hut by the creek with another fishermen named Morgin. Neither have kin-folk here. Morgin is quite the catch himself, so Mara likes to say.”

  “You’ve lived amongst the humans for too long, old warrior.” Fenris grunted with a chuckle.

  “Your Hattie might be quick to agree with me,” Jorik said, a smile hiding in his peppered beard, “she’s taken to tending their affairs. Keepin’ things in order, helpin’ get more hands to help them. Practical woman. I’ve told her the creek will be fat with trout this time of year. It’ll be a good season if we time it right. They’ll need all the hands they can get.”

  Fenris felt a twist in his gut, low and sudden. “She tends their affairs?” he repeated, his voice flat.

  “Aye,” Jorik said, not looking up, but the corner of his mouth twitched. “And those affairs keep her out later and later. Sometimes till the stars are turning. Often as not, it’s me puts the little princess to bed while her mother’s off tending… fishermen’s business.”

  Fenris’s jaw tightened. He opened his mouth to speak, but a high, imperious voice cut through the morning air.

  “No, Grim, there! The castle moot goes there!”

  Isangrim was kneeling in the mud, knee-deep in a puddle the spring thaw had left behind, his small hands wrapped around a cracked wooden bowl. With great, solemn concentration, his pink tongue caught between his lips, he was engaged in the intricate labor of transferring mud from one puddle to another. He scooped with exaggerated care, watching the black sludge drip through his fingers, then waddle with the stiff-legged gait of a drunkard to pour his bounty into a second, smaller depression, his face breaking into a gurgle of delight as it splashed.

  Ethel stood over him, hands on her hips, her dark curls wild as a crown of briars. She directed operations with the stern authority of a queen whose subjects were particularly dense.

  “Noot there,” she sighed, pointing a chubby finger toward the larger puddle. “That is the keep. The moot must surround it, or the wolves will get in! Don’t you know the stoory?”

  Isangrim blinked up at her, his head tilting. He did not know the story, nor what a keep was, or a moat, or why the wolf couldn’t come in, but he considered the instruction with the gravity of a councilor pondering war. Then, with deliberate insolence, he poured his mud exactly where he had intended anyway.

  Ethel sighed, a sound so like her mother that Fenris felt a strange pang in his chest.

  It was then that Jakoob, finished it seemed with his observing, strode forward with a steady, stalking gait and pushed Isangrim with both hands.

  The wolf-child went down with a squelch, his small body landing in the mud with a wet slap.

  Before Isangrim could rise—even register shock—Jakoob stepped over him and planted a firm, possessive kiss upon Ethel’s rosy cheek, his freckled face serious as a knight claiming his queen.

  Ethel touched her cheek, her eyes wide.

  “A true knight will kill all the wolves for his queen!” Jakoob shouted at Isangrim.

  Fenris was moving before he knew it, his heart hammering against his ribs, a hot, primitive surge rising in his throat. He lifted Isangrim from the mud, the boy’s small body dangling in the air, his tunic soaked and black and lip trembling on the verge of a wail. Fenris set him on his feet solidly and dusted the muck from his knees with sharp, efficient strokes. His hands shook with a rage he did not fully understand. He turned his eyes upon Jakoob.

  The boy did not flinch. He met Fenris’s gaze—golden wolf eyes blazing down upon green human ones—and there was no fear in him, only a stubborn, territorial set to his small jaw; an ancient enmity that had no place in children so young. Not unless it had been his father who put it there.

  “Fenris.”

  It was Hattie’s voice. He turned away from the piss-boy. She was coming up the path from the creek, her boots squelching and the hem of her skirt dark with water. She glowed like a lantern freshly lit, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright with a happiness that struck Fenris like a slap. She looked… satisfied. Rested in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

  “This boy pushed my son to the mud.” Fenris growled.

  “It is only a wee bit of play, Alpha Fenris,” she said, smiling as she approached. She bent to kiss Ethel’s crown, then ruffled Jakoob’s red hair with a familiarity that made Fenris’s stomach clench. “Boys wrestling fer favor. It means nothing. They be joost a couple of bairns.”

  “It means nothing?” Fenris’s voice was low, dangerous. He kept one hand on Isangrim’s shoulder, feeling the small tremors running through the boy’s frame. “If it had been Isangrim who pushed Jakoob down, Hattie, and said a true wolf keeps a human slave, would his father not see it as the aggression of a wolf? Would he not wonder if the beast in the blood was showing itself?”

  The smile faded from her face. She straightened, her river clay eyes narrowing, assessing him with a shrewdness that saw too much.

  The damn woman always knew.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked. “You’re on edge. You’re angry. What’s gone and bitten your arse?”

  Fenris looked past her, to Jorik, who had stopped his whittling and was watching them with a quiet, troubled gaze. “I do not appreciate you making Jorik tend to Ethel till the witching hour,” he said, the words coming out sharper than he intended. “He is old. His bones are stiff. He needs his rest, Hattie. He is not to be nursemaid while you tend to fishermen late in the night.”

  Hattie’s brow arched, a testing, dangerous curve.

  Jorik stood, his joints creaking, and spat into the dirt. “I spoke of her mending the nets and preparing up the fisher’s catches, Fenris,” he growled, “You take my words and twist them like a wet rag till they drip with meaning I never gave them.”

  “Then why,” Hattie asked, her eyes never leaving Fenris’s face, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut across his skin, “have you go0t such hurt feelings? It be my business who I’m tendin’, is it noot?”

  Fenris opened his mouth to answer, to deny, but the sound of footsteps approached fast from behind them. Fenris turned his head before the figure broke from the path-line. It was Alfric, Bor’s grandson. The boy had shot up over the winter, his shoulders broadening, yet he still moved with the coltish energy of youth and was still as thin armed and legged. His face was flushed red from running, his chest heaving with his heavy breaths, but as he skidded to a halt before the bench, Fenris inhaled deeply and smelled no fear. Only urgency, and beneath it, a bright, sharp excitement.

  “Is it good news this time, then?” Fenris asked, his voice dry. Alfric bent, hands on his knees, sucking in great gulps of air. Then he straightened, and a grin split his face, wide and unrestrained.

  “Aye, Alpha,” he panted, his eyes shining. “It is. It’s Albi. Ninny sent me. The pains have started. She’s in labor.”

  The world seemed to narrow, then expand. Hattie, the children, Jorik’s angry breaths—all of it receded to a distant murmur.

  He didn’t run at first; it was a swift, ground-eating walk that broke into a jog as he passed the last huts of Folkstead, then into a full, pounding sprint as he hit the path to Black Rock.

  The mud splattered his legs, the cold air burned his lungs, but he felt none of it. The only thing that existed was the longhouse and the woman-wolf inside it.

  ????

  The great door of the Alpha’s longhouse stood open for him, a dark mouth exhaling warmth and a bustle of nervous energy. Inside, the main hall was a hive of motion. Several of the she-wolves who served as healers and midwives— Luta, plump Helga, Bo with her kind eyes—were milling about, wringing their hands, stirring a broth over the hearth, and chattering with low whispers. The air smelled of steeped herbs, clean linen, and anxiety.

  The one who stepped forward to block his path to the Alpha’s chamber was Ninny. She was built like a barrel, with arms thick as haunches of meat and a face that seemed hewn from granite. She looked less like a midwife and more like a bear who had decided to leave her life in the wilderness and don an apron instead.

  “Alpha,” she said, her voice a low rumble. Her broad face was creased with concern, and affront, of all things. “She has sent us all out. All of us. Even Luta, who birthed half of Deep Water. She refuses a midwife. Says she’ll have none of it. Not our hands, not our broth, not our herbs. Must she be so difficult? Is this because of Ulga, that wretched cunt? Must we all be slopped together with her vileness?”

  Fenris slowed his breathing, forcing his heart to still its frantic hammering against his ribs. He could feel Albi through the bond now—she was not in pain, there was only the fierce, focused concentration, a gathering of power like storm clouds on a horizon.

  “She is the Seer,” Fenris said, half-making things up as he went along, “The Great Mother Wolf is her midwife. This is her way.” He saw the protest forming in Ninny’s eyes, the professional disapproval, the worry that shaded into a personal sense of rejection. He held up a hand, gentle but firm. “Do not take offense, Ninny. It is not a judgment of your skill. She has birthed children before. She was a slave, if you remember. That is her way of it.”

  Ninny studied his face, her small, dark eyes searching for doubt. Finding none, her expression softened into something like pity. “It is a sad thing,” she said quietly, “to be alone in such a moment. A she-wolf should have her pack around her.”

  “Her pack is here,” Fenris said, and put a strong hand on her shoulder, “You are all waiting. And eager to serve, if she calls.” He offered Ninny a small, tired smile. “Your care does you credit. She knows it. I will have her send for some herbal tea here soon.”

  Some of the stiffness left the big woman’s shoulders. She nodded once, a sharp dip of her chin.

  “We are here and the herbs are ready. We will be silent as mice if she needs that from us.”

  “Thank you, Ninny.” He bowed, a strange, nervous movement in his desperation to be rid of her.

  She stepped aside to let him pass.

  Fenris crossed the hall. He could feel her now, more clearly—a tightening and releasing that was the muscular work at the beginning of all creation. He pushed the heavy wool of the tapestry aside and stepped into the dim, warm quiet of their room.

  The air in the bedchamber was heavy with the scent of wet stone and wood, crushed herbs, and the sharp, coppery tang of impending blood. The fire in the hearth had been banked to glowing embers, casting a dull red light that pooled in the corners and turned the steam writhing above the great wooden basin into drifting phantoms.

  Albi was nestled within the water, naked. The lamplight gleamed on the sweat-slick curve of her shoulders, the powerful swell of her hips, the immense, taut drum of her belly. Her white hair was a tangled mane plastered to her neck and shoulders, but she had wrestled the worst of it into a rough knot atop her head, bound with a leather thong. She braced her hands on the rim of the tub, her head bowed, her breath coming in slow, measured drags that fogged the water’s surface.

  Fenris moved to her, the rushes sighing under his boots. He placed a hand on the soaked, hot skin of her flank. Her eyes opened, finding his in the tight wave of pain that was moving through her body. They were dark, her pupils wide, the honey-smoke nearly swallowed by black.

  I did not send for you, she said through their mind-talk, her thoughts low and rumbling, That was Ninny’s doing. The woman has the patience of a gnat.

  She had planned to labor alone, her thoughts told him, to birth alone, as she had for all her others. And beneath that iron resolve was her fear that he would look at her and see another birthing bed, another pool of blood, another life bleeding out, and his anxieties would suffocate her when she needed space to feel however the birth made her feel.

  If you are here, I cannot worry about your feelings.

  He leaned in, the steam dampening his tunic, and pressed his lips to her temple. Her skin burned.

  “You do not have to worry about me,” he murmured, the words half-lost in the hiss of her next indrawn breath. “I am here only to bear witness to you. I am fine.”

  As if to test his claim, the contraction gathered within her. He felt it through his palm, through the bond—a deep, grinding compression that began at the base of her spine and wrapped its fist around her entire middle, tightening, squeezing, crushing. Albi’s breath hitched, then released in a controlled, guttural groan that vibrated in her chest. Her fingers curled against the wood, knuckles whitening to the color of bone. The pain was a distant, echoing pressure in his own guts, a sympathetic clenching that left him lightheaded and nauseous.

  You see? she gasped as the fist unclenched, leaving her shuddering and loose in the water. You should get out of my head. Out of my skin. You will not like the taste of this labor, Alpha.

  “I am Alpha, and I’ll manage.,” he said, though his jaw was locked so tight his teeth ached.

  She turned her head then, her eyes opening to find his in the dim light. They were dark, her pupils blown wide, the honey-smoke nearly swallowed by black, yet they held a clarity that cut through the haze of pain.

  “You’ve been with Hattie,” she whispered aloud, her voice rough as river stones.

  “I’ve been with our son,” he corrected, his thumb tracing circles on her hip just below the water. “He was pushed down in the mud by some piss-boy with fox hair.”

  “Aye, well, that might tell you something, mightn’t it?” She settled deeper into the water, sliding beneath so far that only the swell of her belly broke the surface, like a whale’s back, cool and exposed to the air. “Perhaps it is time we leave the humans be. Let them tend their own affairs.”

  “Aye,” he agreed, sinking to his knees upon the rushes beside the tub. He pressed his palm to her heated brow, pushing damp strands from her eyes. “Perhaps you have the right of it. But it is not the time to worry on such things.”

  And yet, it gnaws on you like this labor does to me, Fenris she sent, her thoughts softening, opening like a flower despite the next wave gathering in her depths. So let us go through these hard pains together.

  Fenris stilled. He looked her over; the bead of sweat that gathered on her soft upper lip, the vast rise of her belly breaking the water's surface, and the corded strength in her shoulders. The leaden weight of his deception came down upon him then with force enough to bow his head down.

  Albi reached for him. Her hand, warm-damp, closed around his with a grip that was sudden and fierce, her fingers lacing through his and tightening until he could feel the beat of her pulse against his palm. Through the bond, she poured the certainty of her feelings for him, collecting as a single message; I am here and I do not break. The shame in his chest was a black stone, but her love was a rising tide that bore it down and broke it into pieces that could no longer become lodged and aching in his throat. He felt held.

  Be honest with me, Fenris. Her tired mind pleaded. Not because I don’t know the truth, but because it has become a serpent of your own and it’s coiling around your throat.

  I love her deeply. The admission hung between them, stark and treacherous. It ached in his chest, but he would not shed a single tear for it.

  I know, Albi answered, and there was no surprise in her thought, I tried to tell you, you would not listen. You fear nothing but yourself, Fenris.

  Does it hurt you? The question tore from him, ragged.

  It hurts me that it is hurting you, she sent, her thoughts low and resonant. But I know what it is, and what it is not. I know you dream of a world where you love a woman like Hattie, and keep a hut in a village like Folkstead, with no burden on your back of wolf-men or their wars. She is one life—the life of the meadow, the quiet, the simple. I am another.

  She shifted in the water, grimacing as a new pain rippled through her, but her mind-voice remained steady, I am the life you are destined to have, Fenris. The life all paths lead to, whether by your will or not. I am your Imprint. Your mate. I am the mother of your children, the bone of your bone. She is the maiden of your dreams, the ghost of a kind of peace you’ll never have. I do not fear her stealing your heart from me. I know I have you. I have always had you. We are carved from the same stone. Your blood and mine are from the same vein.

  I am…without honor, he sent, the shame hot in his throat. You have grown stronger, Seer, and I have grown weak.

  It is the heart of a wolf-boy in you, Albi answered, her thoughts gentle despite the sweat beading on her upper lip. It is sweet, and it is loving. You are not weak. You are only tired of being strong.

  What do I do, Albi? Do I send her away?

  What good will that do, Fenris? Albi raised a brow at him, and took his hand to press her lips to his palm, I think you let yourself have what you want, she sent, and the thought was fierce now, The only way to end a dream is to wake from it, Fenris. You must face it, touch it, know it for the illusion it is.

  You want me to give in to the desire? He pulled back, shocked, his hand falling from her lips. To mire your honor and mine in the mud?

  I asked the Great Mother about it, Fenris, and that was what she spoke to me. She sent, her eyes blazing open, I give you my permission. Take her, if you must. Work her out of your blood like a fever. I know where I stand. I stand at the center of your world, unmoving. She is….a passing star in the sky.

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  “You slight me.” he whispered aloud, his voice breaking. “You slight us both with this... generosity. It is….unkind.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she gasped, as another wave took her, stronger now, the fist clenching tight. She bore down, her neck corded, her face flushing scarlet. When it released her, she fell back against the tub, panting, her eyes finding his with a terrible, loving ferocity. “But I’ve said what I said. I’m tired of hearing you brood over her like a boy nursing a sore tooth.”

  “And while you labor with my pup, you say these things?” He reached for her hand, clutching it tight, feeling the bones grind. “It is wrong, Albi. What happened to killing her if she so much as looked at me for too long? I want to hear more of that.”

  “I am not the Alpha who makes wolves submit,” she grinned at him, lopsided and sloppy with the momentary relief of pain from her labor, “but we are wolves, are we not? Aye, we are messier than honor alone. We are blood and bone and want.”

  Another wave came, sudden and violent. Albi sat up with a cry, her body arching, the water sloshing over the rim. Fenris scrambled up, pressing his hand to her back, feeling the iron-hard ridge of muscle working beneath her skin, the primal force of life demanding passage. He held her through it, his arm a band around her shoulders, his cheek pressed to her wet hair. When it released her, she fell back against him, trembling, her head resting upon his shoulder. She turned, her lips finding the skin of his neck, and pressed a kiss there.

  “I love you,” she whispered, the words barely breath.

  “I love you the more.” he answered.

  For hours he sat with her in this quiet world, her world, this world of women. The Great Birthing Fist inside her clenching at first with a slow, predictable grip then faster, harder, until there was no space between its holds and releases; only a continuous, rising squeeze of pressure.

  Fenris had helped her step from the basin then, placed a thin, soft wool cloak over her damp nakedness, and she paced the bedchamber; a naked, sweating goddess of pain, Fenris her careful shadow.

  Ninny brought the bitter, steaming cup of midwife’s tea to the bedchamber door and Albi took it from her, Fenris knew, only to satisfy the sensitive mid-wife.

  I despise her, she snarled, and the bitterness of it was from her discomfort alone. She drank the tea, though, between bouts, and Fenris felt a gratefulness at the soothing of it on Albi’s raw throat. He rubbed warmed oil into the small of her back as she bent over the bed, his strong fingers kneading the rock-hard muscles, feeling through the bond the searing stretch of sinew.

  It was a brutal intimacy. He felt her animal fear, her primal urge to flee a process that could not be stopped or controlled in any manner. He felt the raw, tearing sensation as the child’s head pressed against the gateway of bone and flesh. He did not cry out when she bit back a scream. He held her up when her legs buckled, becoming a pillar for her to brace against.

  Sweat ran in rivers down her spine. Sweat beaded on her upper lip that he would take away with a strong kiss. There was even a fine sprinkling of it on the soft lobes of her ears. Her breaths became ragged pants, then low, grinding moans that spoke of descent into a world now without language. All defiance was gone, burned away in the furnace of the task. What remained was a feral, singular focus.

  Fenris, her thought slammed into his skull, her whole body trembling as she leaned into him, her weight a solid, shuddering force. Now. I need to push. The babe is there. I can feel the head against my finger-tips.

  He saw in her mind what she wanted, and helped her back into the basin, the water sloshing over the sides. She braced her feet against the far end, her knees wide, and her arms hooked over the rim. Her face was a mask of strain, veins standing out in her neck, her teeth bared.

  He knelt on the wet stone beside the tub and watched as she bore down, a sound tearing from her that was howl and sob. The bond screamed with the effort—the burning, tearing, monumental pressure of her body rending itself open. He focused all his thoughts on keeping himself from feeling it through the bond, knowing it would break his weaker body apart if he let it in.

  She pushed, and paused, and pushed again. Again. Again. Time lost meaning in their chamber. There was only the gathering of her strength, the tremendous, shuddering heave, the gasp for air that was more a ragged scream. The water grew clouded.

  Then, with a final, raw shout that seemed to shake the stones of the longhouse, it was over.

  A slick, dark shape slid from her into the water, followed by a rush of fluid and a darker cloud of blood. For a terrible, silent moment, Fenris watched as the babe lay still in the water between Albi’s thighs, pale and curled, tethered by the thick, pulsing cord.

  Albi watched with him for a moment, her breath calming into a silent, sweet flutter. Then her hands, slick with blood and sweat, dipped down into the water. She lifted the babe, her fingers swift and gentle as they rose the perfect face up to the surface, the rest of the babe still submerged. She curved her finger and scooped mucus from the tiny mouth and nose. Then she lifted the babe up into the warm, dry air and turned the child onto its belly across her forearm. She struck it, twice, with dull, firm beats of her palm, between the babes shoulder blades.

  A cough. A splutter. Then a thin, reedy wail cut the thick air, a sound of outrage; the sound of life.

  Albi sagged back against the wood, her face slacken with a relief so profound it fell upon her features like death. She pulled the squalling, slippery thing to her chest.

  Strips. She thought tiredly, too tired to explain, and only showed him the images of the clean thin-strips of linen she had prepared on the rocking chair. Give them here.

  Fenris leaned over and found them on the seat where her mind had told them they’d be. He placed them onto her waiting palm, his own mind blissfully empty. With sure, steady hands she took the cord, still throbbing with a faint, fading pulse, and tied it in two places with the strips.

  She met Fenris’s eyes, a wordless command in her exhausted gaze. Her chin gave a slight nod toward the pulsing cord, slick and blue-purple in the dim light.

  Will you do it for me? She asked him, and Fenris leaned over her, his shadow cool on her hot skin, and pressed a kiss to her lips.

  He slid his hand down into the clouded water and took the thick, living rope between his fingers, feeling the strange, vigorous pulse of it. He leaned down into the basin and brought it to his mouth. The cord was tough, slippery with birth fluids, warm against his lips. He opened his jaws, settled his teeth around it—at the midpoint between the two linen ties Albi guided him, aye, there, that is good.

  He bit down.

  There was resistance, a fibrous toughness that required the full, grinding force of his jaw. The coppery taste of blood flooded his mouth, rich and vital. He felt a clean, wet snap and the cord parted. A final, weaker pulse sent a last trickle of warmth over his tongue before the two ends fell slack.

  He spat the severed piece into the basin, the metallic taste lingering. Albi’s eyes held his as he searched her face and saw a flicker of primal arousal in their deep exhaustion. It was done.

  The newborn’s cries settled into hiccupping gasps in the silence of the bedchamber.

  The babe’s skin was the color of fresh cream, blotched red from the ordeal. A fine down covered its body, the hair on its scalp, plastered wet and dark, showed at the roots and temples the unmistakable, shocking white of freshly fallen snow.

  Albi’s breath caught, and in the warmth of her thoughts, Fenris could see she was remembering Finn.

  Gently, she turned the child before them, checking limbs, counting fingers with thinly sharpened, jagged nails that curled around her thumb. She parted the tiny legs, looked, then lifted her face to Fenris with a girlish delight. Her eyes swimming with it and her mouth a trembling circle of surprise.

  “The babe is a girl,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and broken. She looked down at the child, then back at him, a slow, exhausted wonder dawning on her face. She brushed a thumb over the pale, damp fuzz on the tiny skull. “With my hair.”

  Fenris reached out, his finger trembling slightly, and touched the astonishingly soft, white down. The bond flooded now with a fierce, staggering protectiveness, a dizzying awe, and the clean, new scent of his daughter, like honey-suckle and the fresh growth of new grass, cutting through Albi’s own scent of thyme and rose and blood. He leaned and pressed his lips to Albi’s temple, their sweat mingling, their breath one in the steam.

  “She will be trouble, then,” he teased, “trouble for me.”

  Albi shifted the wailing infant gently against her chest, her movements slow and instinctual despite the bone-deep weariness that dragged at her limbs. Her hand cupped the back of the tiny skull, guiding the searching mouth. The babe rooted blindly, her face a knot of furious need, until she found the dark, pebbled areola. She latched with a surprising, desperate strength, and Albi gasped; the pull was immediate and fierce, a rhythmic, insistent tugging that seemed to echo through her core. The baby’s cries ceased, replaced by the soft, wet sounds of suckling.

  Fenris, knowing nothing except he wished for his daughter to be warmer than he felt she was, laid the squared cut fold of linen from the rocking chair over his daughter’s small body; the ends of it soaking down in the water. The child fed and its body gradually unclenched from its furious white ball. Albi, with her free hand, dipped the cloth entire into the warm, blood-tinged water of the basin. She wrung it out and began to wipe the vernix and blood from the tiny form with a slow, reverent care. She cleaned the creases behind the knees, the perfect, miniature ears, the folds of the neck. Her touch was a scrutiny, an inventory of every miraculous detail. Ten fingers, ten wrinkled toes, and the faint, silvery eyebrows that were slightly furrowed in the same expression Fenris could feel his own face making as he watched her.

  Her ministrations slowed as she reached the slope of the baby’s shoulder. There, just below the curve where arm met body, was a mark. A perfect circle of pink, the size of a copper coin, a shade lighter than the surrounding cream-colored skin. Albi traced it with her thumb, her brow furrowing, then softening.

  “Look Fenris,” she whispered, her voice still rough. She tilted the baby slightly so Fenris could lean and see in the fire-light. “It is a kiss from Ygrid.” She said with a quiet certainty, “It is a kiss for the Mother’s protection.”

  The wet in his eyes made his vision a watery tunnel. He gently brushed the mothers-kiss with his thumb.

  Then, his large hand hovering, drifted down to the girl’s small leg. He pressed the pad of his thumb against the sole of his daughter’s foot. The tiny toes, like pink buds, immediately curled around his fingertip, gripping in reflex. A slow, wondering smile touched his lips.

  “Do you still favor the name Willow?”

  Albi’s head snapped, her eyes, wide and startled, locked on his. The surprise there was absolute.

  “How did you know that, Fenris?” The words were all warm breath.

  “You talk much in your sleep lately,” he said with a sly shrug,“and I have naught else better to do than nose through your mind, as you like to remind me. So, these past nights, while you’ve slept I stayed awake with this little babe kicking in your womb and listened.” He reached out and brushed a sweat-damp strand of hair from her cheek. “In your dreams you are sitting on the bank of the creek, looking up at the willows that you call, the bending trees. You like how their roots are in the earth and the water both. I feel your smiling at the way their heads bow down, heavy, like they’re carrying the weight of all the sky and wind with charming grace. But their leaves are a messy tangle and it reminds you of Isangrim’s hair after he’s been rolling in the grass, and your hands in sleep remember how you wrestled the knots out wet after his scrubbing,” A ghost of a smile played on his lips. “I saw you, in the dream, going to stand beneath the tree and brushing the leaves. As if you could comb them smooth, too. It was a sweet dream, Albi. I quite enjoyed it.”

  Albi stared at him, her mouth slightly agape. The baby suckled steadily, a soft, contented rhythm. She looked down at the infant in her arms, at the white hair plastered to the tiny scalp, at the determined pursing of the little mouth. Gently, she lifted the baby just a fraction, not breaking the latch, and bent her head to inhale the scent of her at the crown of her head.

  “I think Willow fits her,” Albi announced softly, as if testing the name against the child’s soul.

  Fenris was silent for a moment, then pressed his thumb again to his daughter’s wiggling foot.

  “Willa,” he offered, his tone careful. “It is close enough.”

  Albi’s eyes searched his face, the surprise hardening into a familiar, defiant grin. “So you don’t like the name, then.”

  “I like it,” he said, and he meant it. “But ‘Willow’ is not a proper name. It is a tree with a tree soul, and not a pup.” He said it not with criticism, but with the practicality of a man who knew how names could shape a life, for good or ill. “Willa is a name for a fierce she-wolf.”

  Albi held his gaze for a long moment, her lower lip caught between her teeth. She looked back at their daughter, at the pink mark on her shoulder. She looked at the white hair, her own legacy. She felt the fierce, independent pull of the child at her breast. She let out a soft, conceding breath, a faint eye-roll ghosting across her features.

  “Fine, Fenris of Black Rock,” she said, the corner of her mouth twitching upwards. “Willa.”

  Fenris reached out, his finger trembling only slightly, and touched the astonishingly soft, white down once more. The bond flooded anew with a deep, settled joy.

  Albi smiled, a true radiant smile, and rested her head against his strong shoulder as Willa fed soundly between them.

  Ode to Farewell

  The rain came down in sheets, black and relentless, as though the sky itself had opened a wound that would not clot. Thunder rolled across the mountain, deep and percussive, shaking the pines until their needles hissed and the mud beneath Fenris's boots turned to soup. He walked without a torch. He did not need one. The path down the rise to Folkstead was carved into his memory, every root and stone, every turn where the birches thinned and the ground leveled and the smell of woodsmoke and damp thatch replaced the sharp, clean bite of mountain air.

  Lightning split the sky, white and blinding, and in its brief, violent illumination he saw the oak post at the edge of the village. The sign nailed to it was dark with rain.

  He passed it without slowing.

  The village was silent. Every hut was shuttered tight against the storm, the firepits drowned, the paths between the dwellings turned to rivulets of brown water that ran toward the creek. Nothing moved. The world had been reduced to rain and darkness and the distant, rolling growl of thunder, and in it Fenris felt invisible, a ghost moving through a place that belonged to another life.

  Bodolf's hut—Hattie's hut—came into view; its low roof dark with wet, the chimney cold. A faint glow bled through the cracks in the shuttered window, the ember-light of a banked hearth. Fenris went to the low shelter of the smell overhand beneath its roof above the door. But he was tall, could only find relief for the top of his head, and the rain continued to hammer and run in cold streams down the back of his neck, soaking through the leather of his tunic until it clung to his skin like a second hide. He was drenched to the marrow. He could not feel the cold.

  He knocked.

  The sound was swallowed by the storm. He knocked again, harder, his knuckles rapping against the rough-hewn timber. A silence followed, long enough for the thunder to roll again, and then the creak of a floorboard, the soft pad of bare feet on packed earth.

  The door opened a crack. One grey eye peered through, narrowed with sleep and suspicion. Then it widened.

  Hattie pulled the door open fully. She stood in the dim glow of the dying hearth, barefoot, wearing a linen shift that fell to her knees, her brown hair loose and tangled from sleep. Behind her, in the deeper dark of the hut's single room, Fenris could make out two small shapes on the cot by the far wall—Isangrim and Ethel, curled together beneath a shared pelt, their breathing soft and rhythmic.

  "Fenris?" Hattie's voice was barely a whisper, pitched low so as not to wake the children. "What the fook are you doing out here in this storm? Are you dense? Or has somethin’ happened with the babe-–” she read his face quickly, decided nothing had from the expression she saw, but the way he was looking her over made a red blush leak into her cheeks, “--It's the dead of night, Alpha. I was going to bring Isangrim back on the mornin’—he's sleepin’. I woon’t let you wake him—"

  He took her face in both his hands and kissed her; the kiss of a man who had fought himself to exhaustion and lost, a starving man breaking his fast, graceless and desperate and full of a need that had been denied so long it had turned him savage now.

  He stepped into the hut, pushing her back with the weight of his body, pulling her with him as he gently booted the door shut without looking. The latch caught with a click that was lost in the next roll of thunder.

  When he pulled away, his chest heaving, the rain dripping from his hair onto her upturned face, Hattie's eyes were wild. Her breath came in sharp, shallow bursts, her lips parted and swollen from the force of his mouth. He reached down and gripped the hem of his soaked tunic, peeling it over his head in a single rough motion. The wet leather hit the wood with a slop as he eased it to the ground. The firelight caught the planes of his chest, the ridges of muscle across his stomach, the silver scars that mapped the history of his body.

  "Give me–give me a second—” she whispered, looking back at the babes on the cot, looking at the door, looking at his chest, her breathing rapid, “---what do you think you're doin’?" Hattie whispered, and her voice shook with a fury that was tangled so thoroughly with desire that the two were indistinguishable. He took a step towards her, she pressed both palms firmly flat against his bare chest, whether to push him away or hold him there he did not seem to know. "Fenris, you cannot do this to me—you cannoot—"

  He kissed her again. This time he felt her resistance crumble, felt her submit to it, to him, to the moment; the flood of it rushing through her body in a shudder that ran from her lips to the soles of her bare feet. She kissed him back, her fingers curling against his chest, nails biting into his skin, pulling him closer–then pushing him away.

  She wrenched her mouth from his, gasping, her forehead pressed to his collarbone. "Fenris." Her whisper was ragged, almost inaudible. "I am to wed Morgin. He has asked fer my hand and I have said yes. You canoot—"

  "I do not care, Hattie." he whispered back ruggedly, and the words were a confession and a sin in the same breath. He lifted her. His hands found her hips, her waist, taking her up with no effort. Her legs wrapped around him by instinct, her arms circling his neck. He carried her to the bed—three steps, four—and laid her down upon the rumpled wool and fur, her brown hair fanning across the pillow, her grey eyes enormous in the half-dark.

  His hands found the hem of her shift and pulled it up, over the flat plane of her stomach, over the swell of her breasts, over her head. She raised her arms to let him, and the linen whispered away into the dark. She lay beneath him naked, her skin pale gold in the ember-light, the small, firm breasts rising and falling with her rapid breathing, the dusting of freckles across her collarbone, the lean muscle of her thighs, the dark thatch of hair between them; she was earth and hearth-smoke, warm and solid as the ground beneath his feet.

  He stripped the rest of his clothes with rough, desperate hands—unlacing his breeches, kicking them free, the wet fabric tangling around his ankles before he tore loose of it. When her hand found him, her calloused fingers wrapping around the hard length of his cock, he groaned into the crook of her neck, his hips bucking into her grip. She stroked him once, twice, her thumb tracing the swollen head, and he felt himself pulse against her palm, thick and aching.

  Hattie pushed him back. Her hands on his chest, commanding, angry with frustrated emotion, rolling him onto his back on the narrow bed. She rose above him, straddling his hips, her thighs gripping his waist, and sank down onto him with a slow, deliberate roll that drove the breath from both their lungs. Her lips parted. His jaw clenched. The tight, wet heat of her swallowed him completely, and for a moment neither of them moved—they simply existed in the fullness of it.

  His large hands grabbed around her thighs, as if pleading for mercy.

  She leaned over and pressed her lips to his. Her hair fell around his face, a curtain of brown silk that sealed them into a world no larger than the space between their mouths. Her hips rolled in a rhythm that was instinct, slow, deep, grinding. Her hands braced on his chest, her fingers splayed over his heart. The bed creaked beneath them, a soft, rhythmic protest that was swallowed by the storm outside.

  All the needing reduced now to the slick slide of skin on skin, the whispered curses and bitten-off moans, the desperate clutching of hands. She rode him harder, her back arching, her head thrown back, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that she fought to keep silent. He gripped her hips harder, his fingers pressing bruises into her flesh, guiding her, matching her rhythm with upward thrusts that made her bite her lower lip until it bled—which he lapped up greedily, the taste of the human in her a tang on his tongue.

  Her body seized, her thighs clamping around him, her mouth opening in a cry that would have woken the Elders of Folkstead.

  Fenris's hand shot up, clamping over her mouth, pressing the sound back into her throat, and she moaned against his palm, her hips jerking, her inner walls clenching around him in rhythmic, shuddering pulses that dragged him over the edge with her. He came hard, his back arching off the bed, a guttural groan tearing from his chest that he buried in the crook of her neck, his teeth grazing her shoulder, his seed spilling deep inside her.

  For a long moment, neither moved. Their breathing was the only sound, ragged and raw, slowly steadying. The storm raged on beyond the walls, indifferent.

  Then Fenris wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight to him as he pushed himself up—so tight that her ribs creaked, so tight that there was no space between them for air or light or doubt. She rested her head against his shoulder, her hand over his heart.

  It was a farewell; the rolling of the scroll whose end Fenris had known since the first stroke.

  “It’s over isn’t it?” Hattie whispered against his skin. Fenris could only nod.

  Hattie stirred against him, tried to move, to rise. Fenris held her still, his arms tightening, keeping her there with him. He was still inside her, softening, and the intimacy of it was almost unbearable—the closeness, the raw vulnerability of two people with no barriers left between them. It was no Imprint; but it was simple, practical, and good.

  He brushed the hair from her face, tucking it behind her ears. She looked up at him, and there was a dimple in her cheek where a smile was forming despite the tears that had begun to gather in her river clay eyes. He pulled her head down to him and kissed that dimple—a slow, solid, deliberate press of his lips—lingering there, breathing her in, committing the taste and scent and feel of this moment to a place in his memory where it would live forever.

  He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her eyes to his. The ember-light played across her features, catching the dampness on her lashes, the flush still high on her cheeks.

  "A part of me will always be yours, Hattie," he said quietly, his thumb stroking the line of her jaw. "Before Morgin. You were made for me, Hattie. Do not hurt me by denying that." His voice roughened, the next words catching in his throat like fish-hooks.

  “I woont, then.” She whispered back.

  "Perhaps in another….life. If the Great Mother is kind. Perhaps I will not be wolf and Alpha, but human, a man with no burden upon his shoulders. Who finds you in some human village." He swallowed hard.

  “All this because you heard I was sweet on the fisherman, Fenris?”

  “Aye, part of it.”

  “That is joost like a man. Wolf or no.”

  “I kissed you first.”

  “So you’re claimin’ me then? Is that woot this is? That is all you want?” she smiled tiredly, teasing, and he touched the dimple upon her cheek.

  "I love you, Hattie. Sure as the Great Mother. And all the days of my life, I will see that no harm comes to you or Ethel or any other children that should come from your womb by…..by way of your husband. Whatever is yours I will protect it for you. And every generation after me and after you. The Alpha’s of Black Rock will watch over yours"

  Hattie looked at him for a long time, her grey eyes searching his face, reading every line and shadow. Then she kissed his brow. His cheek. The bridge of his nose. The corner of his jaw. Small, sweet, careful kisses; memorizing what she knows she will not touch again.

  "You are a great fookin’ fool.” she whispered, and the tears spilled over, cutting bright tracks down her flushed cheeks. She laughed through them—a soft, broken sound—and pressed her forehead to his. "And you are noot kind to my heart, Alpha."

  He drew her in, one last kiss, deep and slow and tasting of salt and rain and nothing else. When they parted, her lips brushed his ear.

  "I love you too," she whispered. "Now go. Before the rain stops and the village wakes and I have to explain to Jorik who’ll be here at crack of dawn why the Alpha of Black Rook is leaving my hoot emty-handed."

  She lifted herself from him, the separation a small, physical grief, and reached for her shift where it lay crumpled on the floor. Fenris watched her pull it over her head, watched the linen swallow the body he had just held, and felt the finality of it settle over him like a stone lid closing on a tomb.

  "Leave Grim’" she said, not looking at him, her voice steadying. "I'll bring him up in the noon’, when the rain stops. Let him sleep and share a day with Ethel. You and Albi go and enjoy the noo babe. I’m happy fer you, Fenris."

  Fenris dressed in the dark, pulling his damp breeches over his legs, retrieving his soaked tunic from the floor.

  At the door, he paused. Hattie already slid back into her covers; she was not asleep, but she did not turn around.

  Fenris stepped out into the rain, and pulled the door shut behind him.