Chapter 68: The Mercy I Shouldn’t Give

I didn’t intend to return to the clearing.

But something in me—wolf or woman—needed to know.

After I’d rocked Talon to sleep and bound the gash on my arm with a strip of fabric from the fallen rogue’s cloak, I had started east again, hugging the ridgeline. The storm had passed, but the air was still sharp, clouds low and bellied with snow. My body ached. Every step sent hot flashes of tension down my legs and across my back, but I didn’t stop.

The blood on my hands had dried.

Somewhere beneath my skin, my wolf still paced.

And I couldn’t shake the image of the one I’d spared—how he’d screamed when my blade tore through his thigh, how he’d crawled when the others abandoned him. He hadn’t died.

And if he hadn’t died, he was out there.

Maybe still bleeding.

Maybe watching me.

Maybe waiting.

It took me an hour to circle back west, sticking to higher ground where the trees thinned and snowdrifts weren’t deep enough to swallow my boots. I could smell it before I saw it—the copper tang of blood, sharp and fresh. Not old enough to have clotted.

He was still alive.

I found him half-curled beneath the roots of a black pine, his cloak bunched awkwardly around one leg. A makeshift bandage—torn from someone else’s shirt—was pressed to his thigh, dark with blood. His breath came in ragged bursts. The moment he saw me, his eyes went wide, and he dragged himself backward with both hands.

“No,” he rasped. “Don’t—please—”

I didn’t move.

Didn’t lift my blade.

Just looked.

“I warned you,” I said quietly. “I told your leader to walk away.”

He coughed, pain wracking his lean frame. His skin was gray beneath the dirt, his lips cracked. “I wasn’t… I didn’t want the fight.”

“You came for me.”

“I followed orders,” he said. “I didn’t touch the pup. I swear it.”

I shifted Talon against my chest, my hand hovering protectively over his tiny back.

The rogue’s eyes flicked to the bundle, then away again. “He’s still alive?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because I killed the one who would’ve ripped him from my arms.”

“I’m not like them.”

“No,” I said. “You’re worse. You lived.”

He looked down.

Silence stretched.

Then: “You gonna kill me now?”

I stepped closer.

His hands tensed against the snow. He didn’t try to run—he couldn’t—but I saw the panic bloom in his eyes.

I crouched instead. “What’s your name?”

He blinked. “You’re not going to kill me?”

“Not yet.”

He swallowed hard. “Fenn.”

The name curled through my chest like something half-remembered.

“Fenn what?”

He hesitated. Then looked away.

“There’s no last name anymore.”

“What pack?”

“…Used to be Nightfall.”

The words hit harder than I expected.

“Liar.”

“I’m not,” he said quickly. “Swear it. My father was blackguard under Alpha Marius. I trained at the north outpost. You can ask Senna—she knew me.”

I stared at him for a long time. The pain in his leg was real. The scent of him—familiar in the worst way. Nightfall blood turned wild.

“You were one of ours,” I said. “And now you run with scavengers.”

“I was cast out.”

“For what?”

“Disobedience,” he muttered. “I refused an order.”

“What order?”

Fenn looked up at me then. For the first time, something steadier in his eyes.

“I was told to kill a girl,” he said. “She’d been caught stealing food from the western cache. Senna said she was a stray—young, no family. Fifteen. Maybe sixteen. She begged. I didn’t do it. So they made an example.”

A slow cold built in my gut.

“What did they do?”

“Stripped my title. Called me a sympathizer. Threw me out of the gate at dusk. No weapon. No coat.”

I didn’t speak.

I didn’t know how.

He let out a slow breath. “Three years since that night. Never been in a pack since. Just rogues, bastards, and the woods.”

“And now you jump travelers in the snow.”

“Wasn’t my call,” he said again. “I followed Oren because he fed us. That’s all. Wasn’t expecting you. Didn’t know who you were until I saw the shift.”

I studied him.

He wasn’t lying.

And his wound had gone bad—red around the edges, already starting to swell. If I left him here, he’d bleed out before nightfall.

Part of me wanted to.

He’d tried to harm Talon.

He’d followed the man who ordered an ambush.

And yet…

Kael’s voice whispered through memory.

Mercy is not weakness. It’s the sharpest weapon you’ll ever wield.

I exhaled slowly.

Then pulled a flask of water from my satchel and held it out.

Fenn stared at it like it might vanish.

“Drink,” I said. “Before I change my mind.”

He fumbled to uncork it and drank greedily, some of it dribbling down his chin.

I pulled a small bundle from my satchel—one of Alis’s old poultices, wrapped in linen. I hadn’t had to use it yet. But something told me Kael would have wanted it this way.

I knelt beside his injured leg.

He tensed. “Why are you helping me?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said truthfully.

The bandage came away sticky. The wound was angry but not deep enough to cripple—he’d live, with help. I cleaned it with snow, wrapped the poultice against the flesh, and tied it tight.

He hissed but didn’t curse.

“I’ll be gone before dawn,” he said. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Good,” I said. “Because I’m not giving you anything else.”

I stood.

Talon stirred.

Fenn looked up again. “Is he… Kael’s?”

My mouth tightened.

“Yes.”

He was quiet a long time. “I heard about the attack. That he died in the field. That they blamed you.”

“They stripped me,” I said. “Told me the Moon turned her back. Said my wolf was cursed. That my son carried something dark.”

“And do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Carry something dark.”

I looked down at Talon.

His breath puffed softly against my chest.

“Yes,” I whispered. “But not the way they meant.”

Fenn nodded once. “Then maybe we’re both cursed.”

I didn’t answer.

He leaned his head back against the tree.

I started to turn away.

“You’ll want to avoid the river forks,” he said. “Scouts from Iron Hollow pass there twice a week.”

“Rogues?”

“No,” he said. “The real kind. Organized. Mean. They don’t like strangers.”

“And how do you know?”

“Because I watched one of them skin a man alive for stealing his blade.”

That got my attention.

I hesitated.

“What else do you know about them?”

“Alpha Vale’s pack runs that territory. Roran Vale. They say he doesn’t even sleep. Just circles his halls like a ghost.”

The name was familiar.

Fenn’s voice dropped. “He’s the kind of wolf who doesn’t flinch when you bleed on his floor. But if you kneel right, he might let you live.”

I filed the name away.

Fenn slumped. “I won’t follow you. Not unless you ask.”

“I’m not asking,” I said.

He nodded, eyes already drifting closed.

“Then thank you.”

I walked away.

Left him in the snow.

But something gnawed at my thoughts as I moved on.

He’d followed orders once.

And refused them when it counted.

Maybe there was more of Nightfall left in him than I wanted to believe.

And maybe mercy wasn’t a weakness after all.

Maybe—just maybe—it was the only weapon I had left that didn’t make me a monster.