Chapter 171: The Enemy Within

Maddie Pov

It felt like I was sitting at the very bottom of a deep well and someone else was leaning over the top, pulling the ropes.

"Maddie, stay still," Calix said and he lifted my head up up onto his knee. "Thomas, get the grease cloth. The dark marks on her throat are still getting wider."

"I am trying, Alpha," Thomas said and he scrambled across the floorboards to find the rag. "The iron water spilled everywhere and the floor is slick. We need to dry the skin before the purple goes all the way down to her chest."

"Do not touch the skin, old man," a voice said. It came right out of my own mouth but the throat felt tight and the words came out heavy and slow. My lips moved without my permission and the sound was deep and smooth like the stones in the mountain creek.

Calix pulled his hands back fast like he had been burned by a hot stove piece. He looked down into my eyes and his face went very white under the lamp light.

"Kai," Calix said and his fingers went right to the bone handle of his knife. "Get out of her head."

"I told you before, young Alpha," I said and my eyes turned toward the small window without me wanting them to. "The contract is already bound in the stone book. You cannot wipe it away with a wet rag or a few dried roots from the valley dirt."

"She is a female of WolfTrail," Calix said and he stood up and pulled me up by my arms until my boots hit the floor. "You are six miles away in your cold hall. You do not have the right to speak through her mouth."

"The twelve Alphas gave me the right twenty years ago," I said and my right hand raised up slow and touched the side of Calix’s jaw. The fingers moved gentle, but they were completely stiff like dry wood. "Her mother brought her to the peaks because you people could not protect your own fences. You needed our spears then and you need our meat now."

"We do not need anything from you," Calix said and he knocked my hand away from his face. "We have twenty hunters at the fence line and our iron is sharp. If your scouts cross the creek tomorrow we will drop them into the mud."

"Your hunters are starving, boy," I said and my mouth turned up into a small, dry smile that made my own cheeks ache. "Rex looks like a ghost and the old female by the door has not eaten a full meal since the first frost hit the pines. You cannot fight twelve packs with empty bellies."

"We have enough to hold the ridge," Rex said from the corner by the door. He did not move his spear but his knuckles went very yellow around the wood shaft. "We held it against the rogues and we will hold it against the peaks."

"The rogues did not have five hundred iron shields, Rex," I said and my head tilted sideways by itself. "They were just hungry dogs looking for scraps in the brush. My father built the stone wall to keep the whole north quiet, and that wall belongs to me now."

"The wall does not give you her soul," Calix said.

"The blood on the back of the page gives it to me," I said. "Look at her fingers. The purple lines are not valley grease. That is the mountain ink waking up because the winter moon is over the ridge."

"We will cut the lines out," Calix said and he raised the blade so the steel caught the yellow light. "I will find the elder who knows the ancient reverse code and we will burn the stone book until there is nothing left but grey ash."

"The book is in the iron vault, Calix," Thomas said and he stayed on his knees near the spilled bowl. "The doors are three inches thick and the keys are lost. Nobody can get inside that room without forty spears turning on them before they touch the handle."

"We will break the doors with the iron sledges," Calix said.

"You will not even reach the first gate," I said through my own teeth. "My guards are watching the logs by the river right now. If a single valley wolf puts his boot on the timber, he will have an iron point through his neck before he can shift his shape."

"We can swim the lower section," Calix said.

"The water will carry you down to the falls in two minutes flat," I said. "The current is too fast for a thin wolf who has been eating leather broth for three weeks. Your legs will snap against the rocks."

"I am stronger than you think, old man," Calix said and he stepped closer until his shirt was touching my chest. "I have the gold mate bond. The valley earth showed me her face before I ever heard your name."

"The mate bond is for the woods," I said and my hand reached down and grabbed the edge of my own boot leather where the paper had been. "The law of the peaks is for the human contract. The two things do not mix, young Alpha. One of them has to break, and it will not be the stone."

"Maddie, fight him," Calix said and he grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard. "Look at my eyes and push him out of your veins. You are the white fur line. You have the power to close the door."

I tried to speak. I tried to scream his name from the bottom of the well but my throat would not open. The air stayed stuck in my chest and the gold light started to hum around my ribs again, hotter than before. It felt like a heavy iron weight was pressing down on my lungs until the room went grey around the edges.

"She cannot hear you, boy," I said and my right arm moved back fast without my brain telling it to. "The thread is too tight now. She belongs to the high halls."

My fingers curled into a tight fist. My arm launched itself forward with everything my muscles had left and my knuckles hit Calix right on the side of his jaw. The impact made a loud crack in the small cabin and Calix stumbled back two steps before his boots hit the wood stool and he went down hard on the floorboards.

"Calix!" Thomas yelled and he tried to grab my skirt from the floor.

My left leg kicked out fast and caught Thomas in the chest, shoving him sideways into the dark corner near the wood box. My body moved like a machine, stiff and heavy, but the strength inside my arms felt three times greater than my own.