Preparing for War

Preparing for War
Ian

“You never shared your name.”

The healer tucks her silver hair behind her ears and completely ignores my statement. She’s been busy with her hands for the past hour, grinding herbs and packing them away into little bags. The scents are all familiar healing herbs that are grown throughout Eastonia–familiar spices, familiar sounds. I could be back in New Glade, if this room was different. It’s all the same. 

She tucks the bundles into a canvas backpack, adding to a growing collection of supplies she means to send with Oakley when Wren’s friend, Amalie, comes to fetch her. I won’t recognize Amalie. I haven’t seen anyone from their pack, or skulk, in fox terms. We’ve been locked away here, in what I believe are this healer’s private rooms. 

“You need to eat. You haven’t touched your porridge.” She points at the bowl in front of me. “You have a long night ahead of you.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for my beast to be starving? Wren wants violence. I can give that to him.”

“Wren is risking everything,” she says in a whisper. She cinches the bag closed, shoving it away. 

I glance at the curtain separating this small kitchen and dining area from a bathroom, where hot water pours from a spout into a large basin, and Oakley is taking a bath. I’m already clean, although I don’t see why it matters. I did shave, and that act alone helped me recognize myself in the mirror, but still. 

I pull the porridge toward me and take a tentative bite. It’s sweet. I wonder if she wasted her good spices on me, on what could be my last meal. “It sounds like Wren has given this situation a great deal of thought.”

“He’s so young,” she murmurs, closing her eyes for a moment. “He’s my grandson, as is Alpin, although they have different fathers. I suppose the differences between them are glaring enough.” She reaches into her apron and pulls out an amulet, tucking it into the sack before I can get a good look at it, but it shines like silver. Foxes can touch silver without burning themselves. Fennec, his mother, and all of his siblings have to be wary of copper, however. 

I take another bite of porridge, barely tasting it this time. 

“My name doesn’t matter,” she says under her breath, her hand resting on the sack. “I’ll have no one left to say it after tonight.”

“I’d like to know it. You’ve shown us, especially Oakley, a great deal of kindness.”

“My fox name is Rubah,” she whispers, and she turns from me completely, moving with practiced grace toward another curtain, and another room, where the curtain falls closed behind her. 

I watch the movement of the fabric for several seconds and lose my appetite in that amount of time. The hovel grows so quiet I can hear Oakley humming from the washroom, and a slight vibration leeches from the earthen walls all around. Again, I’m reminded of how much this place reminds me of a hive. 

I’ve finished my food, and I’m rinsing out the bowl in the crudely carved sink when Wren appears, dressed in dark brown leather with weapons of several varieties stretched across his chest. I don't know whether it’s seeing the weapons, seeing him and the glazed, adrenaline-driven look behind his eyes, or simply my awareness of how late in the day it is that begins to rile the beast, but my body feels less like my own. 

“It’s begun,” he says, letting the curtain fall to a stop behind him. 

“What can I do?” I ask, but he shakes his head. I suppose we’re about the same age. Maybe he’s a year or two older. It could easily be the dark circles under his eyes making him look more like a man in his early thirties than my age, however. 

He braces his hand on the corner of the counter and closes his eyes. “Nothing yet, not until you shift. Can you force it?”

“I have no control over it, and–”

“Have you tried to summon it?” he asks, cutting me off. 

“I could try, but not until I know Oakley is safe.” I motion to the curtain covering the bathroom. “Your friend has not come for her.”

“My mate is occupied at the present, evacuating the children,” he murmurs, but his mouth continues moving in silence, whatever he can’t bring himself to say falling like lead between us. I hadn’t realized he had a mate. “We have an hour until I need to make my move,” he adds.

“And what move is that? Where is your brother?”

“Drinking with his friends, like usual. That’s not the problem. He isn’t going to be a problem in his usual state. It’s the rest of them, our elders, especially.” He sinks onto a stool, looking like a man who hasn’t slept in days, maybe weeks. “Alpin doesn’t care about the greater good of the skulk. I do. My father was a good man. He didn’t have any claim to be Alpha, but he tried. He tried to overthrow Alpin’s father and got killed in the process, as did my mother. The rest of us suffer for it every day.”  He opens his eyes to meet my gaze. “My people shouldn’t be starving. They shouldn’t be closed away in this den, day in and day out, under the guise of protection. Alpin doesn’t know what he’s doing. I do. We barely survived last winter. We won’t survive another one here. We all need to leave.”

“I understand,” I say. But Wren is falling to pieces. I recognize this pattern. I’ve seen it in other men before. Sometimes, it happens just before a big hunt, when all of the doubts set in. Sometimes, it’s before dealing with small skirmishes that happen in the Deadlands and the Roguelands, where my cousin Maeve’s influence as queen only stretches so far. While she deals with the bigger picture, it’s up to the Alphas and Alpha Kings to keep common violence in check. 

And we do. 

But it doesn’t come without great sacrifice sometimes. 

Wren continues. “Alpin’s posse benefits greatly by having him in power. He’s a puppet, easily influenced by drink and entertainment. They keep me on a tight leash, but I am the one sent out to do the dirty work. I was sent out for you, when you and your mate first arrived. I was sent to deal with you last night. I’m being sent to deal with you now.” 

He rises from the stool as Oakley appears, her wet hair braided, clothed in thick, durable trousers and a knit sweater that’s so far beneath her own skill. She looks from Wren to me, then back again, pale. 

Wren adds, “Alpin is having a feast tonight with the last of our stock to celebrate his success in hunting and killing a beast. You. He’s expecting Amalie to bring Oakley to him within the hour, when the feast begins. You need to be in beast form by then because when he notices the skulk isn’t at the feast, his minions will be set loose to find them.”

“Where are your people now?” I ask, my mouth dry. 

He sighs, running his fingers through his dark hair. “We decided on a rendezvous point months ago. They will be there, or close by. Oakley and Amalie will meet them. Amalie knows where it is.”

“But I do not,” I reply sternly. 

“You’ll be able to find me,” Oakley says softly, reaching and tenderly grasping my arm. “You’ve found me before. You can do it again.”

“I’ll be in my beast form, Oakley.”

“Precisely.” Her smile isn’t one I’ve ever seen. She’s nervous, but trying to put on a brave face. 

I hate this for her. She shouldn’t be in this situation at all. I pulled her into it. We barely know each other. I was a fool for thinking I had a chance at a soft, tender life with her. I think of the fiber shop and that fateful day I went to pick up a package for my mother and found Oakley, too, and how my thoughts began to tangle from that moment forward. 

A normal wolf would have simply enjoyed the past few weeks of courting and getting to know their mate, if they knew by then. We should be home right now. I should be convening with the men in her family, paying her bride price, and preparing for our wedding at the Harvest Festival. She should be sitting at her loom. 

Not here, preparing for a war we have nothing to do with. Not here, among foxes, who we’ll never see again. 

“If anything happens to her,” I say to Wren, but I taper off. His cold, hard stare is answer enough. 

“You can scorch the place to ash regardless. I will ensure we’re successful, even if I do not make it out. There is a plan in place if it comes to that.” He turns and slips through a curtain, and the kitchen falls silent. 

Oakley moves closer, just out of my line of sight. She trails her fingers down my arm to the bandage covering my scars. Our scars. 

“I have a new one.” Her pale wrist comes into view. “It happened in the bath. It didn’t hurt as badly as the last few. I have over a dozen now. Look.”

Another bright red moon shape sullies her skin. The others are in various stages of healing. 

“It’s the entire cycle of the moon, isn’t it? The healer was right. It’s a countdown.”

I turn to face her. “Oakley–”

“I already know what you’re going to say,” she cuts in, lowering her sleeve. She won’t meet my eyes and keeps her gaze firmly on the toes of a new, well-fitting pair of boots supplied by the foxes. “You’re going to sacrifice yourself tonight. At least, you think that’s going to be the outcome. And, I suppose it’s noble. You’ll be granted a warrior’s death and funeral when I–I return home to tell our packs of your… glory.”

“Oakley, please–”

“But in the event,” she interrupts again, finally looking up at me, “that you survive, even if survival isn’t what you want, I just want you to know that I would–I would still marry you. I’d still be your mate, beast and all. If you’ll even have me, with a wolf that’s only made her appearance once.”

My lips part to laugh, but I choke on it instead. I step into her. “You think I wouldn’t want you because your wolf is taking a while to make her grand appearance?”

“I overheard you talking to Wren and the healer on and off. You talk about me like I’m your mate for real, like we’ve known each other for a long time.”

“I have known you for a long time.”

“We’ve only ever spoken to each other the past maybe three weeks, Ian. You don’t owe me anything. Our packs, sure, might believe a match is being made, but if that isn’t what you want, I will be okay just being your friend.” She blinks and settles her eyes on her toes again, her cheeks burning a furious red. “I would accept a rejection.”

“No,” I breathe, and before I can stop myself, my fingers graze her wrist, her scars. “That’s not what I want. This isn’t what I want, either. This place, this situation. I’m going to fix this, and you’re going to go home, and we’ll figure things out from there.” I trace her oldest scar, the full moon that started it all, with my thumb. Suddenly, the scar lights up from within, burning a soft silver in the dim lighting. 

It’s like a punch to the gut. My chest expands, my ribs cracking and flexing until I feel like something, someone, is bending me apart from within. 

“Ian! Ian, oh, Goddess, look at me!” 

I accidentally drag her to her knees. My spine pops, vertebrae by vertebrae. 

“Ian!” Oakley shouts as the room swims. 

Wren appears before my vision fades into something so sharp even the dim light burns. I see detail in everything. Every fiber on Oakley’s shirt when my head falls between onto her chest. Every speck of dust and microscopic fleck of debris on the earthen floor. Oakley’s scent explodes through me, driving forward something crazed and delirious within me that I’m desperately trying to hold back. 

“Back away from him slowly,” Wren rushes out, but his voice is distorted by every other sound in a fifty-mile radius. Trees swaying in the wind. Snow whipping off the tallest peaks. Birdsong. The slow, rhythmic thump of a heartbeat that doesn’t belong to anyone in this room. 

“It’s hurting him!” Oakley shouts, and the anguish in her voice is enough to wake it. 

“Let him go, now!” Wren thunders, but Oakley closes her arms around my head. “Oakley!”

He makes the mistake of touching her.