Sacrifices Must Be Made

Sacrifices Must Be Made
Ian

“That was better.” Fraser huffs a breath and shrugs back into his shirt. He winces, closing his eyes for a moment. Bruises fan across his shoulders and chest–large, deep paw prints. 

My clothes are shockingly intact, but I’m still in my fae form as the first glimpses of morning light turn the distant mountains a vibrant violet. Fraser carefully tucks in his shirt but moves like every step across the open air landing area high atop his mountain is painful. 

“Once you’re calmed down, I’ll meet you in the dining hall.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I did not ask if you were,” he says bluntly, and he leaves me alone to ride out the last waves of the transformation I’ve been battling for the past two nights. 

Shifting isn’t even the worst of it. It’s everything else, everything that follows rejecting Oakley. 

I don’t go to the dining hall right away. It’s not like Fraser is waiting for me with a feast laid out. He normally just sits nearby and reads while I force myself to eat, and so far, I haven’t seen the man so much as pick up a fork. 

He has me settled into a room four stories above the formal entrance of the palace. It overlooks the village that serves as the center of the inner-mountain castle. Through the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the village, it does really look like an outside view. 

But the village is quiet. Empty. Not a single soul strolls down the street, and no sellers peddle their wares at the market stalls. 

It’s only been two days and two nights, but I feel like I’m going insane from the silence. 

I can’t imagine three thousand years of this. 

My fae form fades away in a cold bath. I examine my fingers and skin before resting my head against the curve of a large copper tub, watching shadows play over the ceiling tiles. I haven’t been doing much. All of the action happens at night, and during the day, I sleep, if I can. Pacing in my room is normally what fills my day, pacing and damning myself for every decision I’ve made over the last several weeks. 

I regret everything. I regret roping Oakley into this mess. I regret the day I stumbled into her family’s fiber shop to pick up that package for my mom and locked eyes with the woman who was about to have her life ruined… by me. 

I regret rejecting her. It’s a physical and mental anguish I wasn’t prepared for, even as the one who severed the bond. 

I can’t imagine how she feels right now. The idea of her in pain has forced screams that I bury in pillows until my throat is hoarse. 

I rise from the bath when the water grows cold. I dress in whatever clothing Fraser stocked the dresser with, which are simple cotton or linen uniforms that edge on making me look like I’m institutionalized in some temple for the deranged. And maybe I am. Maybe this is the hell of my own making, my personal purgatory, and it’s clear I deserve every second of the silence that follows. 

Fraser is in his usual seat at a sturdy table in the center of the dining hall. He doesn’t look up from his book when I sit at the far side of the table and lift a spoon to the lukewarm bowl of stew waiting for me. This is our usual dance. He’ll read his book. I’ll stare at the same soup I’ve been eating for days. He’ll tell me to eat, that I need to keep my strength, and I’ll silently obey. 

“You need to eat,” he says like clockwork, flipping to the next page of his book. “Your beast forms thrive on your weaknesses, hunger being one of them.”

I take a single bite, which is usually enough for him. 

He flips another page. I hear it all. The way he slides his finger over the yellowed parchment. The crackle and snap of the fire burning in the large, brick hearth across the room. The howling wind carrying termination dust off the tallest mountain peak, the first snow of the season. Winter is not far off. Here, in the high mountains, it has already arrived. 

It’s too much. The silence is just… too fucking much. 

“I want to send a letter to Oakley.”

“No.” He flips another page, his glasses reflecting a language reminiscent of the old tongue in the Deadlands. 

I don’t bother asking him why. I’ve already asked this very question before, and he has answered in length. Leave her alone. Let her grieve. Let her get better. Return to her once you’re able, etc., like time is merely a construct for him in the grand scheme of things. 

Outside of asking why, for the fifth or sixth time, my mouth parts and words spill out against my will. “How do you understand what I’m saying?”

He glances at me. “Well, you’re speaking out loud and being rather noisy about it.”

“I mean my language. You had no difficulty speaking to me or any of my companions.”

He looks down at his book, heaving a sigh that screams boredom. “I suppose it’s not a stupid question, for once. Fine.” He closes the book with a snap and turns in his chair to face me, his arms crossed over his chest. “The mountains speak. I know that sounds unlikely to you, but when I’m hibernating in my dragon form, I hear what I can only describe as whispered music. My dragon picks up on the shifts in the world. The changing of the seasons. The passing of time. The mountains sing to my dragon, and when I awaken, I have a new understanding of things, language included.”

I take another bite of soup. I don’t even taste it. 

Fraser watches me for several seconds before going back to his book. 

“Don’t you get lonely?” I ask, and he huffs with annoyance. 

“No.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Of course you would, wolf. You’re a pack animal. You’re used to being around others of your kind, day in and day out.”

“Were dragons not the same?”

“All dragons were not the same.” 

I lean back in my chair, resting my hands flat on the table. 

Fraser eyes me coolly. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Everything you do during the day will directly affect how our next evening together goes, Ian. You need to be eating and sleeping. Nothing else. Conversation isn’t warranted.”

“I am losing my mind,” I gut out, the words wobbling off my tongue. “I am being torn into pieces. I–I want to see Oakley again. I just want to know that she’s okay, that’s it, and I can’t. I get that, but you’re keeping me here in total solitude, and I’m going insane.”

“It’s been two days,” Fraser argues, then he chuckles darkly. “All of this after only two days?”

I rise abruptly, and he follows, both of our chairs falling to the floor with an echoing crash. 

“Be very careful, Ian,” he says in a low growl. “Remember who you are.”

“I’m not about to shift.”

“Your eyes tell me another story,” he replies, taking a single step to round the table and gauge my reaction. When I don’t leap toward him in a blur of black, scaled fur and teeth, he grips the top of a chair and rolls his shoulders. “You don’t have the luxury of living your normal life right now. You’re out of control. You know you are, and the only way forward is training these beast forms into submission. You’re already past the mental block that would otherwise give these beasts full authority, and that is progress, Ian. But there is much more work to do before the next full moon.”

“I don’t see how attacking you every night is training,” I argue. 

Fraser does look beaten to shit. Dark circles of fatigue line his eyes, highlighting yellowing bruises and shallow scrapes along his cheeks, jaw, and nose. I’m pretty sure I bit him last night, as well, but he’s still here. Still standing nearby. Still helping me. 

“I’m used to noise and conversation. It’s too quiet here.”

Fraser swallows hard and looks down at the table. “That empty feeling will pass in time.”

“How long did it take for you?”

He closes his eyes for a moment. “I thought your cousin was the nosey one. Apparently, it’s a family trait.”

I already know he’s talking about Naomi. His eyes sharpen if I so much as mention her name, so I don’t. How she got under his skin is a mystery, but Naomi has the habit of pissing off everyone in her path eventually, so it comes as no surprise. 

Fraser raps his knuckles on the table and shakes his head. “I have faith that you’ll break through this, Ian. I believed you have it in you to force your way back to rationality while in your beast forms, and you do, just not enough. This is going to take time.”

My mouth falls open to argue, but he lifts a hand to silence me. 

“You’re impatient, I know. You had to reject your mate to save her life, I understand. I saw it. I was there.” He rights the chair he knocked over and sits. “If I’m correct in my estimations, you’ll be yourself again within a month. The full moon will solidify any progress we’ve made before then, and that will be telling. But if you’re at the point where you can shift again, into your wolf form, and keep the beasts at bay with full control over when and if you use them, we can discuss your return to your pack.”

“Why are you even helping me?”

“I am the only one who can.” Fraser suddenly looks up and squints. I follow his gaze, unsure what he’s seeing or sensing. I hear nothing but wind and crackling embers. “That will be Wren. Finish your soup before it gets cold.”

“It’s already cold.”

He walks away, waving a hand over his shoulder in dismissal. 

I resign myself to finishing the soup I believe he made and has been reheating for the past two days. Twenty minutes later, Wren and Fraser arrive in the dining hall again, with Wren carrying a sack over his shoulder, which he promptly dumps out on the table in front of me. 

Fraser is busy with a trio of newer looking books and totally ignores Wren to sit at another table. I watch him examine the glossy spines for a moment before catching Wren’s knowing gaze. 

“I had to make a run down the valley to the nearest settlement. We were low on most of our supplies after the… fire.” He hands me a bundle of fabric. “New clothes.”

“Thank you.”

“These,” he says, waving a hand over the rest of the random items on the table, “are just things I thought you’d need. Shaving supplies, magazines.”

I nod, but a lump forms in my throat. “How often do you go into the villages of the Highlands?”

“Very irregularly,” Wren replies. “It’s not safe, obviously, for a fox.”

“Whatever you need, I have here,” Fraser says, but he isn’t looking up from the books he’s thoroughly pouring through. 

Wren braces his hands on the table, leaning in to say, “I have to bring him a gift every time I come here. It’s a weird dragon thing. He really likes books, for reference.”

“My eyesight is atrocious, but my hearing is pristine,” Fraser barks from his table. 

Wren seems easier, more relaxed than usual, but there’s a faint line between his brows like he’s been pinching his face in concern for several hours. He licks his lips and turns to Fraser. “Can we continue our conversation?”

“I have no concern over hunters in the valley. They’ve been hunting in this territory for eons. What difference does it make to me?”

“My skulk no longer has a protected home, and winter is upon us. It snowed in the valley last night. We’re making do in burrows, but some of the young ones can’t stay in their fox forms for very long. We are sitting ducks to the hunters who visit this valley in the winter.”

“And your idea is to move all four hundred of your people closer to the villages? Be serious, Wren.”

“I have to think about their safety over the winter. We lost everything.”

Fraser sighs and neatly stacks the books before tucking them under his arm and rising methodically. “I am aware.”

“We have over a hundred children to think of and more on the way by next spring,” Wren says, but he cowers slightly and bites back his tone when Fraser looks directly at him. “Sacrifices must be made.”

“The wolf shifters will kill any foxes they come across.”

“That’s not necessarily true,” I try to cut in, but neither man is listening to me. 

“It’s too late in the year to build a new settlement. My scouts have found a nearby valley, but we can’t start our burrow until the ground thaws again. The soil is already starting to freeze. It’s too late, and our camps aren’t enough. We’ve run out of time. I have it in mind to scatter my skulk and hope they assimilate in villages until next spring.”

“Then bring them here,” Fraser says bluntly, but his jaw is set tight. “Your people can winter over in my home.”

Wren freezes, and even I’m at a loss for words. Fraser eyes us both, then rolls his eyes to the ceiling. 

“They’re welcome as long as they don’t touch anything.” He gathers his new, glossy, recently printed books to his chest and turns out of the room, hustling away into the shadows. 

I swallow hard, glancing at Wren, who looks like he’s just been slapped. 

“Were you fishing for that answer?”

“No, of course not. I trust Fraser, and that trust extends to his opinions on skulk matters. I was just—” He pauses and looks around. “We had no choice but to kill Alpin. Destroying our den was not part of the equation, and winter came on so early this year.”

I follow his gaze. “It would be big enough for everyone, surely.”

“It would be.”

“But you’d be living with a dragon. And for the next month, me.”

“I don’t have time to question it,” he concludes with a sigh. “And anyway, what Fraser says, goes.”

“But you’re the Alpha of the foxes.”

Wren holds my gaze. “Haven’t you realized what he is?”