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“I’m fine, Mother. I don’t need to be coddled.”

He saw the flutter of her hands as she stopped herself from moving to grab him once more and he was glad for it. His father was upon him, a large hand landing across Mother’s shoulder. He ignored the smallest of flinches from his mother, choosing instead to focus on his father’s face and the rare hint of a smile he saw there.

“I heard from Arik you were complaining about a sprained ankle. I expected to find you pouting in the kitchens.”

Fox’s shoulders pulled back automatically. “I just needed to walk it off.” He ignored the throb that shuddered from his ankle as if reacting to the comment.

His father’s hand fell heavy on his shoulder. His fingers squeezed in something like comfort, but it only forced Fox to bite his tongue as the pressure sent another wave of pain and nausea crashing through him.

“Perhaps there’s hope for you yet.”

And with those parting words he left, not even looking back at his wife whose lips were pinched in a frown, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deeply set as she studied Fox.

Fox moved before she could breathe out a word, biting his tongue through the pain in his ankle to stop himself from limping. Ocons didn’t limp.

CHAPTERFOURTEEN

SOFIA

Sofia crouched low to the ground as she moved, sliding between the shadows on silent feet. She was the hunter once more, tracking her prey. If she was lucky, she’d have Ocon back by the end of the day and she might convince Micael to forget these last few days.

She peeked around a small knoll overlooking a small ravine beyond. She’d expected Ocon and there he was. What she hadn’t expected were the two large men towering over him, the king’s man quaking beneath their glare. She didn’t bother biting back the smirk that stretched across her face. There was no one there to judge her.

She was tempted to leave Ocon behind. The men looked like they were ready to eat him right then and there, and she doubted they’d be any friendlier to her. They weren’t king’s men or from Suvi, which meant they were from the tribes, likely shapeshifters if the power they were radiating said anything. The few tribes she knew that lived in these woods might have never attacked the resistance outright, but they’d made it clear anytime they crossed paths that they didn’t want any part of the trouble those from Suvi brought.

But Ocon was no use to her or the others dead. Without him, Dia and every other Dragonborn left in the king’s prison would be killed.

Sofia had the high ground, but night had fully settled over the forest and the shadows were deep and long. Her eyes were nothing compared to a shifter’s even in their human form. She wouldn’t be able to sneak up on them.

The air was cold as she crouched, motionless and watching. Ocon had moved on from talking to punching and his attempts only seemed to humor the men. But it gave Sofia a chance to see how they fought. They moved like large predators from the ripple of their shoulder muscles to the bend in their knees. They fought with brute strength and speed, but their moves weren’t graceful or practiced. These shapeshifters hadn’t trained for strategy. Muscular men never did.

She slunk slowly, skimming a circle around the ravine. They wouldn’t want to leave their prisoner alone. So if she could lure one of them away and separate them, she might have a fighting chance. She wasn’t going to go crawling back to the resistance to explain how she’d let Ocon escape and then watched him get himself killed out here.

One of the trees she passed by had branches low enough to the ground to give her a foothold. She could just make out the two shapeshifters grappling with Ocon, toying with him. She placed her foot on the lowest branch before she became aware that she wasn’t alone. The sound of low breathing was coming from behind her, even as she watched the two shapeshifters below. With her own breath stuck in her chest, she turned slowly. A wolf stood a few feet away, mouth open and panting as saliva dripped from gleaming white teeth. Had he been standing only a few feet closer, his head would have nudged her chest. His paws were the size of her own hands.

There were three of them, and they weren’t just shapeshifters, they werewolfshifters.

The wolf let out a low snarl as her hand twitched toward her dagger and she pulled it back, palms wide.

“I didn’t come to cause trouble,” she said, hoping the creature understood dragon-tongue. She repeated the words in the king’s tongue just in case, hoping one of them would register with the shifter. The wolf blinked, yellow eyes not moving from her face, but his head tilt told her he had understood her words, at least in part. She noticed the matted tangle of his fur and wondered if the wet spots were dew or blood.

She counted in her head and sent a prayer to the dragons. And then she moved. One hand reached for her bow at the same moment her other pulled an arrow from her quiver. She had the arrow pulled and aimed in less than two seconds. But even that didn’t matter because one moment the wolf was springing forward, and the next a naked man towered over her, smile pulled back in the same feral grin.

“Humans always cause trouble.”

“Please—”

She started, but before she had the words out, he lunged. She let the arrow fly, but it only grazed his arm as he dodged sideways and bowled straight into her. The bow nearly snapped in her grasp as she was thrown to the ground. The air left her lungs, and she could only gag in silent pain as the shifter brought her head down again onto the hard forest floor. She didn’t know if it was the ground or her skull that cracked through the black night, but the world split in two and then there was nothing.

SOFIA

AGE 11

What my colleague Dr. Viona continues to ignore in his argument toward assimilation is the Dragonborn’s genetic weaknesses which make it nearly impossible to truly learn the king’s ways. Research across the sea in Glosshire has shown that certain individuals are inherently unable to learn at the same capacity as others. The Dragonborn’s inability to learn the king’s tongue and their lack of interest in reading are simply a few examples of this inadequacy.

-Elna F. Bello, Assimilation or Elimination: A Philosophical Debate

The first week he taught her writing.