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Tannin

T HIS WASN’T HOW IT was supposed to go down. Our orders were to make it here without issue and assess the status of Varinya. It should have been easy, simple.

Now I was sitting in an empty castle, covered in scratches and bites, staring at my best friend on a dusty couch and unsure if he’d survive.

The cusith had come out of nowhere, manifesting like wraiths from the shadows of the trees and bushes in the forest around us, descending upon us like rabid hyenas. At least when they weren’t mutating and bending at impossible angles.

Our scouts had reported no signs of them before our journey, and it was alarming to know they’d spread so far. How long before they reached Varinya? How long before they destroyed everything?

I squeezed my eyes shut, pausing in chewing the stale bread I’d been given.

I couldn’t think like that. We weren’t going to let them win.

That was the whole reason for coming here.

Well, one of them, anyway. Taking back our rightful place inside the kingdom would give us the power we needed to stand against the cusith, not only for our pack, but for all people.

But if Jax didn’t wake up... Only the Alpha had the power of moon song. If he didn’t make it through this tragedy, our pack wouldn’t know it was safe to come, and this journey—his sacrifice—would all be for nothing.

I glanced at the girl curled up on the armchair across from me.

Aliya. She was staring at me with a sort of awe, like I was fascinating to behold.

Her honey-brown hair was messy and tangled around her heart-shaped face, and her torn slip that did little to hide the curves of her body and perked nipples beneath was stained and tattered.

How long had she been alone here? What happened to this once flourishing kingdom?

“What happened here?” I asked, setting my bread back onto the plate in my lap.

She folded her legs against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hugging herself into a ball and casting her sad gaze to the floor.

“There was a plague. Little by little, everyone died. Everyone but me. They said I was immune.” She shrugged and let out a nervous giggle. “It’s lonely at the end of the world.”

When I offered her a sympathetic frown, her attempt at amusement fell like a dead fly, and she returned to staring at me.

“H—” I paused for a moment, debating on the most delicate way to phrase the question. “How long ago did that happen?”

She shrugged and chewed on her bottom lip. “A little over a year ago.”

My throat tightened. She’d been alone in this castle for over a year? I couldn’t imagine such a tragedy. Watching as everyone you loved died around you and being left in isolation to fend for yourself. As a wolf, that was the most terrifying prospect of all. The pack was everything.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. And I was. Though it was to our benefit that the plague had left the kingdom barren and ready to welcome our return, I truly felt sympathy for this kind girl.

“Why didn’t you just leave?” I asked. “You could’ve wandered to a neighboring kingdom and sought help, sought a new place for yourself.” I liked to believe that our pack would’ve helped her.

She shook her head fervently. “I could never leave Varinya. My subjects may all be dead, but I still have a duty as princess. Varinya is my home. This castle is where I belong.”

I struggled to keep my eyes from widening. Princess? She was the last living descendant of the royal line who’d slaughtered countless members of my pack?

It was my sworn oath to destroy her.

And yet, she’d saved us. She’d welcomed us into her home and patched us up. I sat here now, dressed and fed, thanks to her. She’d shown me nothing but kindness. She was innocent. I could see that. But I didn’t think the rest of my pack would see it that way, especially not Jax.

If he woke up at all...

Perhaps I could get her out before they came, convince her to move on. It was the least I could do in return for her kindness.

I cleared my throat. “I can understand your sense of duty, but that doesn’t mean you have to be alone for the rest of your life. You owe it to your people to continue your line. You could marry a prince of another kingdom, forge an alliance.”

The muscles of my chest squeezed around my ribcage, an irrational sense of rage flaring inside me at the thought of her marrying anyone else.

Where the hell did that come from?

She chewed on her lips again, her pretty face crinkling with conflict. “I have no way to send word anywhere to arrange any such alliance, and making the journey on my own would mean certain death, especially after seeing the wounds the two of you endured.”

She had a point there. An image of her being torn to pieces by a cusith flashed in my mind, forcing a powerful protective urge to ignite inside me.

What was this? These feelings came out of nowhere. She was nothing to me.

Unless...

“Besides, even if I did make it to the next kingdom, who would believe I was a princess?” she said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I mean, look at me.”

I did, and she was right. In her current state, she was a far cry from a princess. But she was still beautiful, in a wild, feral way that drew me in. She looked like a forest nymph, like a goddess of the hunt.

“Without the proper appearance and going through the official channels, I can’t prove my pedigree without carting heaps of lineage books.” She shook her head. “It’s just not possible. Varinya is the safest place for me.”

Not for much longer.

When the rest of my pack showed up and discovered who she was, she would never be safe again. They’d lock her up as a prisoner of war or publicly execute her for the crimes committed by her forebearers. And every fiber of my being sizzled in rejection of either outcome.

I didn’t like these foreign and compelling emotions I felt toward her, and I feared what it meant. Suspicion whispered in the back of my mind, but I denied it, shoving it deep down. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t one of us. She was our enemy.

She unbent her legs and scooted to perch on the edge of her armchair. “You must be tired after what you went through. Would you like me to make up a room for you?”

I shook my head and looked at Jax. “No. I should stay with him. I want to be close when he wakes up.”

“Okay.” She rose. “I’ll get a pillow and blankets then, so you can at least be comfortable.”

She skittered away up the stairs before I could reply. She was too sweet for what was coming for her.

I pushed my reluctance aside and focused my attention on Jax. He had to pull through this. He wasn’t just my Alpha, he was my oldest and dearest friend. We’d grown up together, gone through every first, every hardship, every battle together.

When we were pups, I was the runt of the pack, and therefore the subject of ridicule and hazing by our peers. And though he was the Alpha’s son, he stood up for me. He defended me when a pack of pups ganged up on me and declared me untouchable.

Without his intervention, I wouldn’t have grown to be one of the most formidable of the black wolves. I was his second-in-command, his beta, and I would do anything for him. I loved him like the brother I never had. Seeing him like this, battered and barely hanging onto life, shredded me up inside.

Aliya came back into the den with a bundle of pillows and blankets piled in her arms, and rather than handing them to me, she went about setting up a sleeping space on the floor beside the couch Jax was on.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said. “I’ll be fine in the chair.”

“Nonsense,” she said as she aired out the comforter and draped it over the sheet and pillow. “You need some sleep after your journey, and this way, you can be right next to your friend if he needs you.”

My heart squeezed again at her compassion. We were strangers to her, intruders in her kingdom, and yet she went out of her way to care for us. Little did she know our true intentions, and guilt over that fact gnawed at my gut like maggots on a festering sore.

I didn’t deserve her kindness. None of us did, least of all, Jax.

“Well, I’m going to have a rest too. So I’ll see you later?” she said awkwardly when she was finished, then nodded at me once before sweeping from the room.

Leaving me alone to wrestle with my troubled thoughts over what I must do.