Chapter 42

Silas

Changes in crowd energy, that's what my father had taught me to read. All the training in poisons and knife work meant nothing if the crowd was aware of what you were up to.

Or worse, against you.

Which is what I felt right now. We'd beaten a hasty retreat from Jessalyn's cottage. It required some physical intervention from us to get Creed moving, but we'd retired back to the cottage that had been gifted to us for the time being. It'd taken real effort not to get caught up in the emptiness of the place, the spaces between us forming a hollow that only a diminutive princess could fill. But at some point, the sour feeling in my stomach turned into actual hunger that wouldn't be denied, so we'd ambled down the lane to the dining hall.

Only to find everyone watching us as we passed.

It wasn't the same regard we got when walking through the stews of the Kheanian capital. People knew about the Bastard Prince and his band, by reputation if not by the sight of us, even though no one would ever assume Arik was something other than a prince. He didn't realise it, but there was a particular kind of bearing that only those born to rule could affect convincingly. I knew this because many of us at The Guild had attempted to mimic it. But whatever his bloodline was, or mine, it didn't mean much right now. People watched us pass with hard, searching stares, and the reason why became apparent when we went to get food.

"Meals for my pack, if you please, Master…"

Creed's voice was corded with pain, but that changed abruptly as the server grabbed several plates and slopped food on them without any care. Mashed potatoes splattered each plate, along with a tumble of boiled vegetables, but it was the meat that made clear his feeling about us. The server sorted through the already sliced lamb, plopping the fattiest, more gristly meat he could find on our plates, before shoving them towards us.

"You have my thanks," Creed said, the rest of us muttering something along the same lines as we took our food and cutlery.

"Is it just my overactive imagination, or are we getting the stink eye from everyone here?" Roan asked as we found an empty table. Those sitting at the one next to us gathered up their plates and moved away, giving us a sidelong look just to emphasise their point.

"Nope, not imaging it," I said, poking the meat with my belt knife, then fastidiously cutting away the gristle.

"Did something go wrong? People usually love us when we visit," Roan said before tucking into his food, the animal. As long as it filled his belly, he didn't care about the quality.

Arik inhaled, ready to answer, when a peal of the most perfect feminine laughter echoed across the hall.

Usually, I was the one doing the tying up, needing to be in control, but right now the sound of Jessalyn's giggles slid across my skin, binding me with knots, forcing me to stay in my seat as I turned to find where she sat. With Fern, Creed's sister, and the other single women, all of them clustered around the princess like she was the sun and they were her satellites. Food was ignored as they leaned forward, elbows on the table, to give all their attention to her stories.

Stories about us, I was willing to bet.

"I think I know where our poor welcome comes from," I said, dragging a fork through the fluffy mashed potatoes.

"So do I."

Creed shot to his feet, ready to go over there, but both Arik and I put a hand on the back of his shirt. The two of us shared a brief look before we dragged him right back down again.

"Men commiserate and talk shit after a battle," Roan said with a sigh. "Looks like women do the same."

"But… we cut down Jessalyn's enemies," Creed said, as he strained against our grip like a hound on a leash.

"Did we?" That sharp tone of Arik's was back, his gaze all the sharper as he took in the women and their antics. Just like I did, he caught the sidelong looks each woman gave us, except the one we actually cared about. Lips pursed, heads shook slightly, making clear their displeasure. "Or did we just despatch the most pressing threat and put ourselves in its place?

A collective sigh went around the table as we focused on our meal. A soldier can't afford to be squeamish. He eats, sleeps, and shits when he can, lest he never have the opportunity to do so again. The packland cooks were well known for their prowess in preparing food, particularly meat, but it all tasted like glue in my mouth as I chewed.

Only to turn to dust once the meal was over.

The dining hall was more than a place to share food. It was a meeting room of sorts, a place for the different packs to come together, share space, time, news, and company before retiring back to their cottages to sleep. So when several men pulled out instruments, it was just part of the evening gathering. One man tapped out a quick rhythm on a hand drum, looking hopefully around the crowd. Another waving a violin over his head made his way to join the drummer, as did one with a tin whistle, and one more with a mandolin under his arm. The tin whistle let out a little trill as the servers began removing all the plates and food, clearing the tables so they could be pushed back. The musicians nodded to each other and then started to play a little jig with a rollicking beat.

Music had always been my undoing. I'd been forced to learn all the more common dances and then the less common ones, so I could swing around a dance floor with ease whether in a dingy inn or my father's ballroom. But the sound of a song, with all those different notes played by individual instruments, forced my mind to follow them one by one, skipping from the drumbeat to the sharp trill of the whistle, to the whine of the violin. And so it was that my body moved of its own accord and I rose to my feet, just as Fern dragged Jessalyn out to the impromptu dance floor in the centre of the hall.

Wolf shifter women moved like snakes when dancing. It was almost as if they were double-jointed, swaying, twisting, and rolling their hips with feline intent rather than lupine. Fern performed a simpler set of steps, demonstrating for Jessalyn, before beckoning her closer. Other single women leapt forward, twisting and throwing themselves around the dance floor to the sound of the music, but I didn't care to follow any movements except hers.

If I'd thought Creed was a leashed dog in her presence, then for a moment, I experienced a feeling of empathy. It was willpower alone that kept me where I was, each one of the men I called brothers standing beside me as we watched Jessalyn follow the steps with her eyes, nodding to the beat of the music before springing forward to join the dancers.

She was elegant and beautiful, shifting in time to the music the way reeds did the riffling wind. I knew that she would have been taught to dance. High-born women were schooled in all ways, ensuring they grew up to perform perfectly the rituals of womanhood. But knowing that she'd been trained in the formal movements of what passed for dancing in her father's court wouldn't help me now. Instead, I was forced to follow the lines of her body as she moved, stumbling over the steps Fern performed, then quickly mastering them before adding her own embellishments. The thing that caught my attention most was that she was smiling. It was more than that. She grinned with a wild kind of abandon that I'd never seen her show. Not when we'd walked by her side, not even when she was riding the red dragon. There was no haze in her eyes that pushed her to dance, just…

Happiness.

That shouldn't have hurt to see. I wanted her to be happy, needed it like my next breath. However, now I'd seen the way it looked on her face when the mask was set aside and she allowed herself to feel freely, not only did I realise she hadn't been this truly happy in my presence, I knew I'd never be satisfied with anything less. I wanted to make her feel exactly that.

Then I realised that I wasn't the only one as my attention was caught by the sound of chairs and benches dragging back as men rose from their seats.

Of course they did, all of us had done exactly the same thing, though the women hadn't started dancing to elicit this response. Mothers, fathers, children too, joined the young women on the dance floor, moving to please themselves, to experience the music with all their senses. That's what Jessalyn and Fern were doing, which was why they were so happy. For just a moment they could lay their worries down and just experience things. However, single men never seemed content to watch when they could insert themselves into a situation and try to redirect that pleasure their way, and that's just what these fucking wolf shifters were doing. No longer content with standing and watching, they started prowling around the dance floor.

"Don't."

Creed repaid my previous efforts, slapping his hand down on my chest and stopping me from moving forward before I was even aware I had. I didn't see him or feel myself, only her and them. Men circled the group like hungry wolves, and what else were they doing but being true to their natures? They slid between the dancers, joining the frivolity, but with a more sinister intent. They didn't just march up to the woman of their choice to grab her and tug her closer. Instead, they were much more cunning, dancing in a woman's general vicinity, waiting for her to turn to them. And woman after woman did just that, throwing her arms around the neck of her chosen man and dancing with him or matching her movements with his until they were perfectly in step. Even Fern fell into the arms of a big burly wolf shifter. Then another approached Jessalyn.

"No…"

I'd heard Creed howl, growl, and snarl in skin as well as wolf form, but it was odd to realise I was making the same possessive sound.

"This is how it works here." Creed's sharp tone cut through the haze inside my head. "The woman chooses."

"So how the fuck do we make her choose us?" Roan asked.

"We can't make Jessalyn do anything." Creed loosened his grip on my shirt. "We weren't worthy of her, something I think we all knew before, but now…" He straightened up. "Now we need to make clear that situation has changed."