Chapter 68

Creed

If Jessalyn was in the capital, how did I end up here? I didn't know because I wasn't in control. It was the wolf that padded closer to the garrison, not me, and while our haunches ached and our paws bled, he pushed us on, head hanging.

"What the fuck is that?" a human soldier asked from the top of the wall. We watched him pull his bow, aiming the arrow at us.

"Put your bow away!" a shifter commander snapped, shoving the arrow away from us when the human didn't respond fast enough. "Open the gates!"

His order rang through the entire garrison, so we heard the clang of the gate bar being lifted and then the doors opened for me moments later.

"Here, lad…" Another shifter soldier stepped forward, hand outstretched. "You've been on the road for some time. Are you well?"

He wanted to know if I was feral. My human brain was able to parse that, but the wolf just moved forward. He sniffed at the soldier's fingers and then it all came. Which pack this male belonged to. The lands he was born on. His mate, a pretty girl with long brown hair, the last time I saw her. His brothers… All the information that the man paid attention to, but not the wolf, flooded my brain until I was able to wrest control and take skin.

"There you are." The male, Jasper, I remembered, nodded at the sight of me. "You've come a long way, brother."

He offered me his hand again, but this time for me to take. I clasped it firmly, trying not to cling because my whole body shook with the effort of what I'd done. I'd run all the way to the front, not towards the city. I looked around me, seeing the marshy lands of the border country with fresh eyes.

"I have." My voice was ragged and rusty, so Jasper handed me a waterskin. I drank from it greedily. "And I did so because I bring news."

"What news is that?"

The commander of the garrison was one of Jasper's packmates. I saw it in the easy way they stood close, ignoring the strictures of human hierarchy. It wasn't that we didn't have our own but that we focused on very different things.

"The treaty is broken." They heard my voice crack, and that brought the other shifters in the garrison closer. Humans muttered, watching what transpired, but they didn't really understand it. "The human king came onto packlands during the mating games."

The growls each one of them uttered was a salve on my soul. I needed to hear their rage and anger. The humans nearest us, their hands strayed to their weapons, but my sharp gaze stopped that from happening as other wolf shifters snarled their warning.

"He brought soldiers uninvited." The growls turned to snarls. "Armed and toting burning brands." The humans started to edge away, having considered the odds of trying to insert themselves into this situation and thought better of it. "They threatened to burn the dining hall while all of the packs were gathered within." I saw fur start to ripple across skin, fangs flash in the evening light. "The king made clear he would not honour the conditions of the treaty. That we were little other than animals to do his bidding."

The thing about my kind was that we were quick. To respond, to fight, to organise into an effective fighting force, tearing our enemies to pieces before moving on, so it came as no surprise that anger flared hot and hard right now. The other wolf shifters saw there was a new enemy now. Every one of us in the garrison was assembled before me, and I felt the power that came from being in their presence. We were pack, bound together by blood and instinct, and we would destroy anything that got in our way.

"Why, brother?" the commander asked, a lone voice of reason in all this seething emotion. "Why would the king do this? We are his strongest fighters. The humans are dependent on our help."

"Because the woman he was to marry is my fated mate." Gods, the loss of Jessalyn smashed into me hard now. The wolf wasn't capable of such finer feelings, only seeing what needed to be done and doing it. "He has had so many queens before." More growls, more snarls. "He has killed each one of them." The sound of their collective rage seemed to grow more savage. "And he intended to do the same with my fated mate, just as he did yours."

That was it, the tipping point. Any thoughts of maintaining order was lost. The commander's hands went wide, becoming claws, his face beginning to transform.

"Kill… Marigold?"

That was the girl with the dark hair, I remembered that now. He and his pack had come across her when travelling through a small town and stopped for an ale at the inn. They'd seen her and just known she was the one for them, famously refusing to move forward until she agreed to become theirs. The human second-in-command had been forced to take control of the unit, moving the rest of his men to the objective, leaving Jasper, the commander, and the rest of his pack to woo their girl. Because that's what we agreed to, what was written into the treaty.

We knew who our mates were the moment we saw them, and humans didn't. We'd fight in their wars, lend our strength to the king to protect our country, but he had to do something in return. The wives of lords, the daughters of dukes, or butchers or teachers, or bureaucrats. None of them were exempt from the basic premise of the treaty: that the king would allow nothing to get in the way of us wooing our mates. Magnus was the kind of idiot that came from too much power and privilege, but even he had respected tradition and made no attempt to step between a wolf and his mate.

Until now.

Magnus was prepared to piss everything away, thinking his phalanx of human knights were enough to protect him. Most human kings saw us less than human. It's why they called us beast men, but they at least acknowledged our usefulness. Magnus had lived his whole life protected by wolf shifter legions, so he didn't even realise how essential to his continued safety we were.

I'd run here in the form of a wolf, and now every shifter around me was being ridden hard by his. Armour, weapons, all fell to the ground as the shift started to take place. But while Magnus might not want to command the shifter army anymore, I did.

"We must spread the word, brothers," I told them, standing tall, feeling the evening air ruffle my hair. Now I saw the wisdom of the wolf. I wanted to be there, in the capital, standing over my princess and protecting her with my every breath, but I had to trust my pack would serve that purpose.

Right up until I brought an army to her.

"We need all of shifter kind to become aware of the depth of the king's sins." Their roars of agreement helped lighten my heart. "We need some of our number to secure the packlands, keep it safe, but others…"

"Ah, sir…" A human officer edged closer, only for the commander to whirl around and approach him, claws held wide. "What about the garrison? We're based here to keep the bloody Lanzenians back."

"You keep the interlopers back." He stabbed a claw into the man's breast plate, forcing him to stumble back. "You protect the realm and see how well you do without us. I know you've wanted a promotion. Well, consider your wish granted. You'll protect this part of the border, and we'll protect what's important to us."

He turned then to the rest of our kind, staring at us from the form of the wolf man, not his human-looking one.

"We must make haste, approach all the garrisons along the border and make clear what we know. The treaty is broken. There is no need to spend more time in a pointless war. When all our kind hear the news, we return home to our mates!"

I smiled as I saw them all take fur, giant wolves sprinting away in every direction to do just that.

Human men milled in the garrison courtyard, looking lost, but I wouldn't be the one to lead them. I stepped closer to this new human commander, knowing as soon as my back was turned, he'd be off sending a raven to the capital.

"When you tell the king the news of what has happened," I told him, "make sure this is included. That he could've prevented all of this. Jessalyn is the only woman who will ever matter to me." I paused then, flashing my fangs as I grinned. "He wanted to burn the dining hall down? I'll burn the entire country, including the capital. Everyone's family will face the threat of fire before I'm done unless he releases my mate into my care. Bring my mate to me, unharmed and untouched, or he will be the king of a pile of ashes and no more."

I didn't wait for an answer, turning on my heel and taking fur without thought. The wolf and I, we knew exactly what to do. The wolf shifters from this garrison would contact the ones closest to them and then those shifters would contact the next. With the speed of a wildfire, insubordination would race through the ranks, as shifters deserted their posts, and human soldiers… Some of them would assess the likelihood of their success without us and turn tail and run too.

Magnus thought he ruled due to birthright alone, but he was about to find out the truth. He did so because we allowed it, and that right to command was being revoked. The wolf turned then, heading back up the track, trotting at first, then running in long lopes, all exhaustion driven from our frame. We would run and run until we reached the next garrison and the next, before turning our sights to the capital. Jessalyn, that's who's name beat in my heart as I raced ahead. For Jessalyn.