Chapter 77

Creed

This was the moment when the red haze all made sense. It didn't blind me anymore, but forced me to see what mattered. The ridiculous Mattenite warrior that launched himself forward, his war axe held high, revealing all the soft spots for me to drive my claws into. I punched them into one side, tearing through muscle and wrenching out bone, before doing the same to the other. The haze blocked the sight of him falling dead to the ground out, focusing me on them and them.

More soldiers entertained the folly of taking us down, but they didn't have the advantage that we did. They were sent here on someone else's orders, but we defended our home, our land. I glanced sideways to see villagers running headfirst into the fray. Their weapons might be unconventional, but each one was no new recruit, I was sure. All of the borderlands were fertile, the soil rich and productive, which is why people had settled here in the first place, but rather than be plagued by vermin or disease, they had to deal with our enemies raiding across the border.

The Mattenites and Lanzene did this to test our resolve, to check the state of our defences to report back to their high command. They spent much of their time squabbling with each other, taking increments of land from the other in their border war, but it wouldn't take much for the two countries to direct their attention to us. I just had to convince these soldiers to send the right report home.

"Don't let any of them escape!" I snarled, but the soldiers, villagers and shifters were all of the same mind and that's when I felt it.

Battle fever.

It was an almost legendary state of cohesion attained when packs of wolf shifters came together and could put aside their own concerns for long enough to surrender their ego to the larger unit. Tales of regiments gone to battle fever, fighting until the very last man dropped, were told around the fire or in the dining hall during our army training. It was brilliant and terrible, all at the same time. Often the individuals fought until their bodies gave out on them, all individual sense of safety abandoned.

That's not what this felt like.

I looked across the melee and saw the garrison commander battling several enemy soldiers, thrusting his sword into one's ribs, then the others, his eyes locking with mine as he grinned. So did the wolf shifter, Kern, then Hallow. We found each other in the battle and that's when it settled inside me. A kind of fierce peace that pushed out all the noise and screams and chaos and just let me feel this.

Moving like lightning, I was everywhere at once. Tearing a woman from a soldier's grip, then turning on her attacker to rip his head from his shoulders. Blood splattered her face, but she just blinked, then gritted her teeth, snarling as someone else came to grab her. A knife was torn from her skirts and she drove it into the soldier's thigh, right as I punched my claws into his throat. The woman's sharp gasp alerted me that our job was not done. A small child wailed, holding a doll to her chest as she watched the chaos unfolding and as I watched a single tear roll down her cheek, an enemy soldier rose behind her. Huge and oppressive is what he must've seemed to the child as she turned around, her wails dying in her throat.

"Nooo…!"

The mother's shriek was my own, not drowned out by my bellow, but growing more powerful with it. We moved, soldiers moved, townspeople moved, converging on the bastard, but before we could reach our quarry, a knife buried itself into the chest of the attacker, wiping his feral grin from his face. I turned to see the mother stop and stare in shock before rushing forward to scoop up the child.

"Grab the children," I barked at her. "Take them to the garrison."

"No, I'll stand and fight," she shot back and for a second I saw another woman with eyes just as bright, her cheeks flushed. Jessalyn, always Jessalyn.

"You will, at the garrison," I assured her. "If we fall…"

I didn't need to explain further, because right then I could see it. The woman's fears as she clutched her daughter, the cool touch of good sense finally filtering through.

"With me!" she shouted, all the bark of a she-wolf in her voice, because right now she commanded my strength. I was the male, born to protect, and she the woman. Someone's wife, someone's mate, someone's mother, she and all the other women needed to be protected at all costs. They were our future. Her order was heard as women and children rushed past, their retreat covered by our defences.

All but one.

She stood at the edges of the battlefield, dark hair lifting in the breeze as her blue eyes found mine. Her hand lifted and she smiled slightly, forcing my vocal chords to work. I needed to tell her to run, to get to the garrison with the other women, but when I went to do so, she faded, as if she was never there in the first place. Instead a stag whose pelt glowed like the sun itself stood in her stead, staring at me. The sound of the battlefield dropped away as I frowned, then stumbled forward, wanting to check for myself, but a shout drew my focus.

"Alpha!"

I wasn't the alpha for my pack, Arik was, but I understood why they would gift me such a title. I was the one who stirred them to fight. I led the way and I needed to do just that now. I saw the Mattenite leader clamber onto his horse, a messenger raven flapping from where it was perched on his saddle. As I raced forward, his hands went to the pommel, ready to pull himself up. He'd wheel away, galloping back across the border to report to his high command.

I didn't want that.

I didn't want to strip my country of its best defences, but I felt like I had no choice. I didn't want the enemies to the south thinking that we were vulnerable. I didn't want soldiers from both armies sweeping over the border, wreaking far greater havoc than this. Not just burning crops, but settling my entire country alight, until there was nothing more than ashes, then they'd squabble over which pile was theirs. That certainty had me leaping through the air, my arms wrapping around the man's legs before I dragged him down to the ground.

"You're too late, beast." The enemy leader wriggled under my grip but got no further. "This is not a raid, but the beginning of the war. We will take your lands from you, filthy animal."

"Your commanders might, but not you."

He watched me draw my claw back with widening eyes, all of his bravado deserting him, right before I punched them into his throat. Hot, hot blood covered my palm, as I tore his throat out.

There were more enemies, though they became considerably less organised when their leader died. I left the business of dispatching them to the others, the job achieved swiftly, because I had my own task. I held out a hand to the raven, the bird pecking at my claws for a second, before hopping closer. A curl of parchment had been placed before him, ready to be sent via raven back to high command, but they would get quite a different message this time. I unrolled it and then placed the only mark needed to convey my message. My handprint, claws and all, I let the blood seep into the parchment before rolling it back up.

Let our enemies' leaders see this. Not reports of weaknesses in our borders, but a mark of our strength. There was a reason why they never bothered pitting themselves against us before this and they obviously needed reminding of it. As I watched the raven take flight, I hoped they'd understand the folly of taking us on.

"So what do we do?" the garrison commander asked in a low voice as I approached. "We humans are being forced to remain here, but we have no hope of holding the place…" He blinked and then offered me his hand. "Not without your help."

I just stared at his offer, wanting to take it, while knowing I couldn't.

"People are saying that more and more raids are happening across the borders," the woman who had fought by my side said. She jiggled her child on her hip, trying to soothe its low cries. "We're not safe here anymore."

"The humans need to understand the importance of the compact," Harrow, one of the wolf shifters said, looking out over the heads of everyone. "We are all one pack. Your land is our land…" There was a bit of restive muttering at that. "And we need to work together to protect it."

"But we can't right now." Those words felt like ashes in my mouth. "The trust is broken." I stared into the bloodied and begrimed faces of the villagers. "You should be able to rely on our support to keep you safe, but your king has taken that away from us. Our packlands are sacrosanct. No one comes in or out, not even the king, without explicit permission of our elders, but King Magnus disregarded this. All for a princess he doesn't want, that he intends to slaughter as those enemy soldiers intended to do your women folk."

I couldn't read the crowd. Whatever ability had been riding me during the fight was ebbing away now, leaving just me. Away from my pack, aching for the lack of them, of her. What was happening to Jessalyn? I had to hope the others had her safe, but not knowing threatened to drop me to my knees.

"We can't help keep your family safe," I said finally, "when the king threatens ours."

"Bloody bastard king…" The woman who held her child spat in the dirt, but others murmured in response. "Don't pretend he's not. Locked away in his fancy arse palace, far away from the border, you can bet he isn't having his fields burned to the ground…" She seemed to see the devastation for the first time, all the steel going out of her spine. "There's nothing left for us here."

"Now, Nora—"

"There's not. The land is good and the crops we grow are healthy and strong, but we can't do much when raiders come over the border."

"Winter's coming." A grizzled old man looked at the fields and shook his head slowly. "Not enough food left and no time to grow more. Then there's the houses."

"Maybe we could rebuild—" another said.

"And for what?" A young man with a seeping wound in his side said. "For the fucking Mattenites to just wander across the border and set fire to that whenever it pleases them?" He shook his head. "We're not safe here." His focus shifted to me; keen eyes boring into mine. "And you aren't either. If not even the wolf shifters are safe, then how will we ever be?"

People were talking, talking, the voices all getting louder and louder, but I couldn't hear them. I just stared at the chaos, as everyone argued amongst themselves, until I gave them the only answer I knew.

"The Bastard Prince."

"What?" The garrison commander stared at me, but the villagers seemed to perk up at that.

"The king's true-born son," the woman said, "at least that's what they say. The current king is the boy whelped by the bitch queen after riding the old king's knights."

"He and that band of his cut down a whole battalion of Lanzene warriors at the Battle of Nairne," one man said excitedly.

That's not what actually happened, but the stories seemed to grow and grow with each telling.

"Didn't they assassinate one of the Mattenite high command in his bed, sneaking out before the dawn rose, and leaving him lying in his bed, his head never to be found?"

"We left his head there." Everyone turned to face me. "And it wasn't that high a ranked officer. He had the command of the border garrisons, but—"

"You're him." The woman came closer, staring, even her child falling silent. "Creek."

"Creed," I corrected. "And yes, Arik, the Bastard Prince of Khean is my packmate."

"So it's the Bastard Prince's intended that the king seeks to steal," the grizzled man said. "That's what this is all about? The whole country in chaos for a girl."

"Wouldn't you lay waste the world to protect your woman?" I asked him. His eyes slid sideways, taking in the wife that was tucked into his side. We both saw her wide eyed stare. She looked utterly stricken by what she had gone through, her hands clasping the torn remnants of her blouse. I clicked a finger and a shirt was produced from somewhere and passed to me as I approached. "What wouldn't you do to keep her safe?"

"Then where do you go, Master Creed?" a man with the bearing of a village elder asked, standing tall as he faced me down. "Where does the garrison commander go?"

"Sir?"

The commander's use of an honorific was a strange thing. There were plenty of wolf shifters in various levels of the army, some who wielded great power, but using that kind of term caused some uneasiness with the humans.

Because while they forgot their history, some part of them remembered.

That we were once one people and while wolf shifters were the strongest individually, we could not match the numbers of our human cousins. Together we were a formidable force, but what devastation we could wreak on our own.

"I go to spread the news," I told him, the wolf speaking, not me. You could hear it in the roughening of my voice. "I go to make clear to all wolf shifters." I nodded to my fellows. "To all humans, the betrayal our king has committed. He is responsible for leaving your village undefended. It is his fault that all your hard work lies smouldering and I aim to bring each and every one of my complaints to his door and lay them at his feet."

"If it's his fault, then he can be the one to fix it!" one of the young men of the village shouted. "If we gather everyone on the borders that's had to deal with this, he won't be able to ignore us. No crops being sent to the capital for the rich bastards to gorge themselves on, no taxes being paid."

"To the capital!" another shouted and another, and right then I didn't have the heart to tell them. My route would not be so direct, the wolf not allowing it. The man might want to make his way directly to our fated mate, but the wolf?

He wanted to prove his worthiness to his queen by bringing her an army.