Chapter 3 | Sven

Chapter 3

Sven

I WATCHED FROM THE bushes as the scrawny, pretty-boy iceshaper exited the longhouse and stormed away with his shoulders slumped.

For a man who appreciated bombast even more than I did, I found it interesting to see him shrinking within himself, frowning, with his head and shoulders sagging. Almost like he was sorry about something.

Or perhaps that's my own bias speaking.

I'd always found my second-year classmate strange. Slick and conniving. He didn't carry himself with the same seriousness many cadets did at Vikingrune. He was gaudy, yet in a way that could keep him under the radar. A contradiction, this one: holding secrets on one side of his mouth, with boasts and big talk coming out the other.

I supposed he was a man I could relate to. Attractive, at least in the face—if fancy men with mischievous smiles and bright eyes was your thing. Loud, for sure, in the way he dressed and carried himself and spoke. Boastful when he wanted to be.

For me, I had to be those things to keep my people in line. I wasn't outrageous for the sake of being ludicrous. I had a persona to keep, expectations to meet. Being the leader of the four Torfen pack members currently attending Vikingrune was tough business. There hadn't been four of our ilk attending— from first-year initiate all the way up to fourth-year senior—in generations.

My father, Salos Torfen, would accept nothing else but perfection from me. I was molded in his image, and I carried the weight of his name and our family honor on my shoulders wherever I went.

Edda and Olaf, my fourth- and third-year siblings, undoubtedly had reservations, jealousies, and animosity toward me for being their pack leader. They were older than me. Ulf, my younger kin, well . . . I didn't care what the pup thought.

I was losing Ulf to the joyous flaunts of that Black girl, Randi Ranttir, more and more by the day. He spent more time with her than he did his own family.

Honestly, I didn't blame him: She was pretty, smart, and seemed fun and exciting. The Torfen shifters, well . . . we could be a bit dour, admittedly.

My focus returned to Arne Gornhodr as I watched from the peripheries of the woods where he had unknowingly led me. I could practically smell the fear and disappointment on him, even from a stone's throw away. Is it disappointment about whatever meeting he just attended, or disappointment about something he's done and feels guilty about?

I wanted to find out.

I was in my wolf form, staying low, keeping my growls to a minimum. Truth was, I didn't trust Arne Gornhodr, and I hadn't since I first met him during our initiate year. It was a gut instinct. He was too clever, talkative, and roguish. There was an ever-pervasive glint in his eyes that made me want to scoop them out with an ice cream spoon.

Now, I was surer than ever he was hiding something.

Every other day for two weeks now—ever since Ravinica's disappearance—he had marched to this longhouse in the northwest district near Fort Woden, to speak with someone. He never stayed more than thirty minutes.

There were plenty of offices for Hersirs and faculty scattered near the monolithic black fortress, yet I knew this specific one because I'd been inside there too.

He was speaking with Hersir Kelvar the Whisperer. I was sure of it. Certainly no coincidence he's doing it after my little menace was kidnapped and the elves made themselves known.

I wasn't even sure I could trust Arne about his fearful announcement that elves had returned to Midgard. He was too tricky. Surely, if elves are truly outside these walls, pounding on our doorstep, the academy would go into lockdown mode, no? More soldiers and Huscarls would be walking the perimeter, more guards would man the ramparts on the wall and watchtowers surrounding Academy Hill.

As of right now, however, things seemed . . . tense, but not uncontrollable, frightful, or alarming.

There was a good reason for the tension clouding thick in the air at the academy: Two students had been found dead recently. There was Astrid Linmyrr, of course, who had been drained of her blood as if a vampire had gotten to her. One of her goons that followed her around everywhere was found a day later stuffed in a bush, neck broken.

Their relation to one another was no coincidence, in my mind.

Grim Kollbjorn, my rival bear shifter who I shared a temporary truce with until we located Ravinica, had originally been blamed and arrested for Astrid's death. I had watched him stumble upon the body of the initiate.

I knew he wasn't the murderer. I also helped him escape from his confinement so we could find Ravinica together, since I knew she would listen to him more than me.

It seemed my hunch from when my little menace recuperated after Astrid's ambush had been right: Something fucky was going on at the academy.

Two dead students with a murderer running loose? Elf sightings outside the walls? A missing bog-blood? Arne having meetings with the most criminally clandestine Hersir at the academy?

Yes, things were definitely shady around here. I hated being out of the loop. It wasn't suitable for a Torfen pack leader, and it made me feel like an idiot.

If I had been the headmaster—the Gothi—I would have locked down the academy the moment Ravinica went missing. Then again, I was biased, because I found myself drawn to the beautiful, vexing young woman.

I kept seeing her black-streaked silver hair in my dreams. It often woke me up with a cock hard enough to burst through my damn bedsheets. I couldn't control the urges I felt when I thought about her.

I had moved well past bullying the girl, because I couldn't deny my draw and curiosity and longing for her any longer. Hence why I had started following Arne after her disappearance, because it seemed odd to me he would survive a massacre of Huscarls, and no one else.

There's certainly more going on here, and I will find out.

Grim was keeping low in the woods these days near the center of campus, any time he wasn't in class. For some reason, after we had returned to the academy with Arne, classes carried on as usual, as if nothing was awry. The bear berserker kept to himself, like usual, and waited to be arrested once again—this time for not only murdering Astrid, but also for illegally escaping his jail cell.

I suspected Hersir Ingvus Jorthyr was embarrassed about the humiliation of Grim escaping, which was why he hadn't pressed any new charges on the huge lumbering man yet.

It gave me a small window of an opening. Yes, I wanted to ambush Arne and pin him down and torture all the secrets he was carrying in his skinny body. But I also wanted to play my cards right.

So, once Arne left my eyesight, I ventured into the sparse woods, galloping through them toward a deeper, denser section of trees. There, my kinfolk awaited at a creek, lapping up water, also in their wolf forms. My yellow eyes locked with Edda, then Olaf, then Ulf. I wrinkled my snout, asserting my dominance and telling them we had a job to do.

I knew it annoyed them when I stalked off without them, returned thirty minutes later, and didn't tell them what the hell I'd been doing.

They would learn in time. Once I know what's going on, they'll be the first to know. But I want to get my facts straight before I open my mouth. Who killed Astrid and her friend? Are elves really outside, roaming around the Isle? And, most of all, where the fuck is my little menace, and how can I get her back?

Arne had to have the answers to those questions. And by the gods, I would wrench the truth from him yet.

With my primal instinct calling to me, the wolf inside me snarling to the forefront and telling me to rove the woods freely with my nose to the ground and my jaws pried open, I took off out of the clearing.

My three pack members yipped and followed me deeper into the trees—not toward Arne for an ambush, but rather trying to find someone else to speak with before I made any rash moves.

Minutes later, I scented his offensive presence.

I barreled up a wooded hillside, hopped across a small pond, and glanced left and right to see Olaf and Edda beside me like the point of a spearhead.

Grim came into view as I circled a tree into a clearing, resplendent and sticking out like a sore thumb with his snow-white fur.

I pulled up short, ready to shift into a human so we could talk—

But then the bear glared over his shoulder with deep red eyes and a snarl showing his dagger-like teeth. And before I could shift, Grim Kollbjorn charged at me full speed.