Riven
The bonfire was already burning high when Riven reached the clearing.
The flames rose in spirals, painting the night gold and red. Wolves sat in circles around it, some in human form, some shifted, all humming with the electricity of the night meant to honour their elders and dead.
A cluster of young pups broke away from the crowd when they saw him.
They ran toward him on small feet, half-shifted claws clicking on the dirt, stumbling over each other in their excitement.
"Alpha Riven!"
"You came!"
"Did you really fight rogues?"
"Alpha, did you bring us a story?"
Their voices tumbled over one another.
Riven's jaw eased despite himself. These pups had been born after the darkest years. They only knew peace because he had fought for it.
He rested a hand on the nearest pup's head, ruffling the soft fur. "Behave. Your parents are watching."
They giggled and scampered away, leaving the air warmer in their absence.
He moved away, toward the far side of the fire, where the elders had begun to gather on carved stumps.
Old tongues, old bones, old scars.
The drums slowed. Conversations faded. One by one, wolves turned toward the circle of fire, heads inclining, backs straightening.
An elder rose.
Elder Ysela approached him next.
Not frail. Not soft.
Her spine was curved like an old branch but her eyes were bright, sharp, a thousand years of memory tucked inside their depths.
"Alpha," she said. "You missed the opening rites."
"I had matters to handle," Riven replied.
Her gaze flickered, knowing. "The human?"
Riven did not answer.
This woman was older than his parents, older than some of the trees that ringed the clearing.
"Grandmother Ysela," Kael had called her as a pup, clinging to her skirts. "The one who remembers when humans still thought the moon was only a rock."
Elder Ysela lifted her chin toward the fire, voice sliding into the cadence of an ancient tale.
Riven inclined his head with the rest as she stepped closer to the fire.
Ysela's hair was long and white, braided into a thick rope that fell down her back. Wrinkles mapped her brown skin like riverlines. Her eyes, still sharp, glowed faintly in the firelight.
She lifted a hand and the drums stopped.
"The night is listening," she said, voice low but carrying. "So we will tell it the truth."
Some pups shuffled closer. Adults settled. Heads bowed in respect.
"What truth?" she asked, eyes sweeping the crowd. "The simple one. We were here first."
A murmur rose, then quieted.
"Before maps. Before border stones. Before the first human thought to tame a river or cut down a forest. Wolves ran these lands. Our sanctuaries were not cages. They were kingdoms. Our packs had councils and laws. Our Alphas were chosen by claw and challenge. Our moons were our own."
Riven's chest tightened at the words. Chosen by claw and challenge. His hand flexed unconsciously, remembering the feel of the old Alpha's throat under his fingers, the metallic taste of blood and dust when it was done.
Ysela's gaze drifted higher, beyond the fire, to the shadowed mountains.
"Then the ships came," she said. "Wood and iron dragged across seas. Humans walked onto our shores and declared discovery. As if they had found something, instead of trespassing onto what was never theirs."
Her mouth curled.
"They smiled. They spoke of treaties. Of trade. Of sharing land. They brought gifts and poison in the same hand."
A low growl rippled through the gathered wolves.
"They asked for our warriors in their wars," Ysela continued. "They tied our claws to their flags. They promised freedom, then wrote laws in ink that bled only in one direction. When we were useful, we were weapons. When we were done, we were pests. Monsters. Illegal."
Her eyes sharpened, catching the light of the flames. "They took some of us away. Not to prisons, but to rooms under the earth. To cages made of glass and steel. They cut into our wolves and called it medicine. They injected them with silver and called it research. They broke our minds and our magic and called the results mistakes."
There was no sound now except the crackle of the fire.
Riven thought of the rogues. Of the way their eyes did not always focus. Of the way their scent carried both wolf and something sour underneath. Of the old reports buried in council records about human experimentation, about escapes, about survivors that never truly survived.
"Those broken ones were cast out," Ysela said. "Rogues, we call them now. Feral. Unbound. Some by human hands. Some by our own, when fear made us cruel and the councils turned their backs."
Her gaze swept the circle.
"The Wolf Accords came later. Sanctuary lands. Boundaries. A promise from humans that if we stayed on our side they would stay on theirs. Yet how often do humans creep near our borders, hungry for stories and screams. How often do their cameras search for teeth instead of faces."
Riven's jaw clenched.
Nahla's face flashed in his mind. Soft lips, blood on her throat, eyes wide with terror as she saw the rogue. The way she had thought he would kill her too.
"And yet," Ysela said softly, "the moon has not abandoned us. We are still here. We remember. We endure. We teach our pups their history so that no human tongue can twist it for them."
Some of the pups straightened at that, small shoulders squaring.
Ysela inclined her head. "Tonight we honor those we lost to human greed and to our own mistakes. We honor those who fell in the labs and those who were driven mad by what was done to them. We honor every wolf who died believing our world could be better than this."
The drums picked up again, slower than before, heavy.
Riven stayed a while longer, listening. The fire painted everyone in shades of ember and shadow. He felt the weight of their eyes as they slid toward him and then away.
He had not told them about the Oracle yet. About her warning. About the human girl at the center of it.
He did not know how.
He watched the flames climb higher, then turned away.
There was work to do.
On his way toward the path that led to the far ridge, a hand caught his arm.
"Leaving so soon, Alpha?"
The voice was smooth, edged with a teasing sweetness that had once pleased him enough to forget how tired he was.
Serin.
Her long dark hair hung loose down her back. Her dress was cut to flatter, to cling. Her lips were curved in a familiar smile.
"We have not spoken in days," she said. "I thought perhaps you had forgotten what it is to share warmth."
Riven's wolf recoiled.
"I remember," he said, tone flat. "I am not interested."
Her smile sharpened. "Not interested in me, or not interested in anyone who is not human."
The air around them cooled.
Conversations nearby faltered, then continued in forced tones. Eyes slid toward them, almost as if by accident.
Riven went very still.
"Choose your words carefully," he said.
Serin lifted her chin. "I am only repeating what others say. You vanish from the pack. You sleep in your cabin and no one sees you. We hear whispers about the human in your bed. What are we meant to think, Alpha?"
His vision narrowed.
In two strides he had her against a tree, his hand wrapped around her throat. Not tight enough to crush, but tight enough that her breath stuttered.
Her pupils flared. Fear spiked in her scent.
"Do not ever say that again," he said, voice soft in a way that made it more dangerous. "Not to me. Not to anyone. You will not put your tongue on her name."
Serin's hands came up to his wrist. "Riven..."
"She is injured," he said. "She is under my protection as long as she breathes on my land. You will stay away from my cabin. You will not step near her. You will not breathe rumors into the ears of my pack and expect me to ignore it."
Tears glistened at the corners of her eyes. "Everyone already thinks it. They say their Alpha chose a human over his own."
"They are wrong," he said. "And you will correct them."
Her throat moved under his hand as she swallowed. "Yes."
He held her there a heartbeat longer, just long enough to make sure fear rooted deeper than defiance, then he released her.
Serin sagged back against the tree, rubbing her neck, eyes fixed on the ground.
"Find your place, Serin," he said quietly. "Before I find it for you."
He did not wait for an answer.
The path away from the fire seemed darker than before. He welcomed it. The night wrapped around him, cool and solid. The drums dropped away behind him. The scent of smoke thinned, replaced by pine and frost and the faint metallic tang of snow waiting in the clouds.
At the edge of the clearing, he shifted.
Bones lengthened, then shortened. Skin rippled into fur. The change was always a shock, no matter how many times he did it, the world reorienting itself around different senses.
He hit the ground on four paws, the earth cool beneath his pads.
The forest opened for him.
He ran.
Branches blurred past. The air rushed in and out of his lungs, steady and sure. His paws beat a rhythm that had nothing to do with drums.
He let some of the tension bleed out into the movement. The fury. The confusion. The unwelcome pull that tightened in his chest every time he thought of Nahla's face.
By the time he reached the patrol ridge, the wind had sharpened further. The communications cabin squatted against the rock, a low wooden structure reinforced with stone and metal, antennae spearing up into the sky.
Lights burned in the small windows.
Riven shifted back to human form with a shudder and pushed the door open.
The interior was cramped, filled with old monitors, radio receivers and maps pinned to every wall. It smelled like dust, solder and too much coffee.
Kael sat hunched over a console, headset around his neck, fingers tapping at a dial. His blond hair was pulled back in a messy tie. Dark circles carved shadows under his eyes.
He looked up as Riven entered, and some of the lines in his face eased.
"You look like the fire tried to eat you," Kael said. "How bad was it?"
"Ysela spoke," Riven replied. "The usual tales. The usual anger."
Kael snorted softly. "Good. The pups need to hear it."
Riven stepped closer, scanning the screens. Static crawled across one, footage across another, human channels bleeding in between wolf frequencies.
"Any word?" he asked.
Kael's mouth flattened. "Plenty."
He twisted a knob and turned up the volume on one of the radios.
"...unconfirmed reports of a missing woman last seen traveling alone through the Valorian northern border roads. Authorities found what appears to be the wreckage of her vehicle near the Wolf Accord sanctuary line. No body has been recovered..."
Riven's shoulders tightened.
A crackly image on one of the monitors showed the twisted remains of a car, headlights dead, trunk flung open. Human officers stood behind a yellow line, weapons visible at their belts.
Another screen flickered to life, carrying a different voice.
"Speculation is already mounting that wolves may be involved. Locals have long complained that the sanctuaries are not as contained as the government claims. Some witnesses say they heard howling shortly before the crash..."
A familiar phrase rolled across the ticker at the bottom of the screen.
Human woman taken by savage beast.
Kael flinched slightly as he read it.
Riven went very quiet.
"Turn the sound off," he said.
Kael obeyed immediately. The sudden silence buzzed in Riven's ears.
"They move quickly," Riven said. "Faster than we do."
"They have satellites," Kael replied. "We have scouts and an old antenna that barely likes us."
"Did they use her name?" Riven asked.
"Not yet. They are saying 'the victim' or 'the missing woman'. Once they identify her, it will spread."
Riven thought of Nahla's soft voice telling Lira that her family would assume the worst. The guilt that flashed behind her eyes.
He felt something dark coil tighter in his stomach.
"Anyone heading for the borders yet?" he asked.
"Not that we can see," Kael said. "But if the council in the capital officially connects the crash to us, they might send patrols to 'inspect' the sanctuary line."
Inspect. He almost laughed.
"You will double the patrols tonight," Riven said. "No human steps onto Wildmane land. If they approach, you warn them once. If they cross after that..."
He let the sentence hang.
Kael nodded grimly. "Understood."
Riven moved closer to the table where a rough map of their territory was spread. The border road where Nahla had crashed was marked in red pencil. The sanctuary line was drawn in heavy ink.
He traced the path from the road to his cabin with a knuckle.
She had been so close to safety without even knowing it.
"Did you recover her belongings from the wreck?" he asked.
"Not all of them," Kael said. "Human officers were already close by. We managed to grab one bag from the trees. I have not opened it yet. Thought you might want to decide what to do with it."
Riven nodded once. "Bring it to my cabin in the morning. Quietly. No one else needs to see it."
Kael tilted his head. "You are keeping her now, then."
It was not a challenge. It was a question from a friend who had followed him into every battle, through blood and fire and worse.
Riven exhaled slowly.
"I am not keeping her," he said. "I am keeping my pack alive. If humans think we stole one of their own, they will tear at our gates until something breaks. I need to know who she is, why she was on that road and how to return her without giving them a reason to set foot here."
Kael studied him for a moment, then nodded.
"Lira says she will not heal quickly," he added. "Human bodies are slow. Weeks. Maybe months before she can walk without collapsing."
Riven's teeth clenched. "I know."
Lira's words from earlier were still fresh.
They have no magic to knit their bones and skin. If she were one of us she would be hunting again in days. Instead she will need care, and patience and help learning to trust her leg.
He had agreed to let Lira bring food and clothes to the cabin, to borrow garments from one of the younger females whose frame might match Nahla's. The thought of small, ordinary things like that, layered over the threat of war and prophecy, made his head ache.
He looked back at the blank monitors, at the reflection of his own face in the dark glass.
"She is not our enemy," Kael said quietly. "Not yet."
Riven did not answer.
The image of her sleeping face rose in his mind, unbidden. Curly hair spread on his pillow. Faint bruises fading along her cheekbone. Lips parted on a soft exhale. Human, fragile and yet somehow still here, after a rogue's jaws and a flipped car and a night that should have ended in a grave.
The Oracle's voice whispered through his memory.
A human stands at the heart of it.
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
"They will paint her as a victim," he said, voice like ice. "They will paint me as a monster. They will use every word, every slanted story, to justify stepping one foot closer to our lands."
Kael watched him carefully. "What will you do?"
Riven lifted his gaze from the monitors and looked toward the dark window. Through it he could see only his own reflection and the suggestion of trees.
"I will not let a single human cross onto Wildmane territory," he said. "Not politicians. Not soldiers. Not grieving relatives looking for someone to blame."
His jaw hardened.
"If they want her, they will speak to me from their side of the border. Or not at all."
Kael let out a slow breath. "They will not like that."
"I do not exist to please them," Riven said. "I exist to keep this pack breathing. Whatever this girl has brought to my land, it will not be human boots on our soil."
He turned away from the monitors.
Outside, the night waited. The smell of smoke from the bonfire drifted faintly on the wind even here.
Somewhere up on the hill, in his cabin, a human girl slept in his bed and did not yet know the fires she had walked into.
Riven stepped out into the cold and closed the door behind him.