Nobody slept much that night.
Or maybe everyone else did and it was just me.
---
They gave me a small shelter at the edge of the camp. A bedroll. A change of dry clothes that were too big but warm enough.
I lay there staring at the low ceiling and listening to the forest.
---
My mind would not stop.
Three days ago I had been collecting herbs and staying out of people's way. That was my whole life. Stay small. Stay quiet. Do not give anyone a reason to look at you too long.
Now I was in rogue territory holding something that apparently powerful people had been fighting over for three hundred years.
How does a person sleep after that?
---
I pulled the pendant out and held it above my face in the dark.
It caught nothing. No light to catch. Just a small dark shape between my fingers.
But that feeling was still there. The one that had started when my fingers first closed around it at the healer's house.
Something underneath my skin. Patient. Waiting.
---
I did not like things I could not explain.
I put the pendant back in my pocket and closed my eyes.
Sleep did not come for a long time.
---
Morning came gray and cold.
I found my way to the main fire where a few people were already moving around. Someone had put water on to boil.
Riven was there. He was talking quietly with Soren and a third person I had not seen the night before.
---
The third person was hard not to notice.
He was tall. Broader than Riven. His arms were crossed and he was listening to the conversation with the look of someone who had already made up their mind before it started.
Dark skin. Close cut hair. A scar that ran from his jaw down to his neck.
Wolf. Pure blood from the way he carried himself. The kind of pure blood who was used to being the strongest person in any room.
---
He looked over when I approached.
His eyes moved over me the way Riven's had at the river. Reading my scent. Taking stock.
Whatever he found he did not look impressed.
"This is her?" he said to Riven.
"This is Kaia," Riven said.
"She looks like a half drowned cat," the man said.
---
"I was half drowned yesterday," I said. "I am doing better today."
He looked at me for a second.
"Dane," he said. Just his name. Like that was all I was getting.
"Nice to meet you too," I said.
---
Riven almost smiled. I was starting to recognize the almost smile. It was as close as he seemed to get.
"Dane is our fighter," Riven said. "He keeps the camp safe."
"And I am telling you keeping this camp safe is exactly why she cannot stay here," Dane said. He looked at Riven directly. "You know what that pendant means. You know what it will bring."
---
"She has nowhere else to go," Riven said.
"That is not my problem," Dane said.
"The soldiers who were chasing her have the Alpha King's crest," Riven said. "They are clearing hybrids out of every village in the inner lands."
Dane was quiet for a second.
"How many soldiers?" he asked.
"Enough that they were not worried about being seen," Riven said.
---
Dane looked at me again. Different this time. Still not warm. But something had shifted slightly.
"The Alpha King is moving faster than we expected," Soren said quietly. He had appeared beside the fire without me noticing. He did that. Moved without sound.
"He knows the conscription order will push people out of the villages," Dane said. "He is using it to clean out the ones he does not want before they can scatter."
---
"Hybrids," I said.
"And anyone else who does not fit his idea of a pure territory," Soren said.
I wrapped my hands around the cup someone had put in them. Hot water with something bitter dissolved in it. I did not care what it was.
"So it is not just me," I said. "There are others being pushed out right now."
"Many others," Riven said.
---
I thought about that.
People like me. No pack. No protection. Being pushed off their land with nowhere to go.
Some of them would make it to the forest. Most probably would not.
The anger that I always pushed down moved in my chest.
I pushed it down again.
Not yet.
---
"What happens to the ones who cannot run?" I asked.
Nobody answered right away.
That was an answer in itself.
---
"We need to talk about the pendant," Soren said. He sat down across from me with that precise careful way he had. "Properly. With all of us."
"All of us meaning who exactly?" I asked.
"The four people currently standing around this fire," Riven said.
I looked around.
Riven. Soren. Dane. Me.
"Alright," I said. "Talk."
---
Soren leaned forward.
"Three hundred years ago there was a ruler who held all the territories together," he said. "Not a pure blood wolf. Not a pure blood elf or human. A hybrid. Born of all bloodlines."
"The Hybrid Queen," I said.
"The first one yes," he said. "She held the peace for forty years. Under her rule hybrids were not slaves or outcasts. They were citizens. Protected."
---
"What happened to her?" I asked.
"The pure blood factions united against her," he said. "It took all of them together to bring her down. And when she fell they destroyed every record they could find of her reign."
"But not all of them," I said.
"Not all of them," he agreed. "And not the bloodline."
---
He nodded at my pocket.
"The pendant was a seal," he said. "Proof of the bloodline. It was hidden and passed down through the hybrid line waiting for the right time."
"And the right person," Riven said. He was looking at me.
I did not look away.
"You think I am that person," I said.
"The pendant chose you," Soren said simply. "It does not do that for everyone."
---
"What does that mean it chose me?" I said. "It is a piece of metal."
"Put it in Dane's hand," Soren said.
I looked at Dane. He looked deeply unimpressed by this suggestion but held out his hand anyway.
I put the pendant in his palm.
Nothing. He turned it over once. Handed it back.
---
"Now hold it yourself," Soren said.
I closed my fingers around it.
That feeling again. Immediate. Like something pressing back against my palm from the inside of the metal.
Dane's eyes dropped to my hand. His expression shifted slightly.
"You felt that," he said. It was not a question.
"Yes," I said.
---
He was quiet for a moment.
"I have been in this camp for two years waiting for something worth fighting for," he said.
He looked at me steadily.
"I am still not convinced you are it," he said. "But I am not telling you to leave either."
---
Coming from Dane I had a feeling that was practically a warm welcome.
"Thank you," I said.
He grunted and looked away.
---
"There is something else," Riven said.
I looked at him.
"The pendant activates the bloodline," he said. "But the bloodline needs to develop. What you are right now is the beginning of what you could become."
"What does that mean practically?" I asked.
"It means your hybrid abilities are going to start waking up," Soren said. "Abilities you probably did not know you had."
---
I thought about the feeling under my skin. The thing that had been sleeping.
"When?" I asked.
"Soon," Soren said. "We do not know exactly. Everyone is different."
"And when they do wake up?" I asked.
"They will be stronger than anything a pure blood can do," Riven said. "Because you carry more than one bloodline."
---
I sat with that for a moment.
My whole life my mixed blood had been the reason for everything bad. The reason I had no pack. No home. No place in the world.
And now these three men were sitting across a fire telling me it was actually my greatest strength.
It was a lot to take in before the sun was fully up.
---
"What do you need from me?" I asked. "Right now. Practically."
"Stay," Riven said. "Train. Let the bloodline develop."
"And then?" I asked.
"And then," Soren said. "We take back what was taken three hundred years ago."
---
I looked at each of them.
Riven with his calm steady eyes. Soren turning his blade over in his fingers. Dane staring into the fire like he was already planning a war.
Three men in a rogue camp in the middle of nowhere.
This was my army.
---
It was not much.
But three days ago I had nothing at all.
"Alright," I said.
"Alright?" Riven said.
"I will stay," I said. "I will train. But I want to understand everything. No keeping information back because you think I cannot handle it."
---
Riven looked at Soren.
Soren looked at Dane.
Dane shrugged like it was not his problem.
"Agreed," Riven said.
---
I nodded and took a long sip of the bitter hot water in my cup.
Somewhere in the camp someone was starting to move equipment around. The sound of the forest waking up around us. Birds. Wind.
Normal sounds for a completely abnormal situation.
---
Then Dane said something that made all three of us look at him.
"There is a scout on the south ridge," he said quietly. "Has been there since first light."
Nobody moved.
"One of the Alpha King's?" Riven asked.
"No," Dane said. His jaw was tight.
"Then whose?" I asked.
---
He looked at me.
"That is what worries me," he said.