Page 53 of The Warrior's Captive

As the crowd broke up, Briar May’s brothers and sisters leading the Phaethon men back to the big cabin with them, the rest of them shed their black cloaks and returned them to the wiseman.

The women and the men split into two groups. They’d shift separately in the heart of the woods and spread out as wolves for the hunt.

Finding a deer wasn’t the object. It was just ceremonial and traditional to say they were doing so.

Castor followed Silas and Kieran, Agnar just behind them and watching them all. They stripped in quick silence and each of them let their wolves out. The crunch of bone and the reshaping of bodies was all but drowned out by the screaming wind.

Kieran and Silas were huge white wolves, gleaming almost silver in the swirling snow. They blended in well with the weather, almost like a mystical animal with their ruffling, flowing silver fur and their gleaming honey-gold eyes. Agnar was a rougher looking wolf. A grey with both black and white fur interspersed. He had light blue eyes, more like a husky dog, just like Castor’s. Although they might have similarities, no one could mistake their size and strength for a mere dog. His own fur gleamed a mottled grey, but with more white than his former alpha’s.

They broke away, loping through the woods.

The wind drove the scent of the scoured trees into his nose and the crisp electricity in the air rifled through his thick coat. He wondered if the snow was coming down too thick and the winds too brutal for him to find his mate, but it only took him ten minutes to pick up her scent. If Briar May was an ocean away, he’d be able to find her.

She wasn’t with her mother or with Prairie Rose. She was alone, in the middle of a clearing, waiting for him.

She froze when she saw him, a beautiful, magical silver-white being in her own right. Her hackles stood up and her lips pulled away from her teeth. Her golden eyes circled in on him through the driving snow. She lifted her head and let out a long, mournful howl that sounded like a battle cry and then she charged through the trees at him. It was so very like that first day when she could have run with the twins, but instead she’d let them flee and get to safety, wheeling straight for what she must have thought was her own death.

He ran to her too, huge paws loping through the snow. It was almost up to his belly, but he plowed through like she did. They were running to each other now, not to death, but to life. They crashed together with snarls and yelps of sheer joy.

She leapt on top of him, barreling him over, and he let her. She nipped at his face and his throat, which he let her do too, until he leapt up, unseating her. She ran and he gave chase. The wind drove hard against them, but in the cold, pine-scented air, he’d never felt more freedom. They clashed together, falling in the snow, biting and braying, snarling and wrestling each other down, running and chasing again, until a rough howl far in the distance signaled prey sighted.

It was fitting that the alpha found their kill on his own land. Silas’s boisterous howl and then the softer howls of Lilac and Prairie Rose immediately joined in, one after the other. There was a brief hesitation and then Agnar’s deep, booming howl came from somewhere far ahead.

They stood side by side, covered in snow, breath steaming out in thick white clouds, and lifted their heads together.

They sang their song as one, two cries that lifted into the air and turned into one long wail.

They raced together in the direction of their alpha.

He’d learned that he was more than a blunt force object, a bullet or the gleaming blade of a set of twin axes in the dark He was more than silence and more than strength and suffering. He was more than blood and death. He was also life. He was a mate, a man, a wolf, and a father. He’d done things for his own pack that he’d been asked to do. He was more than those killings. He was more than a killer. He was a man who loved his mate and loved his daughter and who had been adopted into a thriving pack in the heart of a beautiful, unspoiled wilderness.

His mother intended for him to be part of a constellation. Castor and Pollux in the night sky, shining bright. Except, he’d lost his brother and his pack.

Life wasn’t done with him, though. Destiny had marked him out as a ball of fire. That meant more than being a warrior. It meant being a man and a wolf with a flesh and blood heart. He was now living in a different night sky, part of a full and bright constellation of good people and good wolves, shining bright beside his mate.

The End