Page 7 of The Fox Heir

“To bring you the answers.”

My voice rises in fury, and I don’t care who can hear me. “Which you could’ve told me without tricking me into crossing the entire country! Instead, you used me to get to the border.”

Tristan stands his ground, but there's something telling in the way his fingers twitch, as if they want to reach for me. He just shakes his head. “No, not lies. I never lied to you, Red.”

“You weren’t honest with me either.” The words come out like a blade, sharp and cutting.

“It was for your own good.”

I take a step closer, close enough that the heat of him prickles against my skin. “Do you really expect me to thank you for ruining my life?”

“It was to save you from your father.”

I laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. “Save me?! Look around, Tristan. I’m a Fox in a den of Wolves. This isn’t a rescue. It’s entrapment.”

“I won’t let them hurt you. I need you to trust me on that.”

“Trust you?” My laugh cuts sharp as broken glass. “You’re the last person I should trust.”

I stare at him, wide-eyed. Does he take me for a fool? As if I could ever trust him again after what he’s done. My head begins to throb. The anger is still burning inside me, but it’s being slowly buried in an onslaught of painful betrayal. I don’t want to admit how much I did trust him. And what it’s cost me.

A vision of Hunter, begging me not to follow the Wolf, flickers through my mind. I shove it aside, unwilling to dwell on the colossal mistake I’ve made. I can’t face that guilt. Not yet.

“For once, be honest with me,” I say, exhausted. “Were you looking for me that day in my father’s chamber? Did you think I was the mystical Heir to the North? That if you brought me here, I’d fix everything and save Annwyn?”

There is a moment of absolute silence. I can’t read him, this Wolf with gray eyes. We’ve been traveling together for weeks and still, I don’t understand him.

When Tristan speaks, his voice is steady. “No, Red. You’re not the Heir to the North. That was never a lie.”

“So, what? You brought me here as a political prisoner?”

“You’re not listening.” He growls. He levels his stormy eyes on mine. “Your father is a dangerous man. You know that as well as I do. I was trying to get you away from him. Away from the poisonous Fox Throne, because I knew you …” He pauses, his eyes shifting away.

“Knew what?” I cross my arms. “What could you possibly know about me that I don’t already know?” Frustration builds in my chest. I want to scream. Instead, tears prick at the corners of my eyes.

When Tristan looks at me, his eyes are defiant. “I know that you’re better than he is.” He lifts his chin, like he isn’t sorry about any of it. “That you’re a threat to his power, and he would do anything to get rid of you.”

Something twists in my chest at those words, though I fight to cover it with a scoff. “Better than him? That’s a low bar to clear.” I take a half-step back, but he takes a step forward, refusing to let the distance grow.

My heart rate speeds up at the memory of the pitch-black dungeon my father threw me in. The place of forgetting. Of dying a cold, miserable death in a rat-infested pit no one would find me in. And no one would have, if it hadn’t been for Hunter. A lump forms in my throat, and I turn toward a snow-covered window to hide how utterly destroyed I feel. How helpless and alone I am. It takes me several deep breaths to control the rising tide inside of me.

Tristan doesn’t press me further. He just stands there silently, waiting. When he speaks again, his voice is soft. “I understand what you’re feeling.”

“How could you possibly know how I feel?” My voice cracks.

“I know what it’s like to hurt someone you love.”

It’s the first time he’s acknowledged what I did—leaving Hunter on a fiery battlefield surrounded by corpse beasts. The admission makes me pause.

He steps closer to me, his voice low. “The guilt. The fear that you’re a monster for what you’ve done.” Another step. He’s barely a whisper away now. His words brush against the fallen curls at the nape of my neck. “And I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. That bone-shattering heartache that never fully goes away.”

My heart stumbles in my chest. There’s something in those words, a depth of understanding that goes beyond mere sympathy. For a moment, the space between us fills with the impossible weight of half-spoken secrets.

I turn to face him again, my breath ragged. “You don’t get to stand there and act like you understand anything I’m feeling.”

Something in me wavers when I see the look on his face. It hints at grief, tended for years. I’d never noticed it before, but it’s there in the grim line of his mouth and his quiet stoicism. Before, I’d mistaken him for cool and calculating. But now, I wonder if that’s not the whole truth. If this Wolf has suffered and bears his scars openly.

The absolute certainty of my anger begins to crack, revealing something more complicated beneath.