For the Wolf (The Wilderwood Books Book 1)

Red smacked the stolen horse’s flank, sending it running back toward the village. She doubted he’d make it all the way back to the capital— he was a fine thing, and whoever found him bridle-less and wandering could probably use him more than some drunk lord could.

The forest in her bones had guided her through the city, invisible as any urchin in her bare feet and bloody dress. Pain still splintered through her limbs, but it was manageable, and lessened as she moved northward. The horse she stole from a tavern’s hitching post, his rope carelessly tied. Riding under the deep-blue cover of sky and stars reminded her of sixteen and Neve, and she wept into his mane.

The Wilderwood was different. When she’d left— yesterday, only yesterday— it’d looked like the dead of winter, branches gnarled and bare, leaves gray on the ground. Now glimmers of autumn shone gold and ocher, seasons moving in reverse. In her chest, roots reached, stretching through the gaps in her ribs like she was water and air and sun.

It ached when Red turned toward Valleyda, pulling at the roots as they grew, but she did it anyway. She stood on the slight hill just before the forest’s edge, the crossroads of two homes that were never content to share her.

Her eyes closed, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Maybe if she stood here long enough, right at the edge of her world, Neve might sense her. Maybe Red could will her reasoning into the earth, weave some kind of understanding into the air her twin would eventually breathe.

“I love you.” An echo of the first time she’d disappeared between these same trees. Neve’s promise that day had come true— they’d seen each other again. Red hadn’t made a promise, not out loud, but this felt like it coming true, anyway. Her place had always been the forest.

One more deep breath of outside air, then Red slipped into the Wilderwood.

Trees stretched tall, branches spread in fanfare. The moss made a carpet for her bare feet. The sentinels speared up from the ground, tall and proud with no trace of rot around their roots.

A trick of the light made it almost look like they bowed.

The forest inside her stung as it grew, as it anchored. Above her, the sky faded from lavender to plum, and Red’s breath hitched in her chest.

The Wilderwood soothed in a voice of rustling leaves. A vine grazed along the ridge of her shoulders in comfort.

“Red?”

Lyra picked through the forest deft as a fawn. “I thought you said three days?” There was something stricken in her voice, her manner.

“I got homesick,” Red whispered.

Golden leaves crunched beneath Lyra’s feet as she approached, brows drawn into a question she already knew the answer to. Tentatively, she laid her hand on Red’s arm. Static rent the air, a sharp crackle like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm, and Lyra hissed as she pulled her hand back, dark eyes wide.

“Oh,” she breathed, understanding distilled into one syllable. Red’s knees felt weak. “I figured it out.”

Everything chased her, everything catching up. Adrenaline spiked in her middle, memories of Arick and twisted sentinels, Kiri’s knife, Solmir’s face. And Neve, Neve beyond her saving. Spots swam in her vision. “Where’s Eammon?”

Lyra’s face was unreadable. “Waiting for you.” She eyed Red’s hands, one sliced and bloody, the other clearly broken. “Those need to be seen to. Come on.”

Red followed Lyra silently through the trees. It made a path for her, the Wilderwood, retracting roots and thorns. A fall of leaves fluttered to the ground.

One lighted in Lyra’s curls. She plucked it out, turned it over in her hands. “Kings,” she murmured, something awed in her voice. “It wasn’t like this before. Even with . . . with the others.”

“The others didn’t have a choice.” Red reached out with her cut hand and touched the bark of a sentinel as she passed. It was warm beneath her palm, soothing on the slices. “I did. Eammon made sure I did.”

Lyra nodded. She opened her hand. The leaf fluttered to the ground.

When they reached the gate, he was waiting. He opened it before they reached the iron, running across the forest floor, eyes wide and mouth set and arms warm as they wrapped around her, tight enough to pick her up off the ground.

Eammon’s fingers shook as he pushed her hair away from her face, traced her jaw. Red rested her forehead against his chest. Warmth bloomed, the forest in him welcoming the forest in her, a missing piece fitted into place.

“What did you do, Red?” Horror laced Eammon’s voice, and when she looked into his eyes, it lived there, too. He pressed his forehead against hers, swallowing hard. “What did you do?”

Fife brought food and wine, but didn’t linger, movements small and eyes unreadable. His voice met Lyra’s when he climbed back down the stairs, murmuring low and indistinct.

Eammon sat at the foot of the bed, features shadowed by the blazing fire behind them. Red’s hands rested gingerly on her knees, one sliced and scabbed, the other broken. After taking the roots, the pain of them had been nearly forgotten, but now it was a struggle to keep her breathing even.

“They hurt you.” Eammon looked at her injuries like he was cataloging each one, debts requiring restitution.

The forest in her chest rustled. “I’m here now. I’ll be fine.”

“You aren’t fine.” His eyes stayed on her hand, like he could intimidate it into healing, but the vehemence in his voice made it clear he was talking about more than broken bones and dagger cuts.

She touched his wrist, leaving a smear of her blood. “Eammon, I—”

His fingers closed over hers, cutting her off. She tried to pull away, knowing his intention, but warmth and golden light flared before she could. Eammon growled through gritted teeth as cuts opened on one hand, but he didn’t pause, reaching for the other. A pop, and her bones righted even as his broke over them, the shift sharp against her skin.

Red flinched. She looked at Eammon expecting changes, new height or the whites of his eyes completely taken by green. But other than a faint blush of emerald along Eammon’s veins, nothing happened. The bark braceleting his wrists remained, and the green-threaded veins around amber irises, but the Wilderwood wrought no more changes in him.

She’d taken half the roots, rebalanced the scales. Made him closer to man than forest.

His eyes widened, locked on hers. Then they closed, his jaw tightening against the pain he’d taken.

“Self-martyring bastard,” she whispered.

A low grunt was his only reply. Eammon went to the desk with its scattered paper, rummaging for a bandage with his bleeding hand. When he found one, he turned his attention to his broken fingers. Red turned her head and closed her eyes, not wanting to see him set the bones. Another low, strained growl, another pop that made her wince.

When she looked back, both his hands were wrapped. He spoke to them rather than her. “You shouldn’t have done this. Without the roots, the Wilderwood would’ve let you go.”

“And it would’ve taken you.” The image of him half subsumed in forest was as easy to recall as a recent nightmare. “It needs two, Eammon. You can’t carry it all alone, not forever. I couldn’t leave you to—”

“You should’ve left me to rot.” Eammon did look up then, eyes fierce. “You know what happens.” His voice was hoarse, the last word barely sound. He turned away on it, like he didn’t want her to see him break.

“It won’t happen this time.” She knew it, knew it as sure as she knew the shape of his mouth. “This time it’s different. I chose to take them, knowing the consequences.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.” Gently, she stood from the bed, crossing the room to stand behind him. They didn’t touch, and he didn’t turn, but every line of him attuned to every line of her. “Eammon, I took the roots because I lo—”

“Don’t.” A whisper, low and rough. “Don’t.”

Her lips pressed together, closing the confession behind them.

They stood silent. Eammon’s jaw trembled with the effort of keeping it clenched. Finally, he pushed back his hair with his bandaged fingers. “Tell me what happened.”

It sent everything careening back, all the emotion she’d cried out as she rode here on a stolen horse. Red’s breath shook, a tremor that started in her voice and traveled down her hands. “They have Neve. They have my sister, and now I can’t get to her, and I chose it and I wanted it but shit they have her, and I—”

“Shhh.” His bandaged palms cradled her face, all the ways he held himself apart coming undone at the sight of her crying. “We’ll figure something out, Red, I promise you. We’ll find a way.”

Slowly, she quieted, under the run of his fingers through her hair and the library scent of him in each breath. She felt the moment he stiffened again, when his touch fell away from her and he took a small step back.

But he kept holding her hand. And that gave her enough stability to take a deep lungful of Wilderwood air, and start from the beginning.

Eammon stayed still and quiet through her story, until she recounted Kiri cutting her. Then his teeth ground hard enough for her to hear it over the flames in the grate.

Her voice faltered when she reached the dungeon. “Can you feel it when a new breach happens?”

Confusion knit his brows. “Used to, back when I’d first become the Wolf. Not anymore.”

“Arick . . . Arick made a breach. More than a breach. He bled on a sentinel, opened the Shadowlands.” A pause. “He bargained with Solmir.”

Silence. Even the fire seemed to deaden its crackle. Eammon’s breath scraped harsh, every muscle tensed, new blood staining the bandage on his hand holding hers.

Haltingly, Red told the story. Arick and his terrible bargain, his blood waking the sentinel branches in the Shrine and pulling them away from the Wilderwood, Solmir taking his place. Eammon barely moved. He didn’t speak. It was more unsettling than if he’d raged.

“He thought I hadn’t taken the roots because I didn’t want them.” Red darted a look at Eammon, unable to stop the angry tightening of her lips. “He thought you’d told me everything.”

The snarl on his face faded to something softer, sadder. “I was afraid if I told you everything, you would take them. You’d try to help me.” He snorted at the floor, eyes hidden behind his unbound hair. “I was right.”

“Of course you were.” He knew her well, her Wolf. “Eammon . . .” She faltered, remembering how he’d reacted when she almost said it before. “I chose this. I chose you.”

“You shouldn’t have.” His voice was a whisper. “I wasn’t strong enough to save them, Red. Even after the Wilderwood had them, I tried to hold the worst of it back, to keep the full weight of it away. It still drained them, every time.” A shuddering breath. “What if I can’t save you?”

“That’s what you don’t understand. I’m saving you.” Tentatively, the hand he wasn’t holding reached up to cup his cheek. “Let me.”

Eammon had held himself tense the whole time she talked, but when she touched his face, all the rigidity faded. His mouth parted, his amber eyes glowed. “Kings.” He cursed like one might call for mercy, and his eyes closed as her thumb brushed his bottom lip. “Kings and shadows, Redarys.”

“You didn’t let me finish, earlier, and this feels important to say.” Her fingers hooked on his jaw, fierce in their gripping. She said it almost stern, almost like a challenge, daring him to contradict her again. “I love you, Eammon.”

He shuddered an exhale.

“I’d like to kiss you,” she breathed, “but not until I know how you feel about what I just said.”

His laugh was sweeter for being unexpected, though quiet and rueful. One of his hands wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer; the other came up to card through her hair. “Of course I love you.” There was fire in his touch, fire in his eyes as they burned into hers. “That’s why I’m so afraid.”

“We can be afraid tomorrow,” Red murmured.

And then his mouth was on hers, warm and sweet and tasting of honey, and there was no fear in his hands on her skin, no fear in the feel of his lip between her teeth. His hands cupped her jaw like this was something to protect, something holy, and his tongue pushed at hers before his mouth went to her throat, covering the rapid rhythm of her pulse. She gasped, low and ragged, and they were on the floor, hands fumbling with laces until nothing stood between. He stared at her a moment then, lying on the wooden floor of the tower room with her hair loose and tangled, the ring of her Bargainer’s Mark stark against her bared, flushed skin.

The Mark was larger, now, like a representation of the forest blooming in her bones. The ring of root just below her elbow sent tendrils curling away in both directions, reaching from the middle of her forearm to the curve of her shoulder, patterning her skin like lace.

Eammon ran his fingers over it, barely a touch, eyes wide and wondering as they drank her in. “Shadows damn me, you’re beautiful,” he muttered, then he kissed the Mark, lips brushing the sensitive crook of her arm, tracing up to her collarbone.

She tried to arch up and bring him back to her lips, but Eammon’s hand found her other shoulder, pushed her gently back to the floor. “Don’t. I’ve wanted this too long to rush it.”

“Is that an order?”

One brow arched over a burning amber eye. “Would you like it if it was?”

“Yes.”

He laughed, the warmth of it drifting over her skin. “Good to know.” Kisses on her shoulders, her sternum, the curve of her breast, back up to her throat, leaving her breathing shallow and her pulse ragged.

“I wanted it,” she murmured against his lips when he reached her mouth again. “The roots, the Mark, I wanted it all.”

“I believe you.” Another deep kiss, one that made her writhe. A wicked grin. “But I’ll let you prove it.”

Red drew a hand over the jut of his hip, tugging him toward her, lips curved just as wicked as his voice had been. He made a low sound, fingers tangling in her hair, tipping up her chin. Teeth caught her neck, something that should have hurt but didn’t, pulling a moan from her throat and making her hips sway toward him as his mouth went lower. He grinned against her skin as his palms skated over her, his knee between her legs, her back arching off the floor in a wordless plea for more. More of this, more of what they’d been running from for so long now. She wanted to feel every single scar he carried and know them by heart.

Eammon paused, firelight shadowing the dips and hollows of his chest, arm cradling her head. Red squirmed toward his warmth, trying to touch as many surfaces of him as possible.

His thumb traced a light half-moon over her temple. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” Her fingertip traced his swollen lip, and he shuddered. “Always am, with you.”

He surged over her, a tide that swept them both away. The roots of the Wilderwood pulsed, growing deeper, twining together like the Wolves on the floor.