Bones snapped like dry pine beneath an axe. The beast’s black fur surged inward, muscles sliding beneath tearing hide in a grotesque, fluid blur. Iron armor straps snapped from the sheer bulk of his frame. Within two pulses, the monster vanished, replaced by a towering man who had to duck to avoid cracking his skull on the clinic’s low cedar rafters. He was built like a siege wall, scarred from clavicle to hip, drenched in drying gore—and completely naked. The lead Vanguard soldier, spear still poised to thrust, stumbled backward onto his heels. "Lord—Lord Bozan?!" The warlord didn't look at his men. His gaze whipped down to Neyza, his ears flushing a furious, dark crimson against his tan skin. He clamped both hands over his groin in a sudden, mortified panic, his towering shoulders hunching in on themselves until he looked like an oversized boy caught stealing plums from an orchard. "Turn around!" Bozan barked at his elite retinue, his voice cracking slightly before settling into a guttural boom. "Turn your miserable faces to the wall, all of you!" Fourteen armored vanguards spun on their heels instantly, facing the broken plaster with rigid discipline. Bozan looked at Neyza through thick, lowered lashes, his cheeks burning hotter than an iron forge. "I... I apologize. Highly improper. Unforgivable. You just... you finished the knot, and the bone-fever broke, and the skin couldn't hold the pelt any longer." He reached out with one massive, calloused hand, stopped two inches from her shoulder, hovered awkwardly, and snatched it back. "Are you hurt? Did their shouting distress you?" Neyza stared at the mammoth warrior, her bone needle still clamped in her hand. The adrenaline that had kept her upright began to drain, leaving behind the dull ache of a sleepless night and thirty yards of hemp suture. Chulpan hissed from atop the herb press, his single forepaw digging into the dried marigold bundles, three legs coiled to spring if the naked giant made a wrong twitch. "Distress me?" Neyza rasped, wiping a speck of wolf blood from her nose. "You crushed two of my best apothecary benches. You shattered the eastern window. And your men nearly ran a spear through my wash basin." Bozan’s gaze tracked the splinters on the floor. His broad chest heaved, shame tightening the corners of his mouth. Then his head snapped toward the squad facing the wall. "Jorath," Bozan said. The tone dropped twenty degrees. It wasn't the voice of the clumsy giant; it was the voice that had broken the siege lines at the Black Fissure. The lead lieutenant stiffened against the wall. "Sire!" "You brought unsheathed steel into a healer’s sanctum. You called her filth." Bozan reached sideways, ripped a heavy wool blanket off an examination cot, and tied it swiftly around his thick waist. "Strip your iron." Jorath hesitated. "Lord, the protocol—" "Strip it." Bozan took three steps. The floorboards screamed under his bare feet. He seized the back of Jorath’s reinforced collar and dragged him across the flagstones, dumping the armored lieutenant directly in front of the bucket of sudsy lye water. "Pockets. Empty them. Every brass bit, silver crescent, and sun-coin. Now." Jorath, pale as skimmed milk, unbuckled his baldric with unsteady thumbs. Leather purses hit the floor with dull thuds. The other thirteen soldiers, taking the cue, frantically began digging into their pouches, shedding gold marks, copper slugs, and military scrip until a small pile of coin sat beside Neyza’s wooden bucket. "Take the brushes," Bozan ordered, looming over the entire squad like an impending landslide. "Scrub the blood out of the pine grain. If I find a single drop of my gore on her planks when the sun clears the crags, I will have you stationed on northern perimeter duty without cloaks." Elite warriors of the high terraces dropped to their knees without another word, sleeves rolled up, scrubbing frantically at the gory boards with stiff bristle brushes. Bozan turned back to Neyza, immediately shifting back into an anxious, clumsy posture. His knuckles twitched against the wool blanket. "Will... will that suffice for the broken glass? I can bring timber from the upper garrison. Pine? Cedar? Which do you prefer?" Neyza looked from the mound of gold to the terrifying warlord who looked ready to beg for a biscuit. A knot of exhaustion burned behind her eyes. "Cedar doesn't rot as fast in the fog," she muttered, picking up her shears to snip the trailing thread. Then, it struck. A white-hot spike plunged directly through the center of her ribcage. Neyza dropped her shears. The metal clattered against the floor. She grabbed at her chest, her palms clutching the rough wool of her apron, her breath tearing out in a ragged gasp. It felt as if molten lead had been poured down her throat, searing along her sternum, threading thin, burning tendrils through her veins toward her core. Her knees buckled under the sudden, suffocating heat. Before she touched the floor, two massive arms caught her. Bozan scooped her up against his bare chest with a precision so delicate it seemed impossible for hands that could crush a helmet. He made a low, frantic whine in his throat, a sound completely unsuited to a warlord of thousands. "Neyza—healer—what is it? Did they graze you? Where are you struck?" His skin was boiling against hers, radiating an unnatural, crackling furnace heat that should have repelled her, but the burning in her marrow seemed to pull toward it, latching on with vicious hunger. Neyza gasped, her vision swimming with black spots, the smell of pine smoke and mountain snow drowning her senses. The agony crested, then dulled into a steady, persistent throb right beneath her collarbone, like an ember buried under ash. She shoved weakly against his chest. "I’m... fine. Just tired. Put me down." "You aren't fine," Bozan rumbled, his voice dropping an octave into pure, territorial panic. He didn't set her down; he merely shifted her weight so she rested more comfortably in the crook of his arm, glaring down at her as if she were made of thin glass. "Your pulse is fluttering. Your skin is cold." "I am a human working twelve-hour shifts on dry bread, of course my skin is cold! Let go of me!" Bozan ignored her struggle. He looked over his shoulder at the scrubbing soldiers, his teeth bared in an absolute, unquestionable edict. "Send word to the High Citadel," Bozan barked, the authority in his voice rattling the glass in the remaining window frames. "Cancel the morning muster. Relocate the operational post from the iron ridge down to Ring Six." The lieutenant paused his scrubbing, wide-eyed. "Sire? Command post... here? In the human ward?" "This clinic is now the official field hospital of the Tarnok Vanguard," Bozan declared flatly, turning his gaze back down to Neyza, his eyes wide and protective, entirely oblivious to the absurdity of his proclamation. "She cannot be left unattended. I will oversee her security personally." "You will what?!" Neyza sputtered, finally finding enough leverage to push herself upright on her own two feet, though she had to catch the edge of the medicine counter to keep from swaying. Before Bozan could answer, a collective chorus of guttural whines and heavy footfalls echoed up the stone cobblestones outside. Through the shattered front window, the morning mist parted. Lined up down the narrow alleyway of the human quarter, stretching past the baker’s awning and wrapping around the public fountain, were dozens of massive, battle-scarred wolves. Some carried fractured limbs in crude splints; others had iron arrowheads jutting from their flanks; all of them sat on their haunches in dead silence, staring intently through the open clinic door with glowing, expectant eyes.

The Alpha's Shadow