The big black dog stared at her from no more than a handspan away. Beyond him, Best kept watch by the fire while the others slept.
“Scram.”
The dog cocked his head. One of the soldiers, probably Chard, had removed the rope.
“Go away!”
Tail wagging, he sniffed her vigorously then stretched out, his back against her stomach, his head curled around on his front paws.
“I don’t want you here, you stupid dog!”
“You sleep with beasts,” Best sneered. “Maybe he thinks he’ll get lucky. If you let him fuck you, keep it down.”
Then he turned his back, as though she wasn’t worth his attention.
With the warmth rising up off the younger Lord Hagen, relaxing muscles pummeled first by the river and then by the forced march into Pyrahn, Mirian wondered if, after the war was over, she might have a career as an actress.
Chapter Four
MIRIAN WOKE A SECOND TIME with the younger Lord Hagen’s face so close her eyes nearly crossed trying to focus on him. He had one enormous paw still pressed against her shoulder, so she assumed he’d woken her. Looking past him, she could see Armin sitting by the dying fire, his musket on the ground beside him, and his head down on his crossed arms. She couldn’t tell for certain if his eyes were open or closed, but had to trust that the younger Lord Hagen wouldn’t have risked waking her if it wasn’t safe.
“What?” she whispered when he leaned closer still, a silken ear brushing her cheek. He leaned back with a whuff of warm breath and jerked his head toward the leather thongs tying her hands around the tree. A little surprised he hadn’t already gnawed through the bindings, she frowned and realized that, while the leather itself would cause him no problem, Armin had tied her in such a way that there wasn’t room for the younger Lord Hagen to gain purchase with his teeth.
When he saw he had her attention, he crept silently around until his shoulder brushed up against her fingertips.
He had an itch?
She wiggled her fingers against his fur. He pushed back against her touch. When she pressed against a spot both sticky and damp and he flinched, she remembered Chard telling the captain that the dog had been injured and he could feel something still in the wound. She couldn’t, but with her movement so restricted that wasn’t surprising.
“They’re using silver!” That was the news the younger Lord Hagen had brought his brother at the opera. With a bit of silver shot still in the wound, the younger Lord Hagen wouldn’t be able to change and he needed hands to get her free.
Bracing her bindings against the tree, Mirian pulled herself as quietly as possible up into a sitting position. Well, half sitting, half leaning against the slender trunk. The bark was smooth and cool against her cheek as she rested and wondered how she was to get silver out of a wound in the middle of the night while tied and guarded, however laxly, by enemy soldiers? She didn’t have the mobility to use a knife even if she’d had one, which she didn’t, and besides, Captain Reiter’s observation about using a knife around dark fur on a dark night was a valid one—however little she wanted to grant him the acknowledgment.
Had she been able to reach her fingers down far enough, she might have been able to work the shot out of the wound like a splinter. Poking the younger Lord Hagen to get his attention brought his head around and he frowned, his expression so clearly saying get on with it that he might as well have spoken aloud.
Fine. Get on with it how?
Lower lip between her teeth, Mirian worried out an answer. Jaspyr Hagen had said she smelled amazing, reacting to her in the way Pack reacted to Mage-pack. If Tomas Hagen also thought she smelled amazing—and the odds were high he did as the two younger Pack at the opera had—then he had to think she was more powerful than she was. He therefore expected her to be able to use mage-craft to get the silver out. Fortunately for him, it would take nothing more than first and second level metals. Unfortunately, she had no idea if she had even first level metal-craft and, given that the Metals-master had refused to test her, the odds were very high she didn’t.
But unless she wanted to remain a captive of the empire, she had to try.
Bracing her fingers around the wound, she took a deep breath, tried to remember the one hundred and one ridiculous ways to center herself in her power—ridiculous because they were all essentially the same way—and froze.
The net!
The golden net had prevented the Lady Hagen and the others in the Mage-pack from using their abilities. It had also caused them pain it hadn’t caused her, but perhaps the amount of pain was related to the amount of mage-craft being blocked. Hardly surprising then that she didn’t feel it at all.
She gave the younger Lord Hagen an emphatic poke and when he turned to look at her, lips off his teeth, she dipped her head and whispered, “You have to take the net off me first.”
His eyes narrowed.
“Off my head.”
When he paced away, she thought he still didn’t understand, but he circled the tree and she felt warm breath on the back of her neck. Then a tug at her hair. The tugging grew stronger, moved from tugging to pulling, pulling to yanking, and she clenched her teeth to hold back a yell as what felt like a handful of hair ripped free. Blinking back tears, she nearly dislocated a shoulder twisting around in time to see him shake what looked like gold spiderwebbing from his mouth. Even in limited starlight, it gleamed. It would have been beautiful, but stuck to it was more hair than Mirian was comfortable losing and what looked like a small bird’s nest made up of evergreen needles and gobs of solidified sap.
She’d forgotten about her response to Lady Hagen’s warning. With the mess of her hair keeping the net from contact with her head, she might have been able to use her mage-craft the whole time. It wasn’t until the younger Lord Hagen pushed at her impatiently with a paw that she realized she was shaking with barely suppressed hysterical giggles at the thought of facing down four Imperial soldiers by lighting a candle and then blowing it out again.
Awareness of the incipient hysteria only made it harder to control. In a moment she wouldn’t be able to control it at all and the noise would wake Armin. Awareness of that didn’t seem to help and the small, rational bit of her that remained could only watch ineffectually as their chance to escape seemed lost.
Then the younger Lord Hagen bared his teeth and growled low in his throat. Mirian didn’t so much hear the growl as feel it reverberate through her body at every point they touched and her reaction was so primal it overwhelmed everything else. She froze again, barely breathing, unable to look away from the teeth inches from her face. The terror was instinctive…
And then she remembered.
The people of Aydori are part of the Pack’s protectorate. If they appear to threaten, they do it only to make a point.
The Pack and You had been a popular pamphlet at the university. Late night conversations about actual interaction more popular still.
If Mirian allowed the younger Lord Hagen’s point to stand, allowed him to believe she needed his protection like some kind of wilting heroine in a bad romance novel, it would define their relationship from this moment on. She needed his help, yes, but with that silver in his shoulder, he needed hers in return. Heart pounding, she swallowed, narrowed her eyes, and growled back at him.
He closed his mouth and leaned back to get a better look at her face. Given how little definition black fur and a dark night allowed, he was surprisingly good at looking annoyed; it was all in the line of his tail and the angle of his ears. She took a deep breath and refused to allow the hysteria to rise again. If she wasn’t fine, and she suspected she really wasn’t, she, at least, had herself under control.