“You have to make them believe.”
“The Pack Leader is never wrong,” Mirian muttered wearily.
“You’re ready to leave.”
She glanced down at her portmanteau, a little impressed the mirror-link had depth of focus enough to show it. The blue Air-mage flecks in Lorela’s eyes hadn’t changed and her sister had never been more than fourth level, merely maintaining the link was already at the edge of her abilities.
“Miri…”
“Traiton fell.” Mirian drew a line through the spilled powder on the dressing table. “Pyrahn fell. My mage-craft may be too diffuse to be viable…” The opinion of her kinder professors; the less kind accused her of being lazy, stubborn, and superficial. Occasionally all at once. “…but no one ever said I was stupid. We’re only seventeen miles from the border and refugees have been arriving for weeks.” Bercarit’s hotels were full of people from both Duchies with money enough to pack up and escape the advancing Imperial army, and the streets were filling with people who’d left without anything more than a desire to survive. “Mother says the refugees are proof positive the border will hold.” Mirian thought they proved only that Pyrahn had fallen. “But it’s not just the refugees,” she continued through gritted teeth. “The Hunt Pack is on the border and the Pack leadership has come to Bercarit in case defending the border requires their personal touch. Mother and Father couldn’t possibly miss this chance to present me at the opera like a dressed side of beef!”
With four and a half years and a dead brother between them, Lorela had carried the weight of their parents’ expectations until her marriage to a young man she’d met at school had taken her out of the social advancement game. It would never occur to her to say Mother and Father just want what’s best for you. Their father wanted the Pack’s business at his bank. Their mother wanted to be invited to all the best parties. The only way that would happen was if their remaining daughter married into the Pack.
“They think because my mage-craft was strong enough to get me into the university, it’s strong enough to attract a member of the Pack.”
“Have you told them you won’t be going back?”
Mirian frowned, and bent to grope among the folds of a sprigged muslin day dress.
“Miri?”
What she thought might be the pearl earrings turned out to be the two polished bone buttons that closed the top of the bodice.
“Miri!”
“No!” She straightened so abruptly that Lorela’s image flickered. Drawing in a deep breath, Mirian forced herself to concentrate. Forced herself to calm enough to anchor her end of the link. “No,” she repeated quietly, “I haven’t told them. It seemed a little pointless what with Emperor Leopald suddenly deciding this year would be all about conquest. Besides, you know how Mother thinks. I was tested, I was accepted, I was schooled. I can, therefore, attract a member of the Pack.”
“Well, you won’t,” Lorela said bluntly. “Not with only first levels. So, it’s the opera and parental disappointment tonight. What about tomorrow?”
Mirian kicked the portmanteau shut. Tomorrow she’d try again to get her parents to leave the city, to head to Trouge, higher up in the mountains where the land itself would give the Imperial army pause. Of course, as long as the Pack leadership remained in Bercarit, the odds were high her parents wouldn’t be moved and she’d be expected to smile and dance and pretend that disaster wasn’t on the doorstep. “Tomorrow,” she sighed, “never comes.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll take Jaspyr and Sirlin down to the border and have a sniff around.” Shifting the brass candlestick that held a curling corner in place, Ryder Hagen stared down at the map spread out over the sitting room table.
Danika sighed, set down the book she’d been trying to read, and stood, shaking out her skirt. Ryder had spent the afternoon studying the map, pacing, studying the map, arguing with his cousins, studying the map, changing, and pacing some more. Although her husband weighed the same in both fur and skin, an agitated wolf took up considerably more space and the room, even emptied of half of its owner’s overly fussy furniture, was not large.
“The Hunt Pack will have closed with the Imperials this afternoon,” he continued. “There should be news by morning. Tomorrow…”
“Tonight,” Danika interrupted, wrapping both hands around Ryder’s arm and tugging him around to face her, “we are invited out to dinner before the opera and a reception after. You’ll be expected to be in clothing.”
“My greatcoat…”
“That’s a field uniform and you know it.” She allowed him to pull her close, her hands sliding up and around his neck. “Tonight requires trousers…” She kissed him before he could protest, then continued kissing him after each piece of required clothing. “…and shoes and a shirt and a jacket and a cravat.”
Dark brows drew in. “If I have to change…”
“There should be no reason for you to change at either dinner or the opera, but if there is, I know for a fact you can get out of your clothing in…Ryder!”
“As I’m already out of my clothing, it seems a pity to waste this opportunity.” His grin, twisted by the scar he’d gained in the fight that made him Pack Leader, was distinctly wolfish as he carried her over to the settee.
Danika thought about protesting the time or the place but, as Ryder’s callused fingers began unbuttoning her bodice, she chose not to. She needed to begin dressing for their evening’s engagements and the unlocked sitting room door meant any of the Pack members in Bercarit with them could walk in, but in a very few months she’d be in no condition for semi-public lovemaking on an extremely uncomfortable piece of furniture, so she might as well enjoy it while she could.
As though he were reading her mind about the furniture, Ryder flipped them so she straddled his lap.
“Better?” he asked nuzzling her throat.
She buried her fingers in the thick, dark mass of his hair and tugged. “Much. Now get on with…Oh!”
After, lying on the wool carpet, not entirely certain how they got there, Danika turned her face into Ryder’s shoulder and murmured, “Why now?”
She felt as much as heard him laugh, a rumble deep in his chest. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, love.”
“The empire. There’s been peace for four years, why did the emperor suddenly toss out the Treaty of Frace and decide to attack Traiton?”
“Why does that shit Leopald decide to do anything? Ego. He hates there’s still free people not kissing his ass.”
“It’s just…” She laid her hand on his where it cupped her belly, warm against her cooling skin.
“I know.”
They’d been married for almost seven years. Danika had begun to fear that she would never be able to bear a child of the Pack when Jesine—the Pack’s strongest Healer-mage and married to Ryder’s cousin Sirlin—had told her she’d finally caught. And now, with their first child on the way, the Imperial army was as close as it had ever come.
“Tell me they’ll be stopped in Pyrahn, that they won’t cross into Aydori.”
“They’ll be stopped in Pyrahn.” She felt his mouth against her hair, his lips warm, his breath warmer. “Would you be this close to the border if I thought differently?”
No. She wouldn’t be. As Pack Leader, Ryder’s duty was to Aydori; he could send the Hunt Pack into battle, but he couldn’t cross the border himself. Bercarit was his compromise. It would, after all, be the first city attacked should the unthinkable happen. He’d asked her to accompany him as much for politics as a dislike of being apart. Clearly, in spite of the Pack Leader’s presence, there could be no real danger or the Pack Leader’s wife and unborn child would be safe behind stone walls, high in the mountains in Trouge, the ancient Aydori capital. And she’d much, much rather be here, even considering the drift of dark hair she could see under the settee. If Ryder had shed that much since the housemaid had last swept the room, he wasn’t as sure as he sounded.