Chapter 13: Chapter 12 - Too Far

I slept in the mirrored camp that night, or tried to. The fire popped where it now belonged on the wrong side of the clearing, smoke drifting the opposite way, as though even the wind had been turned backward.

I lay on my bedroll, staring up at the crooked sprawl of stars through the roof of pine. My own shelter leaned over me, familiar and yet entirely wrong, every angle reversed. The tower of wood loomed absurdly precise against the shadows, waiting like some silent judge.

Why?

The word rattled in me like a loose stone in a jar. Why move the wood? Why flip the camp? What meaning lay behind such careful nonsense?

I poured over every scrap of knowledge I’d ever gathered. Years of stolen hours spent poring through soldier’s tales, market whispers, kitchen gossip, old scraps of parchment tucked away in the king’s study—anything that mentioned the Fenrathi. Their hunts, their rituals, their wars, their strange cruelties, their savage grace. I had memorized so much of it, desperate to impress my father, desperate to know my enemy.

And not a single thing—not one line, one tale, one remembered warning—hinted at this.

No song of mirrored camps. No rite of wood stacked like temples. Nothing.

The more I thought on it, the worse it became. The circles my mind ran made my head ache, spinning tighter with every turn. Each path led back to the same maddening truth: there was no reason. It was absurd. Utterly bizarre.

And still I could not stop turning it over, as if some answer might crack loose if I only thought long enough.

The wood. The mirror. The silence.

I pulled the blanket tighter and pressed my lips against my arm to keep from muttering aloud to the night.

Sleep would not come easy.

The sun was low when I returned, bow heavy in my hand, a squirrel strung at my belt for supper. The day had been long, the forest stingy, and I wanted nothing more than water on my tongue and fire on my face.

I reached for the water bucket where I kept it by the shelter wall, covered with a hide to keep out pine needles and ash.

I lifted the hide.

And stared.

The bucket seethed with life.

Frogs. Toads. Slick backs and webbed toes, throats pulsing, eyes bulbous in the firelight. Packed in so tightly they shifted and croaked against one another, a whole writhing mass of wet, living prank.

My jaw went slack. For a long breath I simply looked, unable to take it in. There were so many. Dozens. More. He must have spent the entire day hunting them, combing every marsh and stream he knew, just to drown my bucket in croaking, blinking chaos.

The sheer effort of it was… impressive. Ridiculous.

At last, a sound cracked from me—not a scream, not the squeal he must have hoped for, but a sharp snort of laughter I couldn’t quite hold back.

I dropped the hide back over the bucket, shook my head, and said nothing more.

Boys. Classic.

It was the sort of prank lads at court used to play on the maids, or even on me, once, when I was small enough to care. I had seen this game before. Slimy, childish, meant to provoke squeals and flailing arms. Only now it came dressed in Fenrathi patience and scale.

He must have worked himself ragged. All those toads, one after another, hunted down and hauled back, just for me.

Why?

I almost laughed again, but the sound stuck. My mind twisted instead toward him in that clearing—the blood, the grin, the way he had torn his own ear like it meant nothing, like the world itself should be impressed.

Was this the same? Peacock feathers spread, chest puffed wide, showing me the effort, the ridiculous lengths?

Or was he angry at my silence? At the way I had stood before his woodpile and mirrored camp and said nothing at all?

I looked at the bucket one last time, at the mass of croaking life he had left as offering or mockery, and turned away.

Later, when the fire had burned low and I curled in my shelter with the blanket pulled tight, the frogs still croaked from the bucket outside, a chorus of mockery that would not hush.

I pressed my face into the wool and tried to smother the heat rising in my cheeks. It was ridiculous. Absurd. Childish. And yet…

I was impressed. Very much so.

The thought of him—hours bent over streams and marshes, hands catching and stuffing toads one after another, just to make me gape when I lifted the hide—made my stomach twist in ways I did not want to name. It felt… boyish. Teasing. Like the court lads who had dangled mice by their tails to win squeals from the chambermaids. Only this time it was not some fumbling boy. It was him. A Fenrathi male, a magnificent predator who had torn his own flesh for nothing more than display.

Was he teasing me?

Or was he angry still, furious at my silence in the clearing? He had likely expected me to fawn like a girl ought, to giggle and gasp at his blood-slicked bravado. Because surely he was something—towering, terrifying, impossible to ignore. Any other girl might have swooned or screamed.

But not me. I had been too terrified to be impressed. Too stricken to give him what he wanted.

Too bad for him.

And yet—if I had not been so scared out of my mind—if I had been anyone else—I might have…

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

No. Don’t think on it.

I pulled the blanket tighter, burying my face in the dark, refusing the heat that flushed my skin. The frogs croaked on, a reminder that he was out there, still watching, still waiting.

And I—idiot that I was—was almost blushing.

________________________

Brannok crouched on the ridge, chin propped against his knuckles, watching the human girl approach her camp. The bucket waited where he’d left it, full to the brim with his prize. Hours he had spent—hours—stalking streams, overturning stones, lunging barehanded through muck to catch every toad, every frog, every slick little thing that jumped at the edge of his claws. He had carried them one by one, patient as death itself, until the bucket heaved with their squirming.

He had imagined her shriek when she lifted the hide. The squeal. The flailing arms. Maybe even the curse spat into the trees. That was what it deserved. That was what he deserved.

Instead—

A snort.

Sharp, short, dismissive. A sound like swatting a fly. Then she turned her back and carried on as if his day’s labor meant nothing at all.

His jaw tightened. His teeth ground until his temples throbbed. He had given her something worthy of rage or laughter, something that should have cracked her silence wide open, and all she had given him was a puff of air through her nose.

Hours. For a snort.

A growl clawed up his throat, and he pressed it down hard, pressing his palms to the stone until his claws gouged it deep. No. No more games.

If she would not squeal, he would find what she could not dismiss.

His gaze cut to the clearing, to the hide stretched taut across its frame. Her prize. Her pride. Days of work scraped into it, nights bent over it with knife and salt and sore hands.

Yes. That would make her scream. That would split her silence at last.

The thought of it almost made him hesitate—almost. It was mean, cruel in a way he had not yet stooped to. But she had left him no choice. If she would not give him voice, then he would rip it out of her throat.

He rose in a fluid crouch, a low rumble curling in his chest. Tonight, she would not meet him with silence. Tonight, she would scream, and he would finally speak to her.

___________________

By dawn the frogs had stilled. I crept out with stiff shoulders, wary and sleepless, braced for the next absurdity. The camp lay quiet, the mirrored order of it unchanged, bucket silent now but damp with frog-stink.

I almost dared to hope.

Then I saw it.

The hide.

My rabbit skins, stretched and pinned with care across the rack, were ruined—dark with the stench of urine, sodden and slick where they should have dried tight. I staggered a step closer, disbelieving, but the sour musk rose sharp enough to make my eyes water.

He had pissed on them.

Like a beast marking a tree.

Anger surged hot through me, strangling the breath from my chest. This was no boy’s prank, no ridiculous bucket of frogs. This was deliberate. This was mean. Hours of my work destroyed in a single contemptuous stream.

My fists curled, nails biting my palms.

So he was angry. Angry at my silence. Angry that I had not given him the awe or fear he wanted. Angry enough to ruin what little I had built.

For a long moment I could only stand there, staring at the wreckage, heat and fury beating at my ribs.

And beneath it—something sharper. Not fear, not even confusion, but the sharp sting of knowing he had singled me out. Not prey. Not forgotten. Chosen.

I stood stiff in the clearing, fists clenched, fury burning my throat raw. The hides dripped ruin, the sharp stench curling in the morning air like mockery. He had done this. He had ruined what I worked for with nothing but contempt and a lifted leg.

I wanted to scream. To curse the trees. To demand why.

But the thought stuck, and another rose in its place.

An old account, buried in the back of my memory. A fragment from some yellowed parchment I had once stolen from my father’s study, written by a soldier who claimed to have seen Fenrathi in the days before the wars, when humans and wolves were still uneasy neighbors.

A male circling a female. Silent. Teasing. Nipping, snarling, smiling sharp, until at last she broke and spoke—to him, at him, it did not matter—and then he answered as though the sound of her voice had loosened his tongue.

A ritual of courtship. Feral and completely Fenrathi.

The memory pulsed in me like a second heartbeat.

Was that what this was? Was he waiting for me to speak? For me to throw my voice into the clearing, to snap or curse, to give him that crack, that opening?

My jaw ached from holding it tight.

I turned from the hides, lips pressed shut, refusing the urge. If this was a game, it would not be played on his terms.

He had circled me, teased me, baited me, ruined me—and still I would not speak.

But oh, how badly I wanted to.

The hides sagged, dripping ruin, and I stood fury choking my throat. He had spoiled them on purpose, and he was watching—of course he was. He had probably been watching this entire time, every prank, every silent test, crouched in the shadows like some smug wolf waiting for me to crack.

Fine. Let him watch.

I lifted my hands. Not one, but both.

Two fists clenched, two middle fingers stabbing the air.

I turned in a slow circle, arms high, daring him to miss it, daring him to ignore the message blazing from my hands. I said nothing. My silence held—but my answer was plain.

----------------------------------------

On the ridge, Brannok’s breath caught sharp, rage ripping through him so fast he nearly tumbled forward. Both hands. Both.

The girl had raised not one insolent finger but two, stabbing the sky, mocking him, mocking him. His chest heaved, teeth bared in a snarl that split his face, claws tearing at the stone until blood welled beneath his nails.

She had dared twice over.

The insult coiled hot in his gut, a humiliation so sharp he almost shifted then and there, almost crashed through the trees to tear the smirk from her silent face.

Instead he crouched trembling, eyes blazing, tail lashing in his mind.

She would pay for this. Oh, she would.

And next time, her silence would not save her.

_________________________________

I stripped the ruined hides from the rack and flung them aside. The stench clung to my hands, to the clearing, to me, but I did not gag or cry out. I would not give him that.

Anger burned hotter than the fire at my back. If this was his game, if this was goading, then he would lose. I had been teased and mocked and beaten down all my life—made the butt of jokes, the unwanted daughter, the bastard whispered about in shadows. They had tried to shame me into silence, into obedience, into despair.

But I had not broken then.

And I would be damned if I would break now.

Not for a sulking Fenrathi, no matter how sharp his teeth, how broad his shoulders, how he strutted and peacocked like an apex male sure the world should tremble at his tread. He might loom over me like a storm. He might wreck and ruin every scrap of work I built. But he would not make me speak.

If he wanted my voice, he could starve on the silence.

I lifted my chin into the night, jaw set, breath burning, and vowed: he would not have it. Not a word. Not ever.