Chapter 6: Chapter 5 - Wolf in Sheepskin

The woods had shed their silence.

Snowmelt hissed through black roots, the thaw dripping steady as a drumbeat, feeding streams that ran hard and cold. Buds split the branches, and the forest spoke again—birds shrilling, wings flashing, foxes yipping to their kits in the underbrush. Life pressed in from every side, restless, wild, unashamed.

And still she was here.

He prowled along the ridges, as much a part of the land as stone and tree. His gaze followed the lines of her camp, the trails she walked, the faint press of her scent over damp earth. He remembered what she had been in the first snows—clumsy little human, loud in her breathing, weak in her step. Prey that somehow had not died.

But now—

Her bow no longer sagged in her hands. Arrows flew straight, fletched from the wings she had taken herself. Birds dropped cleanly from the air, and the foolish girl skinned and gutted them without flinching.

Her shelter was no longer a poor heap of sticks and hides. She had lined it with the thick fur of deer, patched it tight against the rain, raised a bed layered deep in rabbit pelts. Her fire-smoke rose steady, not the desperate stinking mess it had once been.

Even her body had shifted.

Thin arms now bore the faint cord of muscle from bowstring and blade. She moved quieter, sharper, her step more sure. Her brown hair, tangled but thick, caught the light in streaks of copper when she bent near the fire. And her eyes—gray, yet touched with a strange flicker of gold—caught him strange sometimes from a distance, sharp as a hawk’s.

Not like his own, not exactly, though close enough to stir a thought he refused.

He shrugged it off, unbothered.

Coincidence. Nothing more.

He huffed through his teeth, a sound like a laugh cut short.

She failed often, the human thing, but she never stayed down. The little fool was still alive.

But the thaw brought more than green to the forest.

With the melt came need. His caches, buried deep before the snow, were thinning. What hides he had salted were spent or given back to the soil. The streams ran too cold yet for fish. He needed tools, grain, salt, iron—things the forest did not give freely, and with his pack days away to the north, the village to the south would have to be enough.

So he left her to it, the little human with her bow and her stubborn breath, the smoke of her fire curling skyward.

She would live another day, whether he watched or not. The woods would hold her safe enough while he was gone.

Safe.

The thought snagged like a burr in his head and he shook it off with a growl under his breath.

Why should it matter to him whether she was safe or not? Human life was brief and brittle, not worth the weight of attention no matter how fleetingly he allowed it to rest on her.

If she managed to cling to her meager life another day, it was her own doing, not his

He turned from the ridge where her smoke curled and went south, shedding the wild with every step.

The forest clung to him at first—pine pitch, loam, the weight of claws in the earth—but slowly, deliberately, he stripped it away.

Shoulders narrowed, spine eased, gait softened from prowl to stride. Jaws that had been made for rending curved into the more civil lines of a man’s face. Predator became human, wolf became man, apex hunter of the forest became Beau.

Brannok—his name in truth—folded beneath a mask of necessity. He let his aura lie quiet in the marrow while Beau wore the skin.

Beau was a game, a joke at men’s expense.

Even the name he chose for himself in this costume was mockery. Handsome.

He was still too tall, too broad across the shoulders, and his gait too long. His hair the deep, impossible red of his bloodline, shined like a beacon atop his head, but he dimmed it in with ash secured in a satchel for this purpose, tied it back, roughened it with dirt until it passed for chestnut.

His eyes—Fenrathi gold—he turned down and lidded, let the shadows blur them into a tame, human brown.

He cloaked himself with the skins of the sheep, predator among the flock. To them, he would be nothing more than a stranger with a smile that promised more than it gave. To himself, he was still wolf, clothed in man’s shape.

The tavern air was thick enough to chew. Smoke, sweat, ale—men shoulder to shoulder, women laughing sharp as knives, dice clattering on the wood.

Brannok had not sat to drink in months, and he tossed a coin to the barkeep. The first mouthful of crude ale scorched down his throat like fire and left him grinning wolfish under Beau’s skin.

He leaned into the room like it belonged to him, broad shoulders filling the firelight, smile crooked, eyes low.

Beau—his mask, his game—was a man who laughed too easily, who played dice too well, who fought for the joy of it and kissed harder than he should.

In truth that was also himself, Brannok.

But beneath the clothes, beneath the grin, Brannok prowled still. His every shift of weight was a predator’s coil, his every glance a cut too sharp to be entirely human.

A woman at the counter glanced over her shoulder towards him, caught his grin, and looked away with cheeks too flushed. Her friend smothered a laugh and leaned to whisper in her ear. He let himself enjoy the attention, offering a wink, and then slid his gaze elsewhere, lazy and deliberate, the way a wolf might circle a herd without choosing its prey.

The clatter of mugs and laughter pulled his ear.

Three men sat in a shadowed corner, their table scarred deep with old knife scores. Trappers and hunters, by the stink of rank pelts still clinging to their coats, by the grease ground into their cuffs, by the stink of old blood they wore like second skin.

One was thick-necked, with a beard matted in clumps, his hands cracked and swollen from years of setting iron jaws. His nails were black with pitch.

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The second was wiry, nose crooked from old breaks, eyes darting too quick, like a fox half-starved and ready to bite.

The third was broad but gone soft in the middle, his coat lined with fur he hadn’t trapped himself in years—living now on stories and other men’s work.

Brannok lingered at the bar, mug steady in his hand, listening.

The thick-necked trapper and the wiry fox-eyed one laughed into their cups, voices raw with drink. They spoke like men used to one another’s company, easy in their boasting. The third sat heavier, softer, a stranger at their table. His coat was finer, less worn by pine and mud, but his boots carried the dust of a long road. He did not drink like the others; he sipped, slow and deliberate, eyes hooded.

Raul, he’d said when pressed for his origin. The capital, the king’s seat, a town swollen with merchants and coin. His tongue was too polished for these parts, his tone less hunting-man, more hired purpose.

“There’s a man there,” the loner went on begrudgingly as though unwilling to part with this information, voice slick with certainty, “wealthy enough to buy out ten taverns like this. She was promised to him. Bastard princess or not, she fled. He wants her back.” He let the words hang, smiling thin. “And the man will pay anything for her safe return.”

The wiry one gave a short bark of laughter, ale spraying. “Anything, eh? Then maybe I did see her. Cloak torn, hair dark, eyes storm-gray. Months back, heading north of the marsh.” He leaned forward, eyes bright with greed. “If she’s still alive, that’s a purse worth chasing. I’ll help ya find her for a cut.”

The thick-necked trapper grunted, thumping his cup down hard enough to spill. “Fenrathi country eats men like us, Tob. No girl’s lasted there, for certain.”

The fox-man, Tob, shrugged but his grin didn’t drop. It should have at the mention of the beast that prowled. Brannok’s lip lifted.

The loner only shrugged, a tight little roll of his shoulders, calm as if discussing the weather. “Fenrathi or no Fenrathi,” he said, “I’ll find the girl Ari if she’s in those woods. Coin like that, a man doesn’t turn away from.”

Brannok’s grin stayed fixed, Beau’s lazy curve of lip, but his jaw worked once, slow, beneath it. The sound of them—her name tossed like bait, her life weighed against coin—rubbed raw at something in him.

He drank, silent, the ale burning down like tinder catching flame. He told himself he was only listening, only learning. Yet the longer they spoke, the more he disliked the shape their voices took when they spoke of her.

Brannok had enough.

He rose, slow as stretching sinew, and the noise of the tavern bent around him. Eyes cut to him and conversation paused as though the sheep scented a wolf among them. He dragged a chair from another table, ignoring the shout that followed, and swung it down at the trappers’ side. The legs scraped long across the floor before he dropped into it with a grin too quick, too bright.

The three men stiffened, mugs half-lifted, eyes flicking toward him. He was too big, shoulders blotting out the firelight, the kind of size that made men measure their knives and decide not to use them.

His smile was easy, though, almost boyish, but the weight of him was not.

“Evening, friends,” he said, voice warm and pitched to set the men at ease. He leaned forward, elbows heavy on the scarred wood, grinning like they were old companions. “You drink loud enough a man can’t help but listen. Thought I’d save you shouting and bring my ears closer.”

The wiry one - Tob - chuckled first, nervy and quick, grateful for any excuse to break the tension. The thick-necked trapper followed with a grunt that passed for a laugh. The loner only watched him, eyes flat above the rim of his cup.

Brannok’s grin widened, teeth white in the firelight. He made his shoulders slouch like a man too comfortable, but every line of him coiled close, like a wolf settled on its haunches. The men knew it, even if they dared not name it. He was working at harmless but they smelled the lie in their blood and sweated through it, desperate to pretend otherwise.

He lifted his mug, tipped it toward them. “You’ve got yourselves a tale worth coin, from the sound of it. A girl.” He let the word hang, playful, mocking at the edges. “Ari? Bastard princess? I’ve an ear for trouble like that. Tell me more.”

His gaze slid to the loner, steady as a hunting stare, though his grin stayed crooked and kind. “You, stranger. You’ve the sound of a man chasing something that isn’t his. What’s she to you? What’s she to the one who sent you?”

The loner shifted first, his cup turning slow against the wood. “She’s a runaway,” he said, voice slick. “Promised to a man who deserves better than the shame she left him with. He wants her back.”

Brannok hummed low in his chest, a sound almost like agreement, almost like a growl. He lifted his mug, but he wasn’t drinking—he was scenting. Lies always carried a sour edge, sharp as iron. This one reeked of it, the loner. The man spoke of duty, but the want of coin clung to him thicker than his perfume of road dust.

“Wants her back, does he?” Brannok tilted his head, playful, like he was in a humoring mood. “Strange, then, that he sends another man to do his asking.” He grinned sharp, eyes flicking to the trappers. “And what of you two? Did you see her, truly?”

Tob barked a laugh, too quick. “Saw her near the marsh, aye. Cloak torn, eyes like stormlight, I said.” His smile was all teeth, but his scent soured with bluff. “Brorry saw her too, on my word.”

Brorry, the thick man shuddered when Brannok’s attention flicked to him.

Brannok leaned closer, grin widening, his shadow falling across the table. “Stormlight,” he repeated, voice soft with amusement. “That’s a word for poets. Not trappers.” He let the silence stretch, long enough for the man to swallow hard, long enough for the lie to curdle in his sweat.

The thick-necked one - Brorry - thumped his cup down, breaking it. “I saw her too, aye. Passed through quick as you like, months ago. She was real enough.” His tone was heavy, his scent more solid—truth, but thin.

Brannok’s grin sharpened. “Ah. So not yesterday. Not last week.” He leaned back, laughter rolling easy, as though the whole talk were a game of dice. “Months back. And yet here you sit, still boasting.”

He drank then, finally, letting them watch the line of his throat, the ease of it, the grin that did not fade. He played at ease yet something beneath it pressed, a weight they could not name.

Tob wiped his palms on his trousers. Brorry shifted on the bench. The loner’s jaw flexed once, twice.

Brannok only smiled, wolf behind the mask, drawing their truths out piece by piece.

Brannok tipped his mug toward the loner, the firelight catching along his grin. “You speak like a man with reason,” he said, voice warm as honey, harmless as a friend leaning close. “But reason’s a dull blade without truth to sharpen it. Why did she flee, I wonder?”

The wiry trapper laughed too quickly, desperate to fill the silence. “Ungrateful, if you ask me. A girl with coin and keep promised, running off like some farm-hand’s daughter? Ungrateful.”

Brannok’s gaze slid to him, playful as a cat with a mouse. “Ungrateful,” he mused, “perhaps. Why would this paying man want an ungrateful woman as his bride?”

Brorry muttered trying to ease the weight in the air. “A bastard princess is still a princess, eh? Worth more than all the deer in these woods.”

Brannok’s grin lingered, but it sharpened at the edges, teeth showing faint in the firelight. He tilted his head, eyes catching the loner’s with an intent too steady, too knowing. “A bastard,” he echoed, tone light, playful. “Worse than ungrateful. And yet a merchant lord would empty his coffers for her? That seems like a strange coin for shame.”

Brannok’s grin lingered, but the weight of him shifted. He leaned forward, broad shoulders rolling, eyes catching the firelight wrong—too sharp, too gold, for just a moment. The air pressed close, heavy, the way it did when a predator stepped into the clearing.

“You hunt coin,” he said softly, playfulness smoothed flat at the edges, “but do you know what else hunts those woods?”

The trappers swallowed hard. Tob’s knuckles whitened around his mug. The loner’s lip twitched, though he tried to hold his ground.

“Fenrathi prowl there,” Brannok went on, voice still easy, almost kind, though the timbre growled beneath it. “They do not care for bastards, nor kings, nor merchant lords with coin. If the girl is there, who’s to say she isn’t already meat in their teeth, bone on their ground?”

The silence that followed was thick enough to choke. Three men, pale, shifting, sweating through their collars though the hearth burned low. Instinct told them to run, though no blade had been drawn.

Then Brannok laughed. A sharp, bright sound that shattered the weight, and just like that, Beau sat in his place again—grin crooked, harmless, shaking his head as though he’d only meant a jest. He rose, chair scraping back.

“Good luck on your hunt,” he said, lifting his mug in salute, all warmth again. “May the coin be worth your risk.”

The trappers chuckled weakly, desperate for the ease he offered. The loner nodded stiffly, jaw clenched.

Brannok turned away, shouldering through the crowded room towards the light of the street outside. His grin deepened with every step, stretching sharp, feral, unseen.

Yes. Good luck on your hunt. If you venture into my woods, you won’t come out whole.