The Alpha's Concubine (Historical Shifter Romance) (33 page)

"What are these?" she said after a moment as Caspian leaned over to re-heat his metal stylus in the fire.

"These are the hunters of our pack," he said, gesturing to the marks one by one.

"They do not look like hunters to me."

"If I tried to make them all look like people or wolves, how would I tell them apart?" He pointed to one symbol at the end of a row that was slightly larger than the others, resembling four lines scored across one another. "This one is Hawk, and the rest next to him are all those who joined him on his first hunt last year. By putting their markings on this wood, I can look back and see who was on every past hunt."

Netya smiled at the strange wood burning, a little amused by the idea. "You could just ask Hawk who he took."

"I could, but do you remember every person who was on the hunt you joined?"

"I suppose I do not. So you use these marks to remember?"

Caspian nodded. "There is a man among the North People who does the same. He showed me this a few years ago, though he used dyes on a stretched animal hide to record which plants he had sown and where, and how well they grew."

Netya settled herself tentatively on the second log seat next to Caspian, and leaned over to get a better look at his work. "Do you have a mark for every one of the hunters?"

"I do. I try to make them in a way that reminds me of the person. I think you can recognise this one." He tapped his finger against a particularly jagged and uneven looking symbol that sat at the head of several rows.

Netya smiled. "Vaya."

"You can see she appears more as time goes on. This year she will be at the head of even more hunts."

"Do I have a mark?"

Caspian gave her a teasing look, and she felt her skin warm under his gaze. "Not yet, but I am marking down the great hunt tonight. I suppose we shall have to make you one."

"What will it be?"

Caspian gazed at the piece of wood in contemplation, then reached over for his tool and began carefully scoring a line at the end of the current row he was working on. It curved around in a crescent, eventually taking the shape of a semicircle tilted half way on its side. Then, Caspian pressed the tip of his tool down in the centre, rotating it back and forth in the smoking wood until he created a dot being cupped by the crescent.

She leaned in eagerly as he moved the piece of hot metal away, eyeing the mark that now meant
Netya
. "This is me?"

Caspian ran his finger around the edge of the crescent. "The moon." He tapped the small circle in the middle. "And the sun, both coming together in one person."

Netya grinned as she admired the small symbol, fascinated that such a simple mark could be used to encompass an entire person. "I like it. It looks beautiful."

"As it should. I only wish I would get more chances to use it."

She caught him staring at her for a moment, his gaze lingering as a familiar distant look crept into his eyes, as if he was seeing something beyond just the girl sat beside him.

"Perhaps I will use it myself, then," she said. "If I am to be a seer, I may have need of recording things in this way."

"You are taking hold of clever new ideas already. I tried to share this with Adel, but she insists it is a waste of time when she already remembers everything she needs to know."

Netya edged a little closer to the man seated beside her, growing more confident. For once Caspian was not preoccupied, with no other business to distract him from her.

"Are you a friend to the den mother?" she asked carefully, keenly aware of how Khelt might react to such a line of questioning. But Caspian did not even blink as he continued marking down his next symbol.

"I do not know if Adel has considered anyone a friend in her life," he said. "I suppose she tolerates me more than most."

"No wonder she is so unkind."

Caspian looked at her. "You think her unkind?"

Netya shrugged. "She has never treated me well. And she does not seem to respect Khelt at all."

"Yes, those two will never see eye to eye," he sighed. "And Adel is apt to behave cruelly if she thinks it will serve her purposes. Khelt is the opposite. It hurts him every time he is forced to be hard on his pack. I sometimes think his decision to take you from your people was a kindness on his part."

"I do not regret it, but it did not seem kind to me at the time," Netya said, strangely aware that this was not the kind of conversation she could have had with any other member of the pack. "He was treating me as a spoil of his victory."

"But what was his alternative?" Caspian said. "He allowed the man they found with you to escape, but our pack expected justice for the death of Cera. Most of them wanted a kill for a kill, and they would not have accepted it if Khelt took mercy on two of their enemies in one night. He had to make a choice between killing you and taking you as a trophy."

"And what would you have done?" Netya said.

Caspian shook his head with a smile, not deigning to answer. All he said was, "That is why I am not alpha."

His response puzzled Netya. He seemed to lead the pack just as well as Khelt, even if he was less direct about it. He was strong, wise, and perhaps more unique than anyone else in the pack, besides Adel. Who else would have thought to make markings on wood to remember every single hunt of the year?

But perhaps, she thought, that was exactly the answer to her question. Was Caspian
too
different from the others to lead them? From the way he spoke about the conflict between her people and his, she doubted he would be willing to take the kind of vengeance his pack expected.

She held her breath and reached out to touch his hand, and a quiver of excitement ran through her as he took it, squeezing her fingers as if the gesture was the most natural exchange in the world.

"Will you tell me something Khelt would not?" she asked quietly.

Caspian propped his free elbow on the table and turned to her, his wood burning forgotten. "If I can, I will."

"What happened between him and Adel to make them hate one another so? Nobody speaks of it, and it upsets him in a way I have never seen."

A sadness entered Caspian's eyes, but he did not withdraw as Khelt would have done. "You know better than to repeat any of this to him, yes? I have tried also, and it does not end well."

Netya nodded, tingling with apprehension.

"It upsets him because it makes him doubt himself. He still believes the choice he made was the right one, but a part of him questions it. Our pack very nearly splintered apart because of what he and Adel did that night."

Netya resisted the urge to ask questions, hanging on Caspian's every word as he revealed the truth to her. For months she had wondered what could have driven the wedge between the alpha and den mother, and she listened with rapt attention as Caspian spoke.

"Adel sought to take charge from the moment she came to our pack. It was clear she resented everyone at first, both our people and hers. I am not sure which pack she blamed more for using her as a peace offering the way she was. But a woman like Adel would never have been broken down by such strife; it only made her fight back harder. So instead of falling obediently in line, she tried every day to wrest as much control away from Khelt as she could. He had not been alpha for long back then, and he thought it all something of a game. Adel was intended to be his mate, so he indulged her, thinking she would tire of it eventually and settle down."

"She cannot have been fond of that," Netya said.

"It was certainly her first reason to begin disliking Khelt. She saw him as a brash young man who had barely come of age, without the wisdom to lead properly, and every day she tried to convince the others of it. Some of the seers agreed, and Khelt did not realise how many of the pack were questioning him before it was too late."

"Did she try to challenge his leadership?"

"No, she could never have done that. Whatever you may think of her, Adel detests conflict and violence. She would not have driven the pack to in-fighting."

Netya thought back to the way Adel had spoken the night Erech and Nathar fought. She had to admit, it had sounded as if the den mother truly did abhor the barbaric tendencies of her people.

"That year the hunting was very poor," Caspian continued, "far worse than what you saw last summer. There was no prey to be found for months on end, and eventually Khelt was forced to lead almost the entire pack afield to search for new hunting grounds. The search took us closer and closer to the edge of the forest, and soon we were sending hunting parties deep into the territory of the Sun People. Khelt and Adel were leading a group one night, each surrounded by their most loyal followers, when they came across a pen of several dozen sheep. There was enough meat there to feed the entire pack, and it was ripe for the taking."

"But the men of my village would have come to protect their animals," Netya gasped.

Caspian nodded. "And so they did. They must have been tracking us, because there were more of them than usual, and they were well armed. By the time our scouts reported the location of the sheep back to Khelt, the Sun People had arrived to protect their flock, but they had not yet gathered their full strength. Perhaps it was fate that he and Adel were both together on that hunt, because things would have ended very differently had they been apart.

"Khelt had a dozen loyal wolves with him at the time, Adel a dozen more, and we planned to make straight for the animals before any more of your people could arrive. Fear is often more powerful than our teeth and claws, and Khelt was convinced that a show of force would be enough to make the enemy back down. Even if he was forced to fight, the numbers were on his side, and our people would starve without fresh kill. But Adel disagreed. She had seen the way her old pack had suffered at the hands of the Sun People's warriors, and she believed a fight would only leave more dead on both sides. She wanted to retreat and search for prey elsewhere."

Netya held her breath, eyes wide as she listened. She was beginning to piece together this side of the tale with the version she had heard from the men of her village, and it made her stomach squirm as if she had been there on that night herself.

"That was when Khelt realised Adel was not just an unruly female playing games with him. He commanded her to follow, and she refused. If he wanted to prove he truly cared about his people, Adel said, he would call off his hunters and follow her back to safety. Khelt refused to back down. His pride did not help, of course, but he believed far more lives might be lost if he did not return to the pack with fresh kill soon. He called Adel a coward, and threatened that she would be the one leaving others to die if she did not join him in challenging the Sun People.

"So both of them departed and took those who were loyal with them. Khelt believed Adel's disobedience would be short-lived, and that she would hurry back to join him soon, while Adel thought the alpha's nerve would falter once he saw the Sun People waiting for them."

Netya's heart sank as she realised the inevitable conclusion. "Neither of them gave in, did they?"

"No. By the time Khelt realised nobody was coming to his aid, the Sun People had already encircled us. They had nets and spears, and three of us were dead within moments. Khelt called the retreat, and the rest managed to escape before any more lives were lost."

"How terrible it must have been."

"Terrible for all of us, but none more so than the alpha and den mother. One of those killed was a seer, and the moment we regrouped with the rest of the pack I thought Khelt and Adel were about to tear each other apart. They were both furious that the other had been so stubborn. If not for their respect for the pack's grief, that night might have ended with even more blood spilled.

"Khelt talked with me often about exiling Adel back to her old pack in the months that followed, but we both knew it would only lead to another bitter feud with her people. He refused to even consider taking her as his mate after that, and it has coloured everything between the two of them since."

Netya bit her lip, angry at the way Adel had abandoned her people in a time of need, but also frustrated that the outcome had not been entirely of the den mother's making. She wanted to be able to side with Khelt, but she understood now why he had reason to doubt himself.

"Did the pack find good hunting in time that year?" she said.

"Thankfully yes, though it was a hard winter with little to go around, and two of the elders slipped away in the cold months. We tried to keep them well fed when they became weak, but it is impossible to say whether a few mouthfuls of food might have made a difference." Caspian took a deep breath as he came to the end of the tale, running a hand through his light brown hair. Recounting it seemed to have exhausted him, and he took a long drink from his cup of water before looking at Netya again. "You have one more thing left to ask me, don't you?"

Netya gave him a bittersweet smile. He could read her well.

—
26—

A Meeting of Hearts

"Which one of them do you think was right?" she said.

"That is the tragedy of it," Caspian replied. "They were both right. Had Adel given in, Khelt would have had the numbers to easily defeat the Sun People, perhaps even without any bloodshed, and the pack would have been well fed. But if Khelt had backed down, not a single life would have been risked, and the hunt could have continued safely."