King Blackmoor's emissaries arrived at dawn looking like someone had ruined their weekend.
There were two of them. Gregor, a thick-necked wolf with a square jaw, and a young man with a scar on his eyebrow who didn't bother giving his name. They brought a black truck with tinted windows and the Blackmoor crest on the door: a wolf with open jaws over a broken moon.
"This is her?" Gregor asked, looking her up and down.
"This is her," Viktor said, like someone handing over a package at the door.
"I thought she'd be more..." Gregor searched for the word, eyeing her with contempt — she was a ninety-kilo omega with messy hair and a backpack over her shoulder.
"More what?" Irina said. "Finish the sentence. Thinner. Prettier. More submissive. Which of the three?"
Gregor closed his mouth. Viktor looked at the sky.
"Get in the truck, Irina."
Irina looked at her father. She looked at him expecting something. She didn't know what. A hug? An apology? Some tiny gesture that said you're my daughter and this hurts me? Anything.
Viktor held her gaze with the same expression as always: nothing.
Irina climbed into the truck without another word.
The truck pulled away and Viktor turned around and walked toward the house without looking back.
Not once, Irina thought. Not a single time in eighteen years.
Three hours on the road and no one had said a word to her.
Gregor drove like the road owed him money. The scarred one rode shotgun staring at his phone. Irina sat in the back, clutching the backpack to her chest, watching through the window as Volkov territory disappeared behind her.
"How much longer?" she asked.
"Shut up," said the scarred one without looking up.
"It's a simple question. A number. Three hours? Five? Will we get there before I die of boredom?"
Gregor looked at her in the rearview mirror.
"Four more hours. If you stay quiet, maybe three."
"If you drive better, maybe we'll arrive in one piece."
"The fat omega's got a sharp tongue," the scarred one muttered.
"The fat one has a name. Irina. In case you care what the package you're delivering is called."
Silence. Gregor accelerated as a response.
The forest closed in. The pines denser, the light scarcer, the dirt road narrower. No-man's land. Kilometers where no pack had jurisdiction and rules didn't apply.
Gregor slammed on the brakes.
Irina crashed into the seat in front of her.
"What the—"
"Shut up." Gregor was already out of the truck, nose raised and muscles tense. "Outlaws. Four of them. They've surrounded us."
The scarred one pulled out a knife and opened the door.
"Surrounded?" Irina leaned between the seats. "What do you mean surrounded? Aren't you supposed to be the king's warriors?"
"Stay inside!"
The forest exploded.
The first wolf slammed into Gregor before he finished shifting. They rolled through the mud, fangs against fangs. The second appeared from behind the truck. The scarred one spun with the knife, slashed its flank, but the wolf clamped its jaws on his arm and pulled.
The crack of bone.
The scream.
Irina threw open the door and fell into the mud.
"Shit!"
She got up slipping. She didn't know where to run. Just mud, trees, and the sound of bodies being torn apart.
The third appeared in front of her. Big, brown, with the bored-predator look of something that's found a toy.
"Get away from me, you mangy piece of shit!"
She threw the backpack at its face and the wolf dodged it, baring its fangs.
Irina ran. Ninety kilos on wet mud, her legs sinking, her lungs burning, every step a fight against gravity. Ten meters. Fifteen.
She stepped on a root she didn't see and her ankle cracked. She fell face-first into the mud.
The wolf put a paw on her back and pinned her to the ground.
"Let me go, you son of a bitch!" She spat dirt, clawed at the mud, kicked. "Let me go!"
The wolf growled in her ear. Teeth vibrating against her neck. Irina fought with everything she had, which wasn't much, which was nothing against a predator three times her strength.
A fourth wolf emerged from the trees. It approached slowly. The brown one snarled at it: mine. The fourth stopped.
Irina stopped struggling. She couldn't breathe right with the weight crushing her back.
I'm not going to die here. Not in a mud puddle. Not like this. She thought it, but she had no way to save herself.
The howl cut through the forest like a knife.
It didn't come from the outlaws. It came from farther away, deeper. A long, low howl that made the ground tremble and that Irina felt in her bones.
The brown wolf lifted its paw off her. It backed away. All four staring in the same direction with their ears flat and their tails between their legs.
Something was coming. Something that had been following them.
The beast emerged from the pines like a shadow with weight. Enormous. Yellow eyes. Black fur.
It charged the brown wolf before it could react. It clamped its jaws around it, lifted it, and hurled it against a tree that split in half. The second tried to run. Two strides. The third and fourth vanished howling.
Silence.
Irina was on the ground, covered in mud, staring at the same creature from the lake. The beast approached. It lowered its head until its yellow eyes were inches from hers.
"You again," she whispered.
The deep rumble. The same one from the lake. Then it raised its head and disappeared into the trees like smoke.
Irina lay in the mud for a full minute. Shaking. Processing. The emissaries were dead. The truck was still running.
She got up. She climbed into the driver's seat. She looked at the pedals.
"How hard can it be?"
Very hard. She started in lurches, zigzagged down the road, went off it twice, ripped a mirror off on a tree. But she moved forward. Cursing at every turn, hands white-knuckled on the wheel.
Three hours later, a patrol of Blackmoor perimeter guards blocked her path.
"Halt! Who are you?"
Irina rolled down the window. Covered in mud, dried blood on her forehead, the eyes of someone who'd had the worst day of her life.
"Irina Volkov. The offering."
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