CHAPTER 57: OUT OF UNDERCITY

"I am a weak girl, you see."

The Arthien wolves erupted in snickers behind Arjan, their laughter jagged and ugly in the cold air.

I couldn’t bother myself with their apparent mockery.

To them, I was already a joke—a weak, useless girl. Not worth the time, not worth the blood if it weren’t for the bounty on my head.

They must have wondered why two Alphas had bothered to trade over me at all.

But I was beyond caring what they thought.

I had already been bartered like cargo. Their opinions couldn’t cut me deeper than that.

And I definitely didn’t care about the Arthien rogues themselves. Wolves like them only honored coin. They were men without loyalties, without conscience.

Cruel wolves who would follow whichever man promised them the heavier purse.

Arjan’s chuckle was low, his scar pulling at the corner of his mouth.

"Ives," he called out, his voice cutting through the laughter.

A wolf padded forward from the group, his coat a striking blend of gray and black.

His eyes, though golden like the others, lacked the sharp cruelty I had seen in the rest. There was wildness, yes, but something softer edged it.

He was young. I could tell. Around my age, perhaps.

"You’ll ride on him since you can’t shift," Arjan announced.

I braced for protest from the young wolf, but none came. Ives only dipped his head slightly, silent.

I didn’t mount immediately. My gaze slid, traitorously, back to where I had left him.

Rion’s figure was in the distance, with Ares and Diaval at his flanks. They were already walking away, heading back to the tower, their dark forms cutting through the pale snow. Not once did they look back. Not once did he spare me a final glance.

Soon, they would descend into the Undercity with the relic they had deemed more valuable than me. The Millow Shade glinted in my memory in his hand.

A fair bargain, he had said.

The words still burned.

"Vien..." Leika’s voice trembled inside me, breaking me from the ache. "I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be riding another wolf. But I am too weak."

"It’s not your fault," I soothed inwardly, though my throat was tight. "Something is wrong with me. With my body. I don’t know what, but I will find answers. I have to."

I moved then, climbing onto Ives’s back. His fur was thick beneath my palms, warm and coarse, carrying the scent of wild forests and steel air.

My legs tightened around his frame, and I tugged my coat closer around me.

Ahead stretched the world of the north—vast, endless white.

Snow blanketed everything, and the air itself seemed carved of frost. Dead trees rose like blackened skeletons across the land, their branches brittle, clawing at the sky.

For wolves, the terrain was nothing. In their shifted forms, they cut through the cold like it was air. Their paws carried them fast, tireless, relentless.

But I was no wolf today.

At least I had the foresight to wear a heavy coat before stepping out of the Undercity.

Still, the thought of riding for long hours, days even, in this cold made me wary.

Already, the chill gnawed at my fingers, at the tip of my nose.

Arjan barked an order. The Arthien wolves needed no more.

They launched forward as one, dark shapes surging against the snow. Ives bounded after them, swift and sure-footed. Despite the speed, his stride was steady, and I found myself balanced with ease.

It wasn’t my first time riding a wolf.

A memory came flashing in my mind...

My father, shifting to his wolf form when I was small. I used to climb onto his back with a child’s unshaken trust, my arms around his neck as he carried me through the forests. The wind had been freedom then, the rush of his stride nothing but joy.

I remembered thinking he was invincible. That nothing in the world could topple him.

But nothing lasts forever.

Now, I rode not out of love or joy, but necessity, and the wolf beneath me was not family but stranger.

Not safety, but survival.

The pack tore across the land with ruthless speed. Their paws beat a relentless rhythm against the snow, drumming into the frozen earth, shaking loose a chorus that echoed through the emptiness.

Each exhale came as a burst of fog, their breaths clouding the brittle air, cutting through the stillness of a dead winter world.

I clung tighter to Ives, his muscles surging and coiling beneath me.

The cold bit into me deeper the longer we ran, sharp and merciless, slipping past my coat and burrowing into my bones. My muscles burned from holding fast, every tendon screaming, but I refused to loosen my grip. To falter here would mean being swallowed whole.

And then...

Something changed.

The air around me thinned, the subtle thrumming at the edge of my senses flickering.

I could no longer feel the Undercity’s wards in its lands.

Which meant we were out of Rion’s territory.

I turned my head, glancing back over my shoulder. The tower was gone, swallowed by the pale horizon, as though it had never been. Only endless white stretched behind us now, a blank canvas that erased every trace of where I had come from.

Beyond Rion’s reach.

The thought struck hard, stabbing into my chest.

For a heartbeat, something close to freedom surged through me... light, fleeting, dangerous.

Yet beneath it coiled dread, twining until the two feelings were impossible to untangle.

Free of his gaze. Free of that mocking smirk, that suffocating authority that made the very air bend.

And yet...

Why didn’t it feel right?

Ives suddenly faltered beneath me, his body stiffening, each muscle wound taut.

His ears twitched, then pinned back. Ahead, the Arthien wolves slowed in unison, their rhythm breaking as one by one they raised their hackles.

Claws scraped against ice, scattering snow in sharp bursts as they dug in to stop.

My pulse spiked. I clutched fistfuls of Ives’s fur, steadying myself as the pack froze.

The cold no longer felt like mere winter, it was the stillness before lightning struck.

And then I saw them.

Shapes rose out of the white expanse, dark furs against the pale.

Wolves. Another pack.

They waited across the field, a line of shadows etched in defiance against the snow.

Eyes gleamed in the gray light, the color of molten gold.