***
Waves of heat were pulsing and blazing before his eyes. He could not remember ever feeling so angry. Flames were lapping at the walls of his skull; he wanted to set them free. Never before had he been aware of how sharp his fangs were in his mouth—he licked them, and felt blood well up from his tongue. He wanted to bite, to attack, to hurt someone. He had trusted them, all of them, and all the while they had been lying to him. They had said he could leave when he wished—they had promised—but it was all a carefully-arranged deception. For almost a month now he had been a prisoner, and he hadn’t even known it.
Prisoner, prisoner, prisoner. The words were repeating themselves in his head, keeping time with the quickened pulse of his heart. He couldn’t leave. They would not let him. But who were they to give such an order? They couldn’t control him. He wanted to fight his way through them all, killing as he went, until he reached his pack. But even in his rage he knew that he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was injured, weak, and entirely at the mercy of Palva and her alpha. No, he had never much cared for the alpha. But Palva had saved his life. Palva had trusted him. Palva had stood up for him. Palva had lied to him.
He turned around, his joints aching and stiff with fury. She was standing just a few strides away, leaning against her herb-boulder and watching him. She looked cold and unfriendly. Oh, how he hated her now.
“Let me go,” he said to her, his voice ragged and hoarse after yelling. He wanted to be persuasive, eloquent; he wanted to convey to Palva the storm of emotions spinning within his ribs, to make her hate herself as much as he did now. But in his rage, he was surprised to find himself capable of anything more than a wordless snarl. He repeated himself: “Let me go.”
“No.”
That was what she had said a few moments ago, when the alpha was here. He had been hoping for a different answer this time, but privately knew there was no chance of that.
“Let me go,” he tried again, louder this time. “I’m warning you—let me go.”
“No.”
“I’ll fight you,” he said, raising his voice as the rage inside him swelled. “I—I’ll fight you if you don’t let me go!”
Palva said nothing.
Seething, he turned and stalked towards the wall of grass at the edge of the hollow as though in an attempt to escape. As he had expected, Palva shifted to the side faster than he had ever seen her move before, blocking his path almost as soon as he had shifted.
“No,” she said.
By now, he was quaking. Blood was pounding an incessant rhythm in his ears, and he glared at Palva as hard as he could. She didn’t flinch.
As much as he hated her now, he knew Palva was the closest thing to an ally he had. Deep down, beneath his roiling rage, he did not want to fight her. He did not want to hurt her. But blinded by his fury, he wanted nothing more than to make someone else feel pain. He wanted someone else to screech and roar as he felt like doing—see how she likes it. The alpha was gone now. The only creature standing between him and his old pack now was a three-legged wolf. And so, digging his claws into the soil, he sprang at her.
Snarling, he collided with her with a painful crash, but she held her ground. He snapped and slashed with his fangs, tearing at every square inch of flesh he could reach and snagging his dull claws in her fur. A crazed exhilaration was whipping through his blood like wildfire, fed by his anger. His teeth tore through fur and tasted blood, but she wriggled away before he could get a proper grip. Instinct told him to go for her neck, where the great vein of her life-blood pulsed not so far beneath her skin; he lunged for it, snarling and twisting his head to avoid her own fangs. At last, he found her throat and tried to hold his grip—but she writhed and twisted like a snake, and the next thing he knew his jaws were snapped in empty air. In one deft movement, she snapped forward and broke him against her shoulders and he was flung back, gasping.
She watched as he lay in a fallen heap on the ground, his head throbbing as though on fire and his lungs heaving for air.
“Are you going to kill me, Tir?” she said softly.
He did not reply. Blood was trickling in a thin stream out of his mouth—his own blood. Bitter blood. He spat it into the grass and snarled in an attempt at defiance. Staggering back up to his paws, he lunged again.
This time, she dodged him before he had even reached her. He landed, twisting in the grass and lunged at her a second time, but she caught him again. He was send hurtling back onto the ground, head spinning.
He glared up at her, hissing. But she did not look angry, not at all. She had not even growled when he had attacked her. He wanted her to be angry. He wanted her to snarl and rage at him. But no; instead, she just watched. She looked blank, tired—and maybe even a little bit pitying. Wolves had once looked at his mother the same way. This enraged him further. She had no right to pity him.
He tried to stand up so he could have another go, but he stumbled and fell back down, his throbbing head landing in the dirt. He glared up at her with as much hatred as he could summon and tried to snarl, but found he hadn’t the breath. All he could manage was a short, ragged gasp.
“Why—won’t you let me—let me leave?” he rasped, each breath causing his chest to sear with burning pain.
“It is my orders. It is what the alpha commands,” said Palva, who did not seem to be the least bit winded his attack. “I have no choice but to obey.”
“Why—does she command—command it? What does—she want with me?”
“I cannot tell you.”
He put his weight on his paws beneath him, and tried to stand up. He rose with effort, wobbling on his legs.
“Tell me!” he hissed.
“No. Do not ask again.”
There was a firmness in her words, and for the first time, she sounded stern. With grudging defeat, he knew he could not shake her or fight past her. He gave one last wheezing snarl in her face before whipping around and stalking stiff-legged back to his grassy nest. He could still feel her pale, eerie eyes freezing the back of his pelt, and he bristled. But she said nothing.
The only thing to do was to go to sleep and hope that by tomorrow this all would have turned out to be a bad dream. Perhaps he would wake up back in his old den, in his old territory with his old pack—perhaps everything that had happened would turn out to be a bad dream.
Tir closed his eyes, but the dream never went away.