The rage was a living thing. It coiled in Thorne's gut, a serpent fed by the monthly ritual, its venom a memory not his own. He sat on his rock by the training hollow, the one smoothed by thirty years of his weight, and stared at his hands. They were the hands of a warrior, scarred and strong, capable of holding a bear's jaw or shaping a bow. But in the ghost-light of the Blood-Pack, they felt like a stranger's hands—the hands of a infant prince, powerless, reaching for a fallen father.
Ethan's face. The sneer. The sword, dark and wet. The image was a brand. His mother's evasion was a constant, gentle torment. "It is not your time to know," she would say, her eyes holding storms of her own. But the ritual gave him pieces of the truth, sharp, bloody shards that cut him from the inside. What was the whole picture? What had the kingdom been, truly, before it was stolen? The not-knowing was a void, and the rage filled it, formless and hot.
"Thorne!"
Axel's voice, sharp with urgency, sliced through the thicket of his thoughts. His friend skidded into the clearing, breathless, his usual playful energy replaced by hunter's focus. "Sentinel at the western ridge. A man. Single. Moving along the border stone line. Not hiding, but… deliberate."
All personal torment vanished. Thorne was on his feet in an instant, the Alpha of the Hella settling over him like armor. The border was their lifeline and their vulnerability. Strangers did not wander there. "Armed?"
"Couldn't tell. Wrapped in heavy furs. But he's big."
That was all Thorne needed. He gave a sharp, two-note whistle that echoed through the trees—a call to alert, not to assemble. This was a scouting matter first. He took off at a ground-eating lope, Axel falling in seamlessly beside him, their footfalls silent on the needle-strewn path. The western ridge was a spine of granite that marked the edge of Hella territory, overlooking the more chaotic, untamed depths of the Hellas
They moved with the forest's rhythm, using the terrain. Thorne's senses, heightened by a lifetime in the deep green, stretched out. He caught the scent first: woodsmoke, old sweat, and something else—a faint, metallic tang he associated with worked iron. Not a forest smell. A kingdom smell.
He slowed, signaling Axel to flank wide. He crested the ridge, using the trunk of a ancient, split pine for cover, and looked down.
The man was there, just beyond the line of moss-covered border stones. He was indeed broad, a mountain of scarred muscle layered under a shaggy cloak of thick, black bear fur. He stood facing slightly away, studying the Hella woods with an appraising, almost wistful stillness. He carried no visible weapon, but his posture screamed of latent, terrible power. This was no lost traveler.
Thorne stepped from the trees, crossing the border line to stand between the stranger and his people. He planted his feet, his own considerable frame a barrier. "These woods are not a path for wanderers," he said, his voice low and carrying, devoid of welcome. "You've seen the marker stones. Turn back."
The man didn't startle. He turned, slowly. His face was a landscape of hard living—a broken nose long since healed, a web of fine scars across one cheek, a beard of grizzled iron and black. But it was his eyes that stopped Thorne's breath. They were a clear, piercing grey. The exact shade of his own. The exact shade from his mother's stories.
A smile broke across the stranger's weathered face, transforming it. It was a smile of immense, aching fondness and profound sorrow. "By the Stone," the man breathed, his voice a deep rumble like falling rock. He took a step forward, his gaze drinking Thorne in. "Look at you. All grown."
Thorne's world tilted. His combat-ready stance faltered for a heartbeat. He knows me. He took an involuntary step back. "Who are you?" The question was a demand, edged with a confusion that threatened to unravel him.
From the trees, Axel watched, poised, an arrow now nocked but not drawn.
The stranger's smile didn't fade. He shook his head, a low chuckle escaping him. "Those eyes. I'd know those eyes anywhere. Staring up at me from a baby's blanket." He took another step, now within arm's reach. His own eyes glistened. "You have your father's jaw. But you have your mother's stubborn mouth."
Thorne's heart hammered against his ribs. The spear felt suddenly foreign in his grip. Memories, not from the ritual but from childhood—hazy, warm impressions of a giant's laugh, of being tossed in the air, of a deep voice telling tales of knights and dragons—flooded his mind. They were dreams, he'd thought. Fantasies.
"How do you know my name?" Thorne whispered, the fight draining from his voice, replaced by a vulnerable, hungry need.
The man's expression softened further. He reached out, not to attack, but to gently touch the shaft of Thorne's spear, pushing it down, away. The gesture was intimate, familial. "Because," he said, his voice thick with emotion, "I'm the one who gave it to you, you little snot. I'm Kragen."
The name hit Thorne like a physical blow. Kragen. He has heard tales of the ghost whose sacrifice was the foundation of his entire life.
It couldn't be. The stories said he died, buying their time with his blood. Yet here stood a man with his mother's eyes, speaking with the authority of legend, looking at him with a love so raw it felt like truth.
Thorne stood frozen, spear-point in the dirt, caught between a lifetime of defensive instinct and a tidal wave of impossible hope.