Chapter 2 - The Uninvited Guest
It took nearly an hour to free him.
Meera’s hands were stained with blood and mud by the time she snapped the final spring of the iron snare. She had murmured soft, repetitive words of comfort the entire time, ignoring the way the wolf’s massive muscles bunched defensively beneath her touch. When the wire finally released, the beast gave a low, shuddering exhale that blew her damp hair back from her forehead.
She expected him to bolt into the safety of the dark woods.
Instead, the giant black wolf simply collapsed back into the mud, too weak to stand, his breath coming in shallow, ragged pants.
Meera sighed, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist. She couldn't leave him here to die of infection or let scavengers finish him off while the storm raged.
Using every ounce of her strength, she managed to loop her sturdy canvas tarp beneath his massive torso, dragging him inch by grueling inch through the mud until she reached her cabin. By the time she got him inside and bolted the heavy oak door against the howling wind, her arms were trembling, and her back felt as though it were broken.
She managed to coax him onto the thick woolen rug near her stone hearth, where she built a roaring fire to chase away the damp chill.
“Don't think this makes us friends,” she panted, dropping heavily into her rocking chair and pulling off her muddy boots. “If you trash my cabin or eat my bees, I’m throwing you right back out into the rain.”
The wolf lay motionless on the rug, his golden eyes tracking her every movement with unsettling focus.
That night, Meera slept fitfully in her loft bed, listening to the rhythmic, heavy breathing of the animal downstairs. She expected to wake up to an empty room and a trail of blood.
Instead, when the first pale light of dawn crept through her cabin window, the giant black wolf was still there.
He had dragged himself closer to the hearth. His golden eyes were open, watching her descend the wooden ladder as if he had been waiting for her all morning.
“Morning, Your Majesty,” Meera muttered sarcastically, pouring herself a cup of black chicory coffee.
She set to work immediately. She fetched a basin of warm water infused with crushed willow bark and antiseptic meadowsweet, kneeling beside the massive beast to clean the deep, ugly laceration on his front leg. The wolf hissed softly through his teeth, his muscles tensing as the stinging medicine hit the raw flesh, but he didn't pull away.
“I know, I know,” she murmured, her fingers surprisingly gentle as she wrapped clean linen strips around his leg. “It hurts. But if you want to keep running around the forest playing hero, you have to let it heal properly.”
That night became two.
Two nights became a week.
And before Meera realized how deep the habit had formed, the giant wolf had become a permanent fixture in her quiet, isolated life.
She talked to him constantly while she worked. She complained about the unseasonable frost that threatened her late-summer lavender crop. She grumbled about the snobbish merchants in the nearby village who tried to cheat her out of silver coins for her honey jars. She told him deep, guarded secrets she had never shared with a living soul—how lonely it was to live on the edge of a world that had cast her out, how the wind howling through the chimney always sounded like the laughter of the pack members who had watched her burn.
The wolf listened. He listened with an intensity that felt almost eerie, his massive head resting on his paws, his golden eyes tracking her expressions as if memorizing every nuance of her face.
One afternoon, after the wolf had foolishly decided to chase a family of muddy wild boars through the swamp behind her property, he returned looking like an absolute disaster. His midnight coat was plastered with stinking, black bog muck from ears to tail.
Meera stood on her porch with her hands on her hips, staring down at him in sheer disbelief.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned.
Ten minutes later, she had dragged a large copper washing tub into the center of the yard, filling it with steaming water and lavender soap flakes.
“Get in,” she ordered, pointing a wooden spoon at him.
The Alpha King of the Northern Range—a sovereign ruler who commanded legions of bloodthirsty warriors, whose word meant life or death across forty territories—slowly, reluctantly climbed into the copper tub and sat down in the soapy water with an expression of profound, soul-crushing humiliation.
Meera burst out laughing, scrubbing the bog mud from his thick fur with a stiff-bristled brush.
“You’re just a giant dog,” she teased, scratching firmly behind his torn left ear.
The feared Alpha King’s back leg suddenly began thumping wildly against the bottom of the copper tub, sending soapy water splashing across the grass.
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Kyle nearly died of shame right then and there. But as her fingers continued to massage his scalp, a warmth bloomed deep in his chest that completely overrode his royal dignity.
He loved every second of it.
