It had only taken a moment to realise just how bad things had gotten. Only a heartbeat, standing in the courtyard as horses and dogs milled in excitement at the prospect of the hunt to come, with my heart hammering in my throat. The overbearing urge to break out of the little box court life had penned me into, while simultaneously screaming to be back indoors, where things were safe and manageable.

Fuck.

Tiru smiled down at me from atop his horse, cheeks flushed pink in the bitter cold. He looked so excited and I had to close my eyes for a moment to compose myself, to keep my face its normal, impassive self. I wanted to pull him down from that horse, to bundle him up and lock him in the basement, surrounded by thick, impenetrable stone walls. He’d be safe then. It was my job. My job to keep him safe, to keep him alive.

Inside was safe. I could manage things inside. I had eyes everywhere, surrounded the young king with chambermaids and cooks and cleaners bristling with weapons and the knowledge of how to use them. So that if anyone tried to harm him, they could put a fucking knife through their eye before they had a chance to so much as look at him funny. It had taken time, a lot of time, to find people right for the job. People that looked unassuming enough that strangers would pay them no heed. Ones that were viciously loyal and, usually, not entirely human. Reman society be damned. The god bothering, holier than thou little turds would run screaming if they knew just how many Others I’d managed to sneak into their golden court.

But out there, out in the wilderness with only this collection of court dandies and bored noblemen as company, I had nothing.

A wet nose touched my hand, even as my heart continued to hammer so hard it felt like it might burst through my chest. The touch was both soothing, and incredibly maddening. Soothing because that seemed to be the reaction his touch always had, some strange, screwed up version of ‘pack’ that no one had even realised made wolves were capable of. Not hard, made wolves had an attached stigma possibly worse than my own. They did not usually live long enough to form packs, and lived lonely, short lives. It was maddening though for almost the same reason. The same metaphysical nonsense that made them want to huddle in massive puppy piles for comfort also gave them something of a sixth sense for turmoil in their packmates.

Why was I pack? Why knew? Whether it was some sort of messed up imprinting, the first kind thing he saw after the change, or just pure happenstance, it was a mystery to me. But we were pack; just the three of us. Edgar, Dell and myself. And only one of us was an actual wolf.

I hated that he could read me the way he could. Some of it was that sixth sense. He’d told me it was like an itch that he couldn’t quite scratch, a vague impression of wrong that only touch seemed to fix. That was part of it. What bothered me more was the fact that the rest was just good old-fashioned people watching. That he had just watched me enough that he started to pick things up, tiny little things that almost everyone missed. I liked it that way. I wanted to be unreadable.

I couldn’t help stroking his head though, and found myself looking down, meeting dark eyes. Edgar was enormous in wolf form, dwarfing all the hunting dogs that gave him a very wide berth in the courtyard that morning. I’m not sure how many people present realised just what he was, or had made a connection between the slender man who sometimes attended court, and the hulking great “dog” that had followed the young king since before he stepped foot on Aclatan soil again. I think a lot of people wrote the giant black beast off as a pet that the prince had obtained when he had stayed with the mysterious Zirans, a gift from the dashingly foreign prince who now often visited with his Highness.

Edgar huffed into my hand, warming my palm with his breath. Being near him was like stepping into a little bubble of warmth and serenity. It helped that people tended to shift very quickly out of the way wherever he went, so being near him meant not having to be near anyone else. The only people who had ever been game enough to touch him in wolf form were myself, Dell and the king. The massive teeth in that broad, formidable head tended to see to that. I reached out to run my thumb across one pointed ear, and smiled a little despite my stress. It was the one thing that made letting Tiru indulge in this fancy bearable, knowing that no matter where he went, Edgar would go too.

After all, those teeth were not just for show. Edgar had a satisfyingly brutal streak. Our pasts shared a lot of similarities, horrible, painful similarities that resulted in him possessing a no-holds-barred, at all costs sort of approach to life that would appall most decent people. We were creatures no longer fit for the light, but that suited me just fine. Some of the Others I knew would hesitate. Edgar, I knew, would use those teeth to crush and rend and tear, if the people within his small “bubble” were in danger. There would be no attempt to incapacitate, no “discussion”, just a swift and sudden end to the threat.

Edgar did not spend much time at court in human form, for many reasons. He was quick to temper, coarse and often uncomfortably honest. Not many people got to see more than that - that he could be gentle as a lamb, incredibly selfless and relentlessly dedicated to the notion of romanticism. Most importantly, he cared deeply for the young king since he had become one of his followers, and would throw himself into the path of danger without a second thought to protect him.

With Edgar there, Tiru would be safe.

I knelt, and ruffled his ears affectionately. The fur on his head and neck was gorgeously soft, and he smelled woodsy in a way that always persisted, even when he was considerably less hairy. All around us, nobles shouted as they prepared for the hunt. I only gave myself a moment - I could feel the eyes on my back already, people openly gawping at the massive beast and his tiny attendant. As I stood, the hunting party swirled around us in a kaleidoscope of horse flesh and excitement.

Stepping back, I watched them pour out of the courtyard and into the fields beyond. I kept my hands clasped behind my back, so that no one could see how white my knuckles were.

The silence left behind was a yawning void. The panic of being suddenly alone almost made me nauseous. I did not want to go back inside. Not without the people there that made the damn place bearable. With Tiru and Edgar gone, and Dell away on business at the behest of his majesty, the place seemed hollow and soulless. It felt like the walls were slowly closing in on me. And yet the thought of leaving made me equally as anxious. I needed to do something.

Annie was my saviour, once again. She always seemed to have a solution. I went to her, and the look on my face must have told her something, because she wordlessly turned to flick through her rows and rows of files. Without saying a thing, she plucked one, and held it out to me with a smile.

“It’s close by, and should be simple. Locals have seen lights in the fen. A child went missing a while ago.” She glanced at the file, upside down, “they think they have a witch, and want us to get rid of it.”