They Called My Father a Traitor, So I Learned Every Secret They Buried novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wounded Alpha Names What They Buried
At the Winter Presentation, Wynn protects her mother from removal, exposes a staged border attack through her healing gift, and hears the wounded prisoner call her by the forbidden royal name Aurelian before Corvin's order can be carried out.
A guard's hand closed around my mother's arm while Alpha Corvin took our cottage.
She struck the doorframe with her shoulder. I caught her before she fell and pushed the loose button on the guard's sleeve through its thread with my other hand.
'Let go of her.'
The guard looked toward the dais.
'Take them to the border kennels,' Corvin said.
My mother's fingers closed around my sleeve. The cottage had been hers since my father died. Its roof leaked above her bed, and smoke came down the chimney when the wind turned, but she could sleep there without asking permission.
The clerk tore my father's protection record from the winter register. He folded the page beneath his arm and marked our names for kennel service.
A guard carried out my mother's blue blanket. Another servant lifted her brass broth pot from the stove. The kennel guard took her winter cloak from its peg before stepping outside.
'That remains with the house,' Corvin said.
My mother heard him. She folded the border assignment once and put it inside her sleeve.
I kept my hand on the guard's torn button. The thread was black. His coat was brown. I would remember him.
'Wynn.'
Hadley stood behind me, snow caught in her auburn hair and two fingers missing from her left hand. Her green leather jacket was split at one elbow. I had reset the bones beneath that hand after a border run, and she had complained about the stitching until dawn.
She had once brought me a wolf whose thigh was open to the bone. She stayed awake while I repaired it. Now she watched the guards because she expected the next blow to come from the front.
'You want the truth or the report?' she asked. 'The report says this is lawful. The truth says somebody changed the property mark before the Presentation opened.'
'The truth.'
'The kennel guard knew where to wait. The clerk had fresh wax on his seal. Your mother's blanket was packed before anyone announced the decision.'
The clerk lowered his eyes.
Corvin's iron ring touched the arm of his chair.
'Tracker, return to your post.'
'Gladly, after you explain why your clerk is sweating through his collar.'
Hadley said it with a half-smile. She had never learned to fear a room properly.
'Your concern is noted,' Corvin said. 'Leave.'
'You first.'
A few people looked down at their hands. Hadley had made the room uncomfortable, which was the closest thing to charity available here.
Corvin turned to the guards. 'Remove them.'
My mother's grip tightened.
I looked at the clerk's wrist. A narrow strip of old paper clung beneath his fingernail. He had torn the record too quickly.
That piece could still carry the old seal.
I bent to retrieve the button. As I rose, I caught the clerk's wrist against my sleeve. The paper tore free. I closed my fingers around it before he felt the loss.
The old seal pressed into my palm through the cloth.
Corvin expected me to fight the guards. He had placed them close enough to drag my mother across the hall and call it obedience.
I moved aside, bringing her behind me and out of their reach. Then I tucked the paper beneath my cuff.
The clerk looked down. His face changed before he could stop it.
Corvin noticed my hand. 'Wynn Sablewood.'
There was no reason to use my full name unless he wanted the pack to hear the rank attached to it.
Alpha Corvin Ashfell stood beneath the winter banner in a dark leather coat, broad and still, his iron signet plain against his right hand. He watched my fingers instead of my face.
'You are assigned to the border kennels,' he said. 'That is not a punishment. It is your rank.'
'Then the pack will survive my promotion.'
Hadley made a rough sound behind me. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a cough caused by poor manners.
Corvin's gaze moved to her missing fingers. 'You have already been generous with your opinions.'
'Wynn kept me walking. I figured I owed her a little noise.'
'You owe the pack obedience.'
'She closed my ribs after your patrol left me in the snow. Start there.'
The guards reached for my mother again.
I stepped between them. 'She will walk.'
Corvin studied my hands. I had sewn the split seam at my cuff closed during the hearing. The thread held. My hands did not shake.
He had expected crying. He had arranged witnesses for it.
I gave him a woman who could count.
The hall doors slammed open before anyone could move us.
Three patrol wolves dragged a man across the threshold. Blood streaked the packed snow behind his boots. Iron shackles cut his wrists, and his slate coat had torn from shoulder to hip.
One patrol wolf held a knife against his ribs. The blade was clean. The man was not.
Corvin looked at the prisoner, then at the room. 'The border criminal will be secured below. The Presentation is not a shelter for raiders.'
The wounded man lifted his head. His hair was dark chestnut, cropped short and wet against his forehead. Thin glasses sat crooked across his face. He had a long, refined face and a mouth pressed tight against pain.
He looked at me once. He did not ask for help. He counted the exits instead.
That told me he was not a raider. Raiders shouted when they were afraid. Survivors watched doors.
'Move him,' Corvin ordered.
The prisoner's knees gave way. The patrol wolves caught him by the arms and hauled him upright.
Blood ran beneath his coat and gathered at his boot. I saw the stain spread across the hall stones. It was too dark for a clean blade wound and too high for a fall.
'He needs a healer,' I said.
Corvin looked at my hands. 'You have been reassigned.'
'Then assign someone who can keep him alive.'
'He is a border criminal.'
'Criminals also bleed.'
Hadley shifted closer. The kennel boys near the doors stopped pretending not to listen.
Corvin's voice became softer. 'You will not turn a lawful order into theater.'
'You brought a dying man into a ceremony and put a knife against him. I arrived with my mother. Only one of us made a spectacle.'
The patrol wolf holding the knife flinched. Corvin saw it.
I knew that wolf. I had closed the bite wound beneath his ribs last thaw. He had sworn a cave wolf caused it.
The second patrol wolf touched the scar beneath his ear. I had stitched that one too.
The third kept his face blank. His left boot was wet with blood that did not belong to him.
The knife remained clean. The prisoner had been cut before they crossed the snow, and the third wolf had stepped through the blood afterward. They had staged the scene for the hall and forgotten the boot.
Corvin saw my attention settle there.
'Take the prisoner downstairs,' he said.
'I will take him.'
'You will go to the kennels.'
'After I see the wound.'
'No.'
The wounded man bent suddenly. His body struck the stone floor before the guards could hold him.
Something cracked beneath his skin.
His fingers lengthened. Bone shifted through torn cloth. A dark wolf burst out of the ruined coat and collapsed on the Presentation floor, shackles still locked around its forelegs.
The room broke into shouts.
I crossed the space before Corvin could order anyone to kill it.
The wolf's flank rose once, then stopped.
I dropped beside him and pressed both palms against the torn muscle beneath his ribs.
Silver lines appeared under my hands.
They branched through the wound, bright enough for every witness to see. The pattern crossed inward, turned against the grain, and ended beneath the spine.
A blade had entered from behind. It had been twisted after it went in.
The wolf made no sound. His eyes opened, dark brown and fixed on my face.
I pressed harder. The silver lines spread across his ribs and caught on three older scars.
I knew those wounds.
The same turn. The same depth. The same deliberate damage.
Six years of wounds.
The patrol wolf with the knife took one step back. Hadley stared at the silver lines.
'That pattern isn't from the border,' she said.
'No. It was made by someone who knew where the ribs separate.'
The old healer near the stove dropped a cup. It broke against the stones.
Corvin looked toward the patrol wolves. His face remained calm, but the iron ring stopped moving against the chair.
'Chain it,' he said. 'Brand the beast as an enemy Alpha and take it below.'
The order went out before anyone moved.
I kept my palms against the silver-lit wound. The pattern pointed back through every patrol report I had copied, every survivor I had stitched, every lie told over my table.
The injured wolf turned his head toward me.
His mouth opened around a human word.
'Aurelian.'
Old Marta whispered, 'The royal line.'
Corvin's command had put his blood beneath suspicion before the chains touched the wolf.
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