Page 36 of To Carve A Wolf

Human.

“Could be the Crescent cowards,” Garrick muttered beside me, his breath fogging in the morning chill. “Moving light. Hiding like rats.”

We pushed forward, winding through the pass—frost-slicked ledges and jagged rocks where a single misstep could snap bone. I took the lead with Garrick beside me, but just behind us, I could hear the steady steps of him.

Roran.

An Alpha from the Eastern wilds. Sharp-eyed. Sharper tongue. Dressed in that same deep crimson and black, his coat trimmed in dark fur and lined with silver thread—just flashy enough to remind everyone he was born rich and wanted more. Always more. But what set him apart wasn’t his clothes, or the smugness in his smirk—it was the thin silver ring pierced through his right eyebrow. A ridiculous thing to wear in battle, but I’d seen him use it to distract his prey more than once. That glint caught in torchlight always came just before blood hit the snow.

I didn’t like him. Never had. But he was a hell of a tracker—and that’s always the curse with Alphas: they’re useful until they start looking at your throne like it’s owed to them.

Roran hadn’t crossed the line. Yet. But I’d seen the look in his eyes more than once. Challenge.

We followed the scent to a clearing—half-buried in snow, ringed with broken stones and blackened roots. There were signs of a small camp: dying embers under a half-burnt log, bonesstripped of meat, piss frozen in the dirt.

Then we found them. Six of them. Dirty. Starving. Huddled behind makeshift barricades of rotting timber and bent steel. Not wolves. Humans.

They froze when they saw us, wild-eyed and pale. One broke immediately, turned to run. Another—a boy, barely a man—pulled a rusted dagger and lunged like he had something to prove.

Garrick caught him mid-charge.

Dragged him by the throat and slammed him against a rock with a wet crack. The others didn’t even resist after that. My wolves bound them in seconds. This wasn’t a fight. It was a clean-up.

I stepped toward the boy Garrick had pinned, watching blood run from his nose, down his chin.

“Where are your wolves?” I asked.

He just whimpered. No more than twenty. Skin stretched too tight over cheekbones. Filthy. Bones like twigs under his torn shirt. He smelled like fear and rot and false promises.

“We—we don’t…” he gasped. “We were told to wait. We were just doing what they said. And attack on the night of the new moon... we.. did..as they said.”

Garrick slammed a fist into his ribs. Bone gave with a wet crunch. The boy shrieked, legs buckling.

“Who said?” Garrick growled, already cocking his arm for another hit.

“The wolves. They said if we helped them…” the boy sobbed, clutching his side, “if we spied, gave them routes, maps, anything… they’d turn us. Said they’d make us pack.”

Roran snorted behind me. “And you believed them?”

The boy blinked through tears. “They said the Crescent Moon were gods. Said the change was coming. That they’d take the north, and we’d be the first new wolves.”

I stepped forward slowly, crouched just enough to meet his eyes.

“You thought betraying your kind would earn you a place in ours?”

He didn’t answer. I stood, and in the silence that followed, Roran spoke again—amused, lazy.

“Cute,” he said, voice like poison-dipped silk. “They thought they could buy the bond with lies and scraps.”

Garrick turned to me, jaw clenched, waiting for the command.

“Crescent Moon used humans,” I muttered, disgust tightening like a coil in my gut. “To infiltrate. To hide. To bleed us from the inside while they died in the shadows.”

The boy nodded frantically, coughing through blood and panic. “They—they told us to stay out here. Keep quiet. Said more were coming. We didn’t know… they never came back—we didn’t know they were all dead—”

“They’re not coming back,” I said flatly. “You were bait. Fed lies by wolves who already knew their graves were waiting.”

Garrick stepped back from the boy, his jaw clenched, breath fogging the air.

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