Blood on the Tide-Line

A rogue wolf with three broken ribs does not run toward deep water unless something worse is pushing him from behind.

I crouched on the rusted crane spar above Slipway Nine, tasting the mist. The Atlantic rolling into the harbor smelled of old kelp, diesel oil, and the dead-flounder stench of industrial rot. Beneath all of that sat the sour tang I had spent four nights stalking: scorched copper and burning marrow.

Airgiod-Rot.

Someone in the upper harbor was cooking raw silver into harbor runoff again. It turned wolves rabid within a week, rotting their brains until they chewed through their own tongues just to taste iron. The Harbor Warden had posted three hundred silver sovereigns for this one’s left ear.

Three hundred sovereigns paid three months of dock rent, canned stew, and generator fuel through the winter gale. It was good money, if butchering rabid shifters in the dark counted as an honest trade.

Below me, the grease-soaked timbers of the dry dock creaked.

A shadow dragged itself over the slipway. It moved with the jerky, broken gait of a beast whose joints were dissolving from the inside out. Shifter fur hung from its flanks in matted, sloughing clumps, revealing gray hide blistered by silver boils. Black bile dripped from its jowls, sizzling when it struck the wet granite pavers.

My wolf didn't whine or bark a warning. She coiled behind my ribs, cold as a butcher’s hook. Five years alone on the Deepwater Docks had taught both of us that solitary rogues had no credit to spare.

I checked the wind. North-northwest, straight off the outer breakers. It blew my scent out toward the open channel, keeping me invisible.

The feral stopped by an overturned skiff, snout lifted to the mist. His left eye was a blackened silver scab; his right burned with that sickly yellow fire of rotting nerves. He was hunting anything with a pulse.

I reached behind my back for the cold grip of my dock-spike.

Not silver. Pack alphas favored silver on formal baldrics to show rank. I preferred tempered shipyard iron dipped in salt brine. Brine purged rot, while thirty inches of forged iron snapped spine bone clean.

I shifted my weight. The crane spar groaned under my boots.

The feral’s good ear twitched. He whipped his head toward the sound, letting out a wet, rattling hiss.

I didn't wait for him to scent the grease on my leather duster. I dropped.

Twelve feet of freefall ended in a hard crouch on the slime-coated slipway. The impact rattled my teeth, but my knees absorbed the shock. Before the feral could pivot, I lunged forward, boots skidding across the rotting cedar planking.

He was faster than a dying animal had any right to be.

The wolf twisted, snapping his jaws inches from my throat. Yellow fangs clacked together with the force of a bear trap. I caught the rank reek of his breath—foul as stagnant bilge—and threw my left forearm up to block.

His teeth caught the thick boiled leather of my bracer. The sheer weight of his bulk drove me backward against the rusted hull of a beached trawler. Steel plates groaned behind my spine.

Pain flared hot down my left arm as the leather strained. If he bit through to the skin, the Airgiod-Rot in his saliva would seep straight into my bloodstream.

Kill it, my wolf growled.

I didn't panic. Panic was for soft pack wolves who grew up sleeping in heated mansions on the cliffside.

I hooked my right boot behind his ruined back leg, kicking out with everything I had. The feral’s shattered ribs gave way with a sickening crunch. He shrieked, the high-pitched squeal of a punctured lung, and his grip on my arm slipped by half an inch.

Half an inch was all the room I needed.

I brought the iron spike up from below, driving the blunted pommel directly into the raw silver boil on his jaw.

The brute shrieked again, his jaws unhinging as the shock tore through his skull. He staggered backward, splashing through a pool of dark tide-water. Black blood sprayed across the stones.

I stayed on his blind side, counting the seconds between swells.

A seventh wave was building beyond the breakwater. When it hit the seaward pilings, a heavy wall of icy brine would breach the low slipway sill.

I backed toward the rotted cedar planking at the water's edge, tapping the iron spike against my boot heel. The rhythmic click drew his good ear.

"Come on, stray," I whispered. "Over here."

He lunged, driven by chemical madness.

Right as his paws hit the slick timber, the swell slammed home. A freezing surge of Atlantic saltwater exploded over the sill, catching the rogue broadside. The cold brine flooded his silver boils, searing the raw flesh and sweeping his footing out from under him.

While the surge pinned him floundering in the churning wash, I stepped in. I drove the tapered point of the iron spike straight down through the base of his neck, right where the skull met the cervical joint.

The steel bit deep into granite beneath the wood. I leaned all my weight into the shaft, twisting the handle a quarter turn.

The feral shuddered. A long, wet gasp whistled through black foam. His yellow eye rolled back, the manic fire guttering out. Then his heavy frame went limp in the receding foam.

Silence settled over the slipway, broken only by the rhythmic slap of the tide.

I planted my boot against the wolf’s thick neck and yanked the thirty-inch spike free with a wet scrape of iron. I wiped the dark gore on the hem of my duster and slid the heavy spike back into the leather frog at my belt.

I knelt in the brine, drawing my short skinning knife from my boot.

Taking the bounty token was nasty work, but three hundred sovereigns didn't care about blood on the floorboards. I sliced off the jagged left ear, wrapped the gristle in oiled butcher paper, and shoved it into the canvas pouch at my hip.

My knuckles were scraped raw where his muzzle had slammed into my wrist. I pulled off my glove and wiped the blood on the hem of my coat.

A sharp ache pulsed behind my ribs.

I paused, knife in hand.

The wind hadn't changed, but the air on my neck went ice-cold. My wolf froze behind my ribs. My pulse jumped, hammering against my throat as the surf muffled into a dull hum.

Then his scent hit me on the seaward draft, cutting clean through the dead fish, diesel grease, and copper rot.

Crushed cedar needles. Cold salt. Sharp steel.

My stomach dropped.

No.

Five years of gutting fish and hunting rabid strays in drainage ditches. Five years of pretending the bond had snapped the night he stood before two hundred wolves and called me an unworthy stray.

Mate.

The word flared in the back of my mind, small and vicious as a struck match.

My wolf didn't bark it with joy. She spat it like venom.

"You're late for the party, heir," I said aloud to the empty mist. I didn't turn around. I kept my knees bent, my boots planted on the wet granite, and wiped the blade of my knife against my thigh. "The bounty's already claimed."

Footsteps clicked against the iron ladder at the edge of the dry dock. Heavy, deliberate steps. The kind of stride that belonged to someone who had never had to run from a landlord or duck behind a fish barrel in his life.

"I didn't come for the rogue's ear, Fiadhuin."

Lorcuin's voice hadn't changed. It was still deep, smooth, and laced with that quiet, unyielding weight that made younger pack wolves bare their throats without thinking. It was the voice of a man born to inherit the largest territory north of the sound.

I stood up slowly, sheathing the knife and letting my right hand drop naturally to the pommel of my dock-spike.

I turned around.