Chapter 379 She Rode Him (Not Like That)
A grey wolf tore through the tree line at Alpha speed.
Agnes heard him before she saw him, the specific cadence of paws hitting frozen ground at a velocity that turned the forest floor into a percussion instrument. The sound was wrong for a patrol wolf. Too fast. Too heavy. The particular acoustic signature of an Alpha at full sprint, covering ground at a speed that regular wolves could maintain for seconds and Alpha wolves could maintain for as long as fury required.
Garrett.
She had seen him shift before. Twice. Both times at a distance, both times during training exercises where his wolf was operational rather than personal, and the impression she had carried was large, grey, efficient.
Up close was different.
His wolf was bigger than she had expected. The shoulders were broader, the chest deeper, the overall architecture carrying a mass that had no business existing on a man who hadn’t been born an Alpha. Garrett Darkhowler had earned the title through combat and loyalty and the specific, stubborn refusal to accept any outcome he disagreed with, and his wolf had apparently received the memo, because the animal running toward her looked like it had been designed by a deity who valued intimidation and had overcorrected.
The golden retriever had teeth. She just hadn’t been close enough to see them.
He shifted three feet from her. The transition was fluid, wolf to man in a single stride, and the man who emerged was already reaching for her, his hands finding her face, her jaw, pulling her forward.
He kissed her.
The kiss was hard, urgent, carrying the compressed relief of a man who had spent hours running on fury and fear and the matebond’s whispered confirmation that she was alive, and who had just confirmed it with his mouth. Agnes’s free hand fisted in his shirt.
The kiss lasted three seconds, and the three seconds contained every word neither of them had time to say.
Andrew stirred against her chest.
Terrible timing. Excellent grip. The boy had slept through a forest escape and a five-pulse alarm and was now waking up for a kiss.
Garrett pulled back. His eyes moved across her face. The split lip. The silver burns visible above her wrists. The exhaustion carved into lines that hadn’t been there this morning. His jaw tightened so hard the tendon jumped.
Then his eyes found Andrew.
The question formed on his face and dissolved in the same instant, because the matebond was carrying her emotions at full volume, and the emotions wrapped around the boy were fierce and protective and carried a permanence that answered every question his eyes were composing.
Boots in the forest behind them. Distant, closing fast, the organized cadence of a pursuit team following a trail.
Garrett shifted. The grey wolf dropped to a crouch, his body low, his shoulders angled, presenting his back.
Riding wolves was unconventional. It wasn’t done. Wolves were partners, allies, brothers in combat. They were never mounts. The suggestion, under any other circumstance, would have been an insult to the wolf.
Garrett: Agnes. Now.
She didn’t hesitate. She swung her leg over his back, settled her weight behind his shoulders, and locked Andrew against the wolf’s neck in front of her. The boy’s eyes flew open, wide and glassy with the disoriented terror of a child waking up on a moving animal.
“Stay down,” Agnes told him, pressing his body flat against the wolf’s fur. “Face down. Hold on to the fur with both hands. Don’t open your eyes until I say.”
Andrew nodded. His fingers closed around fistfuls of grey fur with the desperate grip of a child who had been given an instruction and intended to follow it with his entire body.
Garrett ran.
The acceleration was immediate and violent, zero to Alpha speed in three strides, the forest blurring into a tunnel of dark trunks and frozen branches. Agnes locked her thighs and leaned forward, her chest covering Andrew’s body, her hands gripping the thick fur at Garrett’s shoulders, her weight balanced by instinct and the specific muscle memory of a woman who had been trained on horseback since childhood and was applying the principles to a wolf who was faster than any horse she had ever ridden.
The pursuit team was behind them. She could hear them. Multiple wolves, running in formation, closing the gap with the methodical efficiency of a hunt team that had been trained by her father, which meant they were good, and good meant the gap would shrink unless Garrett maintained maximum speed for the full three miles to the portal extraction point.
An arrow whistled past her ear.
The sound was thin, metallic, the particular whisper of a broadhead cutting air at high velocity. It missed her temple by inches and buried itself in a tree trunk to her left, the impact sending a spray of bark across her face.
Agnes:They have archers.
They were shooting arrows at her. Arrows. Her father, who’d told her that she was going to be a creepy emperor’s mistress, ordered his men to shoot at her. Brilliant strategy.
She rolled her eyes.
Garrett didn’t slow down. His stride lengthened. The forest floor was uneven, roots and rocks and frozen ruts that would have broken a horse’s leg, and the wolf navigated all of it at speed without breaking rhythm, his paws finding solid ground with the instinctive precision of an animal built for exactly this terrain.
A second arrow hit a tree to her right. A third went high, cutting through branches above her head. The archers were firing from wolf-back, which degraded accuracy but the volume was compensating, and the volume was increasing because the pursuit team was gaining.
Agnes pressed Andrew flatter against Garrett’s back. The boy was silent. His face was buried in grey fur. His fingers were white-knuckled. Whatever prayer a seven-year-old knew, he was saying it into a wolf’s neck.
The portal was visible. A gold shimmer between two trees, maintained by a mage Agnes couldn’t see, the extraction point Garrett’s team had established before he had run into the forest to find her.
Two hundred yards.
An arrow hit Garrett.
It struck his right hindquarter, the broadhead burying itself in the muscle above the joint, and the sound that came from the wolf was a snarl rather than a yelp, fury rather than pain.
“Garrett!”