Chapter 461

Thor’s wolf, still receiving zero response from the play bow, escalated.

He rolled onto his back. Full belly-up. Paws in the air. Tongue lolling to one side. The submissive position that, on any other wolf, would communicate deference and vulnerability. On Thor’s wolf, it communicated “look at my abs.”

Aurelia tilted her head again. Same direction as before. Same confusion. Her golden eyes tracked the upside-down wolf with the careful attention of a creature trying to determine whether this was a threat, a game, or a medical event.

She could rule out threat. She had zero framework for the other two.

Thor’s wolf rolled back onto all fours. Shook himself once. Reset.

Aurelia turned her head and looked at Tiberon.

The look was direct. Patient. Expectant. A wolf looking at the only person on this field whose instructions she understood, asking him with her eyes if the weird wolf was finished doing whatever the weird wolf was doing.

“Basic defensive,” Tiberon repeated. His voice carried no inflection. His face carried less.

Thor’s wolf sat up straight. Spine rigid. Chest out. Then he lifted one front paw and held it at an angle against his brow.

A salute. In wolf form. He had invented it. Nobody had asked for it.

Tiberon stared at the paw.

The paw held.

Then Tiberon turned away without acknowledging it, because acknowledging it would mean the salute existed, and if the salute existed, Thor would do it at every formation, every drill, every briefing, and every meal for the remainder of his military career and possibly into retirement.

Captain Halvek appeared at the edge of the field. He gave Tiberon a nod. Professional. Efficient. The nod of a man who had been managing Thor Crushturn for years and whose nod carried the specific weariness of that tenure.

He blew the whistle.

Aurelia flinched. Her ears flattened and her body tensed. The sound cut through her skull at a frequency she hated, a sharp, piercing shriek that served absolutely no purpose that a verbal command could accomplish and that the man with the whistle kept using.

The man with the whistle enjoyed the whistle and the enjoyment was personal and the personal was unnecessary and she wanted the whistle destroyed.

Thor’s wolf did not attack.

Instead, he howled.

Unprompted. Unnecessary. Unrelated to anything the drill required. A long, sustained, operatic howl that erupted from his chest and rolled across the training field and bounced off the castle walls and carried into the eastern forest where it probably confused several birds.

The howl had vibrato. He held the final note for four seconds longer than any wolf should hold any note, because Thor’s wolf treated silence as an enemy and this howl was the opening salvo of a war he intended to fight alone.

When the howl ended, he looked at the crowd.

The crowd did not howl back. The crowd stared at him with the collective expression of two hundred people who had just watched a wolf perform an aria before a basic defensive drill.

Thor’s wolf didn’t seem bothered in the slightest.

He began circling Aurelia.

First circle: sizing her up. His wolf moved at a measured pace, eyes tracking her body, her stance, her position, reading the wolf the way a soldier reads an opponent before engagement.

Second circle: checking her out. The pace slowed. The assessment shifted from tactical to personal. His eyes traveled across her glowing white coat with the thorough, shameless appreciation of a wolf who was gathering visual data he had absolutely no clearance for and filing it under a category that would get a human court-martialed.

Dexmon’s wolf was screaming.

Aegon: He is circling our mate. CIRCLING. That is a mating display. I am going to kill him.

Dex: Get in line. You are not the only wolf in this body who wants to kill him.

Aegon: Then why are we standing here?

Dex: Because my father is ten feet away and being removed from training a fourth time is not happening.

Next to him, Fin’s jaw was locked so tight the muscle was vibrating. His arms were crossed. His breathing was controlled. Everything about him was controlled. Everything about him was one circle away from becoming uncontrolled.

Xeon: Mate is confused. She does not understand what he is doing. He needs to stop. Make him stop.

Fin: I will handle it after the drill.

Xeon: After? AFTER? He is CIRCLING our mate right now. We handle this NOW.

Fin: We handle this after. I am not getting kicked out again.

They were correct. Aurelia was very confused. Her golden eyes tracked the circling wolf with growing bewilderment, her head rotating to follow him, ears alternating between flat and upright. Her body language broadcasted ’I have no idea what this means and I am waiting for instructions from the man who tells me what to do.’

“Crushturn!” Halvek barked. “She’s waiting.”

Third circle. Aurelia had enough.

She picked up her front paw and swatted Thor’s wolf across the face with it.

The contact was light. Dismissive. Zero claws, zero aggression, zero anything resembling a combat technique. The motion was a cat batting a toy off a shelf. She had decided this interaction was over and was communicating the decision through a method that was absolutely, categorically, completely incorrect.

This was supposed to be a defensive drill and she had just flipped the entire script. The defender had just become the aggressor. But the strike she used resembled swatting a fly. The opposite of what wolves did.

Where did Aurelia learn this?

Her mates had used one paw to move her back and forth between them. Her human used her hands every day for important things. Seemed logical.

The problem?

It worked.

Thor’s wolf stopped dead mid-circle as if someone had hit the emergency brake.

Captain Halvek pinched the bridge of his nose.

Thor looked at Aurelia. His head tilted. His ears went sideways. His expression shifted into something that, on a human, would have been hurt feelings, the specific face of a man who had just been slapped at a party and was still processing whether it was flirting or rejection.

Aurelia hit him again.

Same paw. Same face. Same catlike batting motion.

Thor’s wolf sat down. His ears drooped. His tail stilled. The drooping was genuine confusion, a wolf receiving a social signal he had never encountered in his life.