Herbalists' Cache homecoming

blackfell so often allows gjalla to dictate him. so often lets her step in, lets her pull him back, lets her steer him where she deems fit. but this time she had crossed the line. perhaps he had been too soft. too weak, that gjalla thought she had the right. she had interfered, humiliated him, wounded his pride, called his actions into question before svalla of all women!

his fury is immediate, visceral. he whirls on gjalla first, teeth bared, snapping like a tethered wolf, a snarl tearing from his throat. it is a warning growl but all the time, she surely knows he would never lay tooth or claw on her. to do so would call into question any scrap of moral still home to him.

still, rage is laden in his voice. this is none of your fucking business.

it is rare that he speaks to her like this. rarer still that he resents her for her control over him. but he does now, in the heat of his anger, in the weight of svalla’s accusations. she had made him look small. had made him look like a dog that needed to be reined in. he was no fucking dog.

he was a hound. honed for the hunt—and not sated at all. which brings that scorn boiling back towards the white she-wolf wearing scars of her homeland. he turns back to svalla, eyes burning like embers in the snow, and spits at her feet.

you are a woman gone mad. rabid. i am no boy, and you are no child. do not cling to girlish fantasies—men do not make themselves complacent. i was not born a wildling. i was born my father’s son. a shallow breath, and faust? a bastard. perhaps he left to become more than the shadow of his tyrant father. he laughs in her face. you are a woman—it is not your fault you don’t fucking understand. you don’t know what it is to be a son. he steps, and then steps again, cloaking her in his shadow. testing waters. silently daring her to turn teeth on him—and she was so irrational she just might. but no matter how he bluffed, could he truly kill her?

no.

but he will not give her another second of his time. does not let her see anything else that might betray the truth of what he feels. instead, he turns, coldly pushing past his mate. ruby looking to the jutting glacier in the distance, where ice swallows the sky. his jaw tightens. he snaps his teeth at her.

he is there. now get out of my sight.