Chapter 10: Out in the Territory

The next morning I woke up and checked my wrist first thing. Nothing. No silver lines. No warmth. No whisper. Part of me felt relieved. The other part wondered if I had imagined the voice in the firelight. “Wake.” It sounded ridiculous now, sitting here in daylight with tea cooling on the table.

Mara came in while I was finishing breakfast. “His Majesty requested your presence this morning, my lady. He wants you to join him on a ride through the territory.”

My stomach dropped. “Did I do something wrong?”

She smiled gently. “No. He simply asked. The carriage will be ready soon.”

I changed into warmer clothes and tried not to overthink it. When I met Kael in the courtyard, he was already mounted on a large black horse. Another horse stood saddled beside him, steady and calm.

“We’ll check the outer villages and supply stores before the heavy snows,” he said. “You don’t have to come if you’d rather not.”

I shook my head. “I’ll come.”

The ride took us beyond the Citadel walls and down winding mountain paths. The air smelled of pine and frozen earth. Our horses’ hooves crunched over light snow. Kael rode ahead at first, pointing out storage barns and guarded outposts. I stayed quiet for a while, watching how the soldiers straightened when he passed and how the villagers greeted him with respectful nods instead of fear.

At one supply post we stopped to watch workers load carts with grain and wool. I climbed down from my horse and helped steady a barrel that looked ready to tip. Kael didn’t stop me.

“You don’t seem like the stories,” I said after a while, brushing dust from my hands.

He glanced over. “How so?”

I shrugged. “The Lycan King is supposed to be ruthless. Cold. The kind of man who crushes anyone who looks at him wrong.”

Kael’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “That’s because the stories are written by people who dislike me. Or fear me. Usually both.”

We kept riding. The silence between us wasn’t uncomfortable. At the next village he spoke with a local elder about winter preparations while I listened. He asked questions that showed he actually knew the people’s names and their problems. Not just a ruler giving orders. Someone who paid attention.

By late afternoon the wind picked up. It cut through my coat and made my fingers numb on the reins. I tried not to shiver, but Kael noticed anyway. He pulled off his heavy outer coat and draped it over my shoulders without a word. The fabric still carried his warmth and that faint scent of pine and storm air.

“You’ll freeze otherwise,” he said simply.

The weight of it settled on me. It wasn’t much. Just a coat. But no one back home had ever done something like that without making me feel like a burden. I pulled it closer around myself and looked away so he wouldn’t see how much it affected me.

We turned back toward the Citadel as the light started to fade. The ride home was quieter. I kept thinking about the coat, about the way he had handed it over like it was the most normal thing in the world. About how safe the gesture made me feel when I had spent years feeling anything but.

That night in my rooms I sat by the fire still wrapped in his coat. It smelled like him. I told myself it was nothing. Just practicality. But I couldn’t stop wondering why such a small thing had cracked something open inside my chest. And why, for the first time since I left Black Hollow, I didn’t feel quite so alone.