Red's Wolves

Chapter Four

Sleep was impossible for Jere that night. Pacing was all he could do even to begin to calm his nerves. He just couldn't get the conversation he had had with Alera from earlier that day out of his mind. That she was going to be sold away to some Prince like she was no more than goods to be traded made him sick to his stomach the more he thought about it. And there was nothing he could do, which made him feel even worse.

He stopped his pacing just long enough to glance out from the window of his room in the small cottage where he lived with his father. One of the perks of being the son of the stable master was the private residence provided to them in addition to his father's service. It was how Jere and Alera were able to grow so close—they had lived together for as long as Jere could remember. The thought that he could be living in that same cabin without Alera there in the castle created an empty void in his heart that he never thought he would need to experience. To look up from his bedroom window and not see Alera's room alight in the darkness...

He glanced up at that same castle and could see her candle still burning through her window up in her tower. Not only did that assure him she was still there, but he wondered if she was having as hard a time falling asleep that night as he was.

Or if it was for the same reasons.

Jere folded his arms and leaned against the wall, admiring how the shadows played along Alera's bedroom walls, or at least what he could see from where he stood. Did she have any idea what she meant to him? How could she? He was only the stable boy; he was only the help. And every time he tried to mention it to her, he ended up tongue-tied, or she was distracted, or they were interrupted by that damn maidservant—"I heard the new stallion gave you such a difficult time this afternoon, you needed the princess to help you tame it."

Or his father.

If it had been any other day, Jere would have preferred to ignore the playful jest. Instead, he turned his attention from the window to find his father, Palo, the lord stable master of the kingdom, standing in the doorway of his bedroom. The older man's attention was on the window and beyond, and Jere knew there would be no denying what he was doing. Again. Not with what he knew was a look of pure agony in his stare.

Clearing his throat, Palo took a step into his son's room, casually looking around as if he was examining his bookshelf for the first time.

"I had also heard that Princess Alera was to be married to Prince Nicholas of Abigor."

"Seems news travels fast," Jere muttered as he sat on the edge of his bed, his back towards the open window.

The look his father gave him was dripping with pity, and it made Jere feel even worse. Even more so when the man sat next to him on his bed. He heard him release a breath, and he knew what was coming next.

"You need to find your peace, Jere," he said softly, as if afraid his words would carry out the very window and drift up to the princess herself. "Once and for all. You and I both know... we know that regardless of how you feel, Alera will always be outside of your status. It's just how it is. She's a princess destined to be someone's queen, just as you're my son, and one day you'll be—"

"The King of Horses?" Jere interceded.

His father did not seem to appreciate the comment and scowled. "My father was stable master, and his father before him. King. Prince. None of it matters when there's a roof over your head and food on your table."

"It does if the woman you love is being sent away to live like a prisoner in Abingor."

"Prince Nicholas is a powerful man who will provide for Alera."

"Provide her with a cell once he realizes the truth of her blood." Jere didn't know when he jumped to his feet, but he was pacing, the thoughts of the potential treatment of Alera making his own blood boil. "You've seen how she's scorned and avoided here, and these are her own people. Imagine what will happen when she's in a foreign land, all by herself."

"Enough, Jere." His father stood and met him in the middle of the room, ceasing his pacing. A strong, calloused hand rested on Jere's shoulder. "Mere friendship, no matter how great, will never bridge the chasm. You must let her go. For her sake. And for yours."

He held his father's gaze, but he could not agree with his words. "I won't accept that. There must be another way." Jere took a step backwards, out from under his father's touch. "I can't give up hope, and I know she won't either."

Palo remained where he stood for a moment, then another. Jere waited for him to say something else, to counter his convictions, but he only shook his head and began walking towards the door.

The silence was too much, even for Jere. Not when there was already so much screaming in his mind.

"I know not all is lost, Father. I just need to find a way."

Only then did his father stop at the threshold and turned back to look at his son over his shoulder. "Let's just pray is not straight to the hangman's noose."

-----

Shadows danced in Jere's room, but she couldn't tell if he was alone or had a visitor. She tried not to think of the latter, not after the conversation they had earlier that day. The connection between them in that yard—the conversation—it was intense. Almost too intense. She hadn't been able to shake the feelings since.

That tomorrow was her eighteenth birthday made none of it any better.

Age would no longer be a shield; it would no longer be a protection. She would be a woman grown, and apparently too old for her father to want anything else to do with if he was in such a hurry to sell her off.

It was bound to be the worst birthday yet.

The celebration itself would be tepid at best, surrounded by unwanted guests with artificial well-wishes and fake smiles. By then she'd be certain the news of her arranged marriage would have circulated among the masses, the gossips they all seemed to be. How many would attend tomorrow just to see her reaction? To see if her canny blood would surface and create a spectacle before she was shipped off to Abingor it was too late to stare?

But maybe Jere was right. Maybe this would be her last, after what he had said. But not only said... that look in his eyes above all else. It was fear. He was truly scared for her and her well-being. He was the strongest and bravest man she knew, but if he was terrified—The light in Jere's room finally dimmed as the moon was the brightest at its apex. Almost too bright—like the early hours of her birthday needed just a little more light to get her through it all. She was going to turn down her own light when she heard them. Looking out towards the forest that bordered the castle grounds, she waited, and heard it again.

Wolves.

To hear them at all was a rarity. Generally, the howls could be heard in the distance on nights such as that one, but to hear them so loud and so close was beyond unusual.

And they continued. Their loud and mournful howls made the hair of her arms stand up on end. She tried to close her eyes, to somehow drown them out on her own, but it was no use. She wanted them to stop—no. She needed them to stop. Because their song of mourning was resonating with her own sadness, and she needed to drown them out before she spiraled into a deeper pit of despair.

Turning from the window, she retreated deeper into her room, to her bed and the table beside it. There sat a small, square music box saved from her childhood. Almost as a relief, she opened it to allow its mechanical melody to resonate within the walls of her room. The same lullaby she hummed to the horse earlier that day, its soothing tune affecting him as it always had her. She closed her eyes and pretended it was her mother who was humming the lullaby to her, whose lap she was lying in as she lay down on her pillows. Who wiped away her tears as they fell. But no one was there to wipe away her tears, or hold her, or help her get to sleep.

She wished for her mother. She wished there was a way out of this mess her father had sold her into. Anything she could do to get out of it, to get as far away as those wolves howling.

And as the tears fell, as the melody played, and as the wolves howled, she swore she felt as if someone was finally watching over her as she drifted off into a restless slumber.