The Silent Wolf of Wilde

Sixteen Years Earlier

Little Domi

Domi knows something is wrong when his mother’s hand closes around his wrist beneath the cuff of his sweatshirt.

She isn’t hurting him, but Lena never holds on this hard unless she’s scared, and she’s usually much better at hiding it. She stands beside him near the back wall of the service-wing common room with her shoulders straight and her pale hair pinned away from her face, but her fingers are cold against his skin. The room smells like bread cooling on wire racks, dishwater, coffee that’s been sitting too long in the pot, and the bleach somebody used on the floor after lunch. It should feel safe. Domi has spent half his life here, sitting on the counter while Lena folds kitchen towels or racing the other service-wing children between the storage shelves when no adults are looking.

Tonight, nobody’s talking. Even the little kids have stopped whispering.

Alpha Archer Wilde stands on the low platform at the front of the room, where the pack holds staff meetings when the main assembly room is too formal or too full. He’s wearing a black suit with his coat buttoned all the way up, his dark hair brushed neatly back from his face, and he has the same blue-gray eyes Domi sees in the mirror when he washes up before bed.

Lena told him once that Archer is his father.

Domi knows it’s true because of the eyes, and because Bennett writes Dominick Wilde on the clinic forms when Domi needs them. Nobody says it in front of Archer. Nobody says much of anything in front of Archer unless he asks first.

Bennett Fitzgerald stands behind him with a thick paper binder open in one hand. He has dark hair, careful eyes, and a way of talking that makes everything sound like proof somebody else has failed. Domi’s never liked him. Bennett smiles at Lena when he sees her in the service wing, but the smile never reaches his eyes, and afterward his mother always gets quieter.

“There’s been disorder here,” Archer says.

He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to.

The people gathered around the tables stop shifting and looking at one another. Domi sees Tessa by the kitchen door, her youngest boy pressed against her leg with his cheek flushed red from coughing. The boy has been sick for days. Yesterday, Domi watched Tessa wrap two pieces of bread in a dish towel and tuck them beneath her apron before the kitchen supervisor came back through.

He didn’t tell anybody. He wouldn’t have, even if they’d asked.

Bennett clears his throat and looks down at the binder. “Food was taken from the pantry without permission. Assigned work was left unfinished. Instructions were ignored.” He turns a page, though Domi doesn’t think he needs to. “The service wing has forgotten the difference between need and entitlement.”

Tessa’s face goes white.

Lena’s grip tightens again.

Archer looks across the room as though he’s disappointed by a mess somebody left in his house. “You’ve forgotten your place.”

Lena shifts half a step in front of Domi. “Stay behind me,” she whispers.

He hates when she says that. It always means she knows something bad is coming before he does, and she never has time to explain it.

Still, he nods.

Archer lifts his chin. “Kneel.”

The command hits the room so hard Domi feels it in his teeth.

Tessa goes down first. Her knees strike the floor, and her little boy makes a frightened sound before he drops beside her. The woman near the laundry carts folds next, then the kitchen supervisor, then everyone else, bodies bending beneath something they can’t push away.

Lena’s knees start to give.

Domi grabs the side of her cardigan, panic climbing so quickly that he doesn’t have time to decide whether he should be afraid.

Tessa only took bread because her boy was sick. Lena didn’t do anything. None of them did enough to deserve this.

“You can’t make them,” he says.

His voice comes out louder than he expects, sharp enough that it cuts across the room.

For a second, nothing changes.

Then Archer’s command jolts.

Domi feels it before he understands it. The pressure holding everyone down doesn’t disappear, but it cracks apart in uneven pieces, like somebody has kicked the legs out from under a table. Lena straightens first. Tessa looks up. One by one, the workers pull themselves upright, breathing hard as though they’ve been underwater too long.

No one speaks.

Bennett’s fingers tighten on the binder.

The guards along the wall turn toward Domi.

Archer doesn’t move, but his eyes settle on him with a focus that makes Domi’s stomach drop.

“What did you say?” Archer asks.

Lena steps in front of him so quickly that Domi bumps against her back. “He’s a child.”

Archer doesn’t look at her.

Domi swallows. His mouth has gone dry, but Tessa is still holding her little boy’s hand by the kitchen door, and Lena’s knees are red where they nearly hit the floor.

“I said you can’t make them,” he says again, quieter this time.

Bennett takes one step forward. “Alpha, he shouldn’t be able to interfere with your command.”

“That’s enough,” Archer says.

The pressure comes down again, cleaner this time.

Everything in the room goes still.

Domi doesn’t.

He tries to bend his knees because Lena has his hand now, and he can feel how badly she wants him to obey, but his body won’t move. He isn’t trying to fight. He doesn’t know why he can’t make himself go down. The command presses around him like cold water, but it never gets inside him.

Archer sees it.

Something changes in his face. It’s small, but Domi sees it anyway, the way he sees a hunter’s trap half-buried under leaves when the metal catches light.

Lena pulls him toward the kitchen corridor. “We should go.”

Archer turns away before he answers. “Take him home.”

It sounds like permission.

Lena doesn’t take him home.

The second the common-room doors close behind them, she pulls him through the kitchen instead. They pass the bread racks and industrial sinks, then the cold pantry where sacks of potatoes and onions are stacked against the wall. The wall phone rings once behind them, and somebody answers it, but Lena doesn’t slow down.

Domi has to jog to keep up with her.

“Mama, what’s happening?”

“I need you to listen to me.” Her voice is low and tight. “You don’t argue, and you don’t stop unless I tell you to.”

The fear in her voice makes him quiet.

She takes him through the back delivery door, out past the dumpsters and loading bay, where rain has started to come down in hard, cold drops. The service yard is empty except for two maintenance trucks and the yellow security lights shining over wet gravel. Beyond the garages, the estate grounds fall away toward the boundary woods.

Lena doesn’t look back.

Domi knows the woods behind Wilde Estate. In summer, when the guards are busy at the front gate and Archer is somewhere inside the main house, Lena brings him to the edge of the property with a blanket and a bag of apples. There’s an old oak beyond the boundary markers that lightning split down the middle years ago. The inside is hollow near the roots, and Domi used to crawl into it when he played hide-and-seek with the service-wing children.

Lena takes him there now.

By the time they reach it, rain has soaked through the shoulders of her coat and flattened loose strands of hair against her cheek. She drops to her knees beside the hollow and pulls him close, her hands shaking while she straightens the collar of his sweatshirt.

“You’re going to get inside,” she says. “You stay quiet, even if you hear me.”

Domi stares at the opening. It’s narrow and dark, full of wet bark and leaves.

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking you to.”

He doesn’t want to crawl inside. The hollow smells like mud, old wood, and something small that’s made a nest near the back. Still, Lena has never looked at him like this before. He gets down on his hands and knees and slips through the opening, pressing his back against the rough wood inside.

Before she pulls away, Lena reaches in and cups his face.

“You didn’t do anything wrong today,” she says.

“Papa was angry.”

Her mouth tightens. “Archer was angry. That doesn’t make you wrong.”

Rain falls behind her in silver lines. Domi looks past her shoulder toward the dark trees.

“Why did they stand up?”

For a moment, she doesn’t answer.

Then she lifts her hands between them, even though rain is soaking through her sleeves and her fingers are trembling.

You are mine.

The tight feeling in Domi’s chest eases a little.

He signs back, I know.

Lena presses her forehead to his for one brief second. Then she pulls away and starts covering the opening with branches and wet leaves until the hollow goes dark.

Domi hears her footsteps move away.

At first, there’s only rain, tapping against leaves and running down the inside of the tree in cold drops. He tries to breathe quietly. He tries not to move.

Then he hears footsteps, more than one person moving through the storm with the slow, careful rhythm of wolves who already know where they’re going.

Domi presses both hands over his mouth.

“Lena,” a man calls.

Bennett’s voice carries through the trees.

Domi’s stomach twists.

“You can stop this now,” Bennett says. “Bring him out, and no one else gets hurt.”

Lena answers from somewhere near the path. “You said he was a child.”

“He’s a problem we can’t ignore.”

“He’s eight years old.”

“He broke the Alpha’s command.”

The words turn Domi cold.

A growl rolls through the trees, low enough that the hollow seems to vibrate around him. Something moves past the narrow crack between the branches Lena used to hide him. Domi sees black fur, a shoulder, a paw sinking into mud, and then the scent reaches him.

Wet fur. Bitter ash. Something sharp and sour meant to smell like wolves who live outside pack territory.

Underneath it, he smells Wilde security sheds, boot oil, wet jackets, and the soap the guards use after training.

Lena knows it too.

“You brought your own guards out here dressed like rogues.”

“By morning,” Bennett says, “that’s what the pack will believe.”

Domi hears Lena move. A boot scrapes over a root, then something hits the side of the tree hard enough to shake rainwater loose from the branches.

“Don’t touch me,” she says.

The wolf growls again.

Domi wants to crawl out. He wants to run to her and bite whoever has made her sound afraid, but he remembers what she told him, and he stays where he is even though his whole body is shaking.

A man says, “He’s near. I can smell him.”

Lena makes a sound like she has tried to pull away.

The branches over the hollow shift.

A face appears in the opening. It belongs to one of the guards Domi has seen outside the training yard, though he can’t remember the man’s name. His eyes shine gold in the dark, and black fur has spread over his hands and wrists, his fingers stretching into claws.

Domi scrambles backward, but there’s nowhere to go.

The guard reaches inside.

Domi kicks hard enough to catch him across the cheek. The man swears, grabs his ankle, and drags him toward the opening. Domi claws at the inside of the tree, but wet bark breaks under his fingers. He catches the edge of the hollow with both hands and tries to pull himself free.

“Let him go!” Lena screams.

The guard drags him out.

Rain hits Domi’s face. He lands in the mud, and before he can get up, the guard catches him by the front of his sweatshirt. Lena rushes toward them, but another man steps in front of her, farther shifted than the first. Fur covers his arms and chest, and his hands are broad, clawed paws with fingers long enough to close around Domi’s throat.

“Don’t,” Lena says.

Her voice breaks on the word.

The half-shifted guard looks toward Bennett, who stands beneath the trees with rain running off the hood of his jacket.

Bennett’s face is calm.

“Make sure he understands,” he says.

The clawed hand closes around Domi’s neck.

The guard forces him back against the jagged edge of the split oak. Pain flashes white behind his eyes when claws tear into the right side of his throat, and he tries to scream for Lena, but nothing comes out except a broken, choking sound.

He kicks at the guard’s legs and claws at the wrist holding him, but he’s too small and the grip’s too strong. Blood runs warm beneath the collar of his sweatshirt, and the rough bark digs into his back.

Lena is crying now.

Two guards hold her away from him, but she’s still fighting hard enough that one of them curses.

“Please,” she says. “Please, he’s only eight.”

Bennett’s voice comes from somewhere beyond the roaring in Domi’s ears.

“He won’t remember this.”

Domi knows he’ll remember Lena’s hands and the way she told him he was hers. He’ll remember Archer looking at him in the common room as if he had become something dangerous.

Then something inside him tears loose because it wants to live.

Heat rips through his body. His bones twist so fast he can’t understand what’s happening, and the guard loses his hold with a shout as Domi drops into the mud. His palms strike the ground, but they aren’t hands anymore. White fur rushes over his skin. His body shrinks and reshapes, and the pain in his throat becomes something deeper that drives him forward before he can decide what he’s doing.

A broken bark tears out of him.

The men step back as Lena drops to her knees in the mud.

Her hair has come loose around her face, and rain mixes with tears on her cheeks, but she doesn’t look afraid of him. She lifts one shaking hand between them.

Run.

Domi stares at her. He wants to go to her. He wants her to pick him up and carry him away from Bennett, away from the guards, away from the tree that failed to hide him.

When another wolf lunges toward him, Domi ducks beneath the low branches and runs.

He tears through the wet brush, deeper into the boundary woods before anyone can catch him. Shouts follow through the rain, and a moment later the estate alarm starts up behind him, warning Wilde that rogues have crossed the property line.

By morning, those men will be rogues, and he’ll be the boy who survived them. Domi has smelled Wilde security beneath the false scent, though, and Lena told him to run.

He keeps running.