Taming Fire

The man had been talking for eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes was precisely how long it took for a prepared speech to run out of architecture. Nine minutes to deliver the build up speech they had rehearsed. Ten and a half to bridge it to the actual ask. By eleven, if you were paying attention, you were hearing the thing underneath the thing. The real mechanism, stripped of any ornament.

Vorath of the Ashkeld pack was on the mechanism now.

I watched him from behind the stillness I had spent years constructing. It was a stillness that holds the quality of attention that gave nothing back. I learned early on that showing emotion to others in these type of situations only helped the opposing party. It allowed them to read you. And based on what they found, they would be able to adapt and better manipulate you into getting what they want.

Vorath was a large man. Dominant in the way that arrived before he did, the kind of alpha whose presence registered at the back of the throat before a wolf’s eyes had the chance to catch up. And he knew it. Had known it since adolescence, probably, and had learned to use it: the slight forward lean as he spoke, the deliberate expansiveness of gesture, the careful calibration of eye contact. The tools of a man who had built a career on the fact that most people found sustained proximity to a strong alpha uncomfortable.

Most people.

I was aware of Mira at my left shoulder. I could hear the familiar rhythm of her breathing just audible if I needed grounding, which I didn’t…yet.

Vorath’s two men stood behind him with an underlying rigid quality of people who had been told to look relaxed, but couldn’t quite embody it. My compact members, on the other hand, were actually relaxed as they leaned against the entry door. That difference was visible, and I suspected Vorath’s men could feel it. My lip twitched, fighting a smirk as I took in the smell of anxiety beginning to form from his guard. It was subtle, barely noticeable in fact…but I take pride in noticing the things not meant to be noticed.

“–trade routes that would benefit both territories significantly,” he was saying. He had a good voice. I gave him that. “The Reach’s eastern access is something we’ve long seen as an asset that’s currently underutilized. A formalized arrangement would change that. Our people, your infrastructure. And given our standing arrangement with the Iron Fold, you’d have the benefit of their political weight behind any agreement–corridor protections, dispute arbitration, the kind of backing that tends to discourage interference. Access to routes you’re currently maintaining at cost, with cover you currently don’t have.”

He paused. Left space for me to fill it.

I didn’t.

“We’re not asking for territorial concession,” he continued, smooth enough that the pause barely registered. “The Reach remains yours, entirely. We’re offering to supplement what you already have.”

Supplement.

I had been offered protection before. Alliance before. I had been offered, on two occasions I remembered with some clarity, the opportunity to dissolve the Reach into a larger body that would keep me comfortable and useful… and in effect, make me a tributary. A compensated, respected yet entirely defanged tributary. I had declined both with the same expression I was wearing now. My compact called it the flint face. Sometimes to my face, because they had earned that.

“What is the Iron Fold’s current arrangement with the Tessavar crossing?” I asked.

One question. The only question I had asked in eleven minutes.

Vorath’s pause was brief, a fraction of a second, before answering. The Tessavar crossing was neutral ground. Managed by the river holds, no single body held formal claim, the Iron Fold had transit rights in common with every other territory that bothered to file them.

All true. None of it what I had actually asked.

The Tessavar crossing was the only corridor that made his offer structurally coherent. Without access to it, rerouting trade through the Reach didn’t save his people anything – it cost them two days and a river toll. My question wasn’t whether they had transit rights. It was whether those rights were currently in dispute, and with whom, and why routing through my territory had become suddenly attractive enough to warrant this meeting and two tense men at his back.

I quickly noted he had answered around it beautifully.

“We’re aware,” he said, and here his voice shifted. There was now a degree of warmth that hadn’t been there before, the warmth of a man trying a different register, “that the Reach has historically been cautious about outside arrangements. Understandably so. You’ve built something remarkable here, and the natural instinct is to protect it.” A slight pause. “We’re also aware that remarkable things require maintenance. Your eastern coverage, for example – there’s a window between your third and fourth watch that our people could supplement. Not to mention, it seems your pack is a bit spread thin making it easier for intruders to slip through. With my people, we could fortify the watch, especially the eastern and southern marks.”

Beside me I felt Mira go very still. I on the other hand, made sure to keep my expression the exact same– not wanting him to know his offer of ‘supplementing’ my watch took me by surprise. Instead, I offered a response without missing a beat.

“I think it’s more fun when people get through,” I shrugged. ” An exciting way to let off steam.”

It went silent as my unbothered response landed on him. I could tell he was not expecting my indifference and was trying to figure out how else to persuade me.

He thought he had demonstrated capability. He thought he had shown me that the Ashkeld pack had intelligence…had reach. The kind of operational knowledge that made alliance with them a practical matter. It didn’t pass me that it also served as a gentle warning that was dressed as an enticement.

‘We know your gaps. We could fill them.’

What he had actually done was show me a thread. The loose end of something that ran back through my compound…a thread that needed to be fucking burned. There was a shift in the air. The rise of ‘alpha’, if you could call it that. A pathetic attempt in my opinion to increase his presence and send out a dominating scent.

Did he really think that would work on me? Doesn’t he know how many alphas I’ve killed?

I held direct eye contact with him, unfazed. Even my omega didn’t bother to react…and she can be quite volatile. His eyebrow rose in response as he once again turned up the notch on his scent. Based on Mira’s breathing, I could tell she was uncomfortable.

“Mira, get the air freshener would you? There’s something foul in here.” Vorath’s face went red. If I didn’t want to keep my poker face, I would’ve laughed in his face.

“How dare–”

“I appreciate the offer,” I said, cutting him off. “The Reach isn’t looking for external supplement at this time. If the Tessavar situation resolves into something that makes the arrangement more straightforward, you’ll hear from me.” I used the tone that had ended negotiations since I was twenty and was still learning how to make rooms listen…but now I was no longer learning.

Vorath looked at me for a moment, the red on his face gradually fading into a faint pink. He was good enough to know it was over.

“Of course,” he said. He rose. His men rose a beat after him. “The offer stands.”

“Noted.”

I watched them leave. The door closed. The quality of the air changed – the particular relief of a space that had been under pressure slowly equalizing. My compact members exchanged a look I didn’t see but knew was there.

I kept my eyes on the door for a moment after it closed.

“Commander.” My compact members beat their chest before peeling away to their next posts without being told. The outer courtyard sounds came briefly through as the main door opened and then went quiet again.

Mira stayed.

“Commander, he knew about the eastern and southern coverage,” Mira said.

“So I heard.”

She was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully: “He couldn’t have watched us.”

“No,” I said. “He couldn’t have.”

That was the thing. That was the part that made this different from a rival who had done their homework, from an enemy who had been patient and observant and simply paid attention over time. The Reach’s guard didn’t walk the perimeter in clean lines. They didn’t patrol in patterns a careful eye could map from the tree line. They were in the tree line. Positioned in the canopy, in the hollows of old growth, in the carved-out faces of the boulder formations along the southern mark — places that took years to learn and longer to use correctly. You didn’t see them unless they decided you did. Which meant you never saw them.

The assumption from the outside was that the Reach was always being watched, from all points. That was intentional. That was the point.

But it also meant there were no visible rotations to observe. No predictable movements to track from a distance, no gaps that revealed themselves to patient surveillance. The coverage looked seamless from the outside because the outside couldn’t see it at all.

The only way to know where the gaps were was to already be inside them.

“How many people have access to both rotations?” Mira asked.

She already knew. I knew she already knew. She was asking so I could hear myself say it.

“Four,” I said. “Two, not counting both of us.”

To know both corridors – the eastern window, the southern mark, the specific architecture of how they connected – you had to have been told…by someone who understood exactly what they were handing over. I didn’t bother to wonder why they did it. I’d ask that when I caught them…if I didn’t kill them first.

“I’ll start checking,” Mira said.

“No.”

She looked at me.

“I will,” I said.

She understood – she always understood, which was the only thing I had ever found genuinely useful about being known by another person. I didn’t have to explain the thing I couldn’t say out loud. Whoever had been talking to Vorath’s people was someone I had chosen. Mira checking would add a second layer of observation into a network that already had a breach in it, and it would change how the guilty person moved before I knew who they were.

I needed to know who they were before they knew I was looking.

“Alright,” Mira said. She left.

Late afternoon in the Reach had a quality I had never been able to describe to anyone who hadn’t seen it. The light came in at an angle that made everything look like it had always been there – the compound, the tree line, the packed-earth paths between the buildings…golden. Pure golden. As if the place had existed before the people in it and would exist after. Moments like these is when I felt the closest to being an ‘omega’. My wolf would bask in the golden warmth…I could practically feel her laying down belly up. Still, I couldn’t let my guard down–even if I wanted to– my wolf wouldn’t allow it. She never has.

I moved through my land without hurrying.

The training ground sat east of the central buildings, open on three sides. I heard the rhythm of a drill session before I even reached it. I silently stopped at the edge of the grounds without announcing myself.

Two compact members working a striking drill. The younger one was Fen. She stood at 5′6 with twenty-two years of living under her belt. I recruited her from the river settlements years ago when I saw that she was talented in the way of someone whose body understood the work before her mind caught up with it…but at this moment she was losing.

I watched for thirty seconds and noticed a small rotation in her right shoulder.

“Don’t tell us where you’re going,” I said.

Fen immediately adjusted. The next exchange looked different. The one after that, different again, the right hand no longer announcing itself a half-second before it arrived.

I moved on. I didn’t need to watch the result.

Davan fell into step beside me at the fork between the training ground and the supply paths, matching my pace with the ease of someone who had learned not to slow me for most things but knew he could be walked with if he matched me precisely. He was my eastern patrol lead. I could say it took me by surprise that someone 16 years my senior was willing to serve under me, but in reality it didn’t. I may not have an ‘alpha’ gene, but I do have something better.

Davan had a long scar that ran from his temple to his jaw, missing his eye by a fraction. His dark hair was mixed with gray in both the hair on his head and his beard. His designation was a beta, although he’s more alpha than most ‘alphas’ I’ve met…but I won’t ever tell him that.

“Supply run came back from the mountain settlements,” he said. No preamble– just straight to the point. The way I preferred it. “Grains and meats are good. Preserved goods are short. Laric wants to discuss the shortfall before end of week.”

“Thursday at 3 pm.”

“Also.” A half-beat. “There was a runner waiting when they came back. Iron Fold seal.”

“Leave it in the receiving room.” I said without missing a beat.

“Already done.”

He peeled away at the next fork, leaving me to continue walking on my own.

The cookfire smell reached me before I saw the flames – something dense and slow-cooked, started early and left to work all day. Every member of my compact preferred when the meat was slow cooked over a true flame outdoors rather than in the kitchens.

Somewhere ahead, a repetitive metal-on-metal sound. The maintenance crew, working the gate mechanism again. It needed full replacement this time, not repair.

The eastern tree line came into view as the afternoon shifted another degree toward dusk, the light in the trees going from gold to amber. Taking a deep breath, I returned to my office. As much as my compact did what they could for the betterment of everyone here, it didn’t run itself.

I was in my workroom when Mira appeared in the doorway.

The room was functional, unsentimental and clearly the accumulation of a system that worked. Maps were placed on the eastern wall, the detailed ones I’d commissioned, the kind that showed elevation and water and the character of terrain. The desk held only what was currently relevant. I kept it that way – clutter was a form of noise, and I preferred to hear myself think.

Mira set food on the corner of the desk. Bowl, bread, the small cup of something bitter I drank in the evenings and that she had stopped commenting on several years ago.

“You forgot to eat,” she said.

“I was in a meeting.”

“You were in a meeting for two hours. You’ve been walking the compound for one. You’ve been sitting here for forty minutes.”

I looked at her. She looked back with the expression of someone who had long since lost the capacity to be intimidated by eye contact and wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. I guess she was, knowing all that she’s been through during her dark years. She was one of the few people I, and my wolf, held nothing but respect for, all the more reason she was my second in command.

Sighing, I pushed my papers to the side and began eating.

Mira sat in the chair across from my desk. The chair that I’ve subconsciously started to think of as hers.

“Anytime you want something dif–”

“Mira.”

I knew what she was going to say. She was going to once again encourage me to eat a ‘proper’ meal. My wolf and I despised it. Meals in most territories were catered to the specific designation. Omegas were often encouraged to eat warm, soothing foods– especially those to help with fertility. It was meant to be comforting to keep omegas comfortable.

Neither my wolf or I believed in that. Food is meant to sustain you, but keep you sharp. Alert. Not to prepare you for nesting. Besides, Omegas who indulged in such foods were generally paired with an alpha that they submitted to. I’ve never met an alpha worth submitting to, and I doubt I ever will.

After that, we were quiet for a few minutes. The cookfire smell had drifted even this far, faint now but still there. Outside, the maintenance crew had finished – the repetitive metal sound was gone, replaced by the quiet of a compound settling into evening.

“The eastern rotation,” Mira said. Not a question. Just naming the thing that had been sitting in the room with us since we left the receiving room.

“I know.”

“Do you want me to–”

“I said I’ll handle it.”

A pause. She looked at me with the expression I had spent years learning to read – she was debating how much she should say.

“Be careful with it,” she said.

I looked at her, allowing her to continue.

“Whoever it is,” she said, “they’ve been careful enough that you don’t know yet. That means they’re good at it. Or they’ve been doing it a long time.” A pause. “Or both.”

Both.

Both was worse than either alone. Both meant skilled and practiced, someone who had made a long calculation and committed to it, who had been standing in this compound going through the motions of loyalty while running a separate account entirely.

“I know,” I said.

Mira rose. Paused at the door.

“The food,” she said, without turning.

“I’m eating it.”

She left. I sat in the quiet and finished the food and didn’t taste any of it.

I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at night. It wasn’t anything new for me and my wolf. She was always on guard, always watching. It didn’t exactly make it easy to get sleep– especially since we’ve long agreed to take turns keeping watch.

Usually, I would make my way to train or to my office but this morning I had the urge to go to the eastern border despite it being dusk. It was instinct and instinct is the only thing that I’ve learned to trust beyond a doubt in this world.

I’m sure my guard could use the help.

I pulled on my training clothes without thinking about it. Black shorts, sports bra and a jacket.

The eastern border was a twenty-minute walk from the main house, although it felt as if I blinked and was already at the edge of the forest.

I knew this tree line the way I knew my own hands – every hour, every season, the weather that made it miserable and the weather that made it beautiful. I knew where the ground softened after rain. I knew which trees had come down in the last three winters and which had been cleared and which had been left because removal wasn’t worth the effort. I knew the sight line from the third watch post, the ridge that interrupted coverage, the natural blind spot I had built the rotation around. A detail I had shared with exactly two people– excluding Mira.

I thought about each of them as I walked.

Seren first. She was a female alpha, which still felt like the wrong word for her seeing as she had come to the Reach because she was tired of what that designation demanded. Tired of performing a kind of authority she had never wanted. I only asked her to be who she was, not what anyone else expected her to be. She had been loyal for five years. The type of loyalty only developed by someone who had seemingly found a home. I trusted her the way I trusted few people.

The other option was Renna– an omega. She had arrived three years ago from a bonded mate who had used every advantage her designation gave him and called it love. I had not asked her to explain it. Had not asked her to perform recovery or gratitude or any of the things people expected from women who had survived that particular kind of damage. Just given her work and let her do it.

She had been proving herself ever since, with the intensity of someone who had decided this was worth everything. It didn’t take long for her to prove herself not only to me, but to others in the compact– earning her place amongst my higher ranks.

Two names. Two faces I knew. I did not want it to be either of them.

At the moment, I felt my Omega stir. It felt as though she was…anticipating something…or someone. I made quick work climbing up a tree, one known for having a strong floral scent–strong enough to override mine once I pulled my scent inwards.

I looked for a long moment. The trees. The dark between them. The specific quality of air at the edge of my territory where the Reach’s scent markers thinned and the world beyond started.

The forest gave me nothing back – no movement, no sound that didn’t belong, no scent that wasn’t already mapped in my catalogue. Whatever my omega had been bracing for didn’t arrive. The anticipation just sat in my chest, unresolved, which was its own kind of strange. She had never stirred like that without cause. She was not given to restlessness. Neither of us were.

I dropped from the branch and landed without sound.

Stood at the edge of my territory for a moment longer, looking into the dark between the trees.

Still nothing.

I decided to make my way back to the compound. I had a breach to find and two names I didn’t want to look at too closely and a letter from the Iron Fold sitting unopened in my receiving room. I had enough to occupy my attention without chasing a feeling I couldn’t source. It could wait.

I told myself that.

Besides, I had to trust that my compact members would alert me if anything was found to be out of place.

And in the off chance something slipped by, I smirked, I could use some new entertainment.

My omega hummed in agreement.

💌 Author's Note💌

I can't tell you all how excited I am for this one. And by the responses of some of the draft content some of you responded to (in the Unhinged Correspondence), so are you 🤭. Thank you everyone for your patience and giving me a head start on writing this one 🖤 For now, similar to how I started my other books, I'll be doing weekly updates. However, my goal is to have this completed by July so as we get closer to that point, updates may pick back up to twice per week.

Just know I'm using my time very wisely and working on something for you all that I hope to share this summer. In the meantime, feel free to let me know what your most excited about for this novella. Is is the female lead? Anticipating our incoming Alpha? Or perhaps some certain positions...I'm all ears.

I'll see you either Monday, for those who are on the newsletter, The Unhinged Correspondence. Or I'll see you next Thursday for Chapter 2.

Until Then, Stay Unhinged Darlings

-Nyra 🖤 🥀

P.S. Interested in the newsletter? Sign Up at nyralennox.com 💋