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brúðr = bride

There's something about the clash of steel against steel that sings so sweetly to my soul. A begging for me to lean into the unmistakable rush of a blade mere millimeters from my cheek. Oh come, the dagger whispers, come and bleed.

The single dagger feels strange in my hand. I'm unbalanced with just Unn. Eira lays less than a meter away, buried in the forest mud after Bodil had disarmed me.

Bodil brings her broadsword down on me with all her divine strength. The hand of a vengeful god. I pivot right, just as the blade swings down. It cuts the end of one of my braids. My pale hair glimmers in the dusk light.

Before Bodil has a chance to catch her balance I swing around and run for Unn. Bodil's steps are right behind me. As if Death herself is breathing down my neck.

I dive for my knife and manage to grip it between my blood-soaked fingers just as the she-wolf kicks my ribs so hard I see stars. Though my vision is lost for a few seconds, the familiar sound of Bodil's great sword cutting through the air slices through my pain.

Turn, the forest says, turn, what is pain compared to Dauði?

Bodil has always been strong. But I've always been fast.

I twist to my back and let out a barely audible wheeze of pain. The stars haven't completely left my vision. The pain tastes sweet and the stars are so beautiful I could cry.

Steel and steel sing out into the air yet again as Unn and Eira protect me from Bodil's sword.

We are both silent. Sweat stings my eyes and the taste of iron fills my mouth. As the stars clear I make out Bodil above me, her weight pressed against her blade. Her ice-blue eyes stare into my own. A wolfish smirk pulls at her lips, revealing sharp canines.

"Do you yield?" Bodil asks.

I laugh and my ribs threaten to cave in. She can taste my pain. I know it. She loves it.

"Only to you, my lovely brúðr," I half-tease half-wheeze.

Bodil is still as a statue on top of me. When she moves it's not to get off of me it's simply to lean in more and press her forehead against mine. She smells of blood and dirt and sweat and steel. How I love her for it.

"You were slow today, Victorine Aaliyah."

Her sword moves upwards right up until the blade sinks into the soft skin of my neck. Warm blood starts to trickle down my neck.

I laugh into her brown hair. "Not slow enough for you to take a piece out of me, Bodil."

"Yet," she says against my lips.

"Yet."

She rolls off of me at last. The sun has nearly set. Nothing but deep orange paints what little of the sky we can see through the towering trees.

The wolves trees, my mother calls them. Our trees. Untouched by humankind. With magic still running through their roots. My mother always tells me to stop and feel it, remember what you have, remember what can be taken away, burned and ruined. The price of war, she tells me.

I've never been able to feel it like she can. There's no hum beneath my fingers or feet. When I was younger it bothered me how my mother would simply stand unmoving by the oak tree she buried her own mother under. How? I'd ask. How could she stand so still for hours?

But then I found my own hum and I stopped asking questions.

Bodil stands, swift as everything she does and pulls me up with her without a care for my bones.

I hiss out, vicious and deep, "Bodil."

She smiles at me, a tad cruel and beautiful, "I'm so sorry, princess, would you like me to carry you to Dagny?"

My lips pull back into a full snarl and excitement builds deep in my chest and when I come at her, I come at her with no steel, just claws and fangs. She meets me mid-jump

+

Dagny is quite cruel while wrapping my ribs.

"Your carelessness will get you one day, rising alpha or not. You are not indestructible."

"Trust me," I wince as Dagny tightens up the last of the bandages, "I don't think I'm indestructible."

She steps back and assesses me and all my black and blue bruises. "Then act like it,

"Dagny," Bodil sighs, the first thing she's said since we walked in here and got blood all over the white tile. "What's a fight without a little blood?"

Before Dagny can answer I smile, all sharp teeth and respond, "Not a fight at all is what I'd say. Can't get better without a few broken bones, a shattered cheek, bruises so dark you can paint the stars on them."

"A severed ear," Bodil adds on.

"A severed ear," I repeat back.

Dagny shakes her head. "I don't like it," she says, surprisingly serious. "The way you two train, it's like you're preparing for something awful. This is the New Dawn, the generation your mother sacrificed so much for, we've got no need for wolves looking to start wars."

I smile, a little crueler than needed most likely. "We're not looking to start anything."

Dagny turns away from me, cleaning up her tools. Her words are heavy. "I wish I could believe you, Victorine, really I do. So much so, I do."

+

Bodil is quiet as I walk her back to the Packhouse. More often than not I'd stay with her-an Alpha's place is among her Pack members-but tonight I need to speak with my mother.

Before Bodil disappears into the warm house she turns to me. "I will stand with you, no matter what you do and where you lead me. I'll stand with you, I'll fight with you, I'll die with you."

I smile at her. "There'd be no greater honor for me than to stand and fight and die beside you. The greatest warrior the New Dawn has seen."

I press my cheek against her own. She slips inside and shuts the door, closing off the light and sound of the wolves inside, leaving me alone with the rustling of trees and the whispering of winds.

+

"Bodil won tonight I assume," my mother says eyeing me as I shut the door behind me.

"She did," I answer, a soft smile tugging at my lips.

"And it goes on and on," she replies, holding the end of the braid Bodil had cut.

"And on and on."

She smiles, the sad smile she's worn throughout my entire life.

She tilts her head as she brushes her thumb down a nasty bruise Bodil left. I stand a head taller than her now. I look nearly as old as her. Maybe even as old depending on the day.

I don't look much like her though. I inherited more from my father and her own mother.

She smoothes down my braid and rests her hand over my heart. Though my mother is no warrior she holds the scars of one. She has a rather large scar on the center of her right hand. To block a knife, she had told me.

It must have hurt, I remember saying.

Yes, it did. But my hand saved my life. It was painful for a long while. Sometimes things are painful, Victorine. Sometimes we must make decisions that hurt but they are decisions that must be made. Do you understand, sweet daughter of mine?

I nodded solemnly. As solemnly as a seven-year-old could.

She then gave me a sad-sweet smile and kissed my forehead.

I'm scared, I whispered from beneath my covers, just as she was closing my door. I'm scared.

That's alright, she whispered back. You are Victorine Aaliyah. You'll be brave when the time comes. I know it.

I'll be brave, I repeated.

Her eyes shone with unshed tears before she turned and closed the door, leaving me alone with nothing but the moon and stars.

"I remember the first thing I thought when you were born," my mother says, breaking the silence of the heavy night. "I remember it so clearly. I remember it all so clearly. The pain, your eyes, my thoughts, your father's tears. All of it is so vivid in my mind. It's hard to believe it was nearly nineteen years ago. It's hard to believe that I've lived longer among wolves than with humans."

"What did you think, mother?"

She sighs but her lips pull upwards at the corners. "That I would protect you, that you would be untouched by gods. You would never be their pawns."

"You've done well," I say.

"Yes, I dare say I have," she laughs. "My godless daughter."

She wanders towards one of the biggest windows in the house. It's nothing more than a giant frame for the forest, my mother's trees and her mother's.

The next words out of my mother's mouth are not so light.

"Your father still wants to try for a male heir." She holds up her hand before I can spit my curses on his name. "I've already told him I will give him no sons so as I have always told you, you have nothing to fear. But I feel it is important for you to know of your father's schemes to have some unborn boy steal your wolves and land."

I turn away from her and bite my tongue to stay my words. My angry, bitter, cruel words. It is not something unexpected. Alpha Eskelson has never seen me as his true heir. Too much tits and not enough cock.

It doesn't matter. I have the blood of the Death-Called Luna and Twice-Called prophet running strong through my veins. I will be the heir to Eskelson. An aging man and unborn boy can not change the tides of fate.

"He believes he's doing this to keep the peace. He thinks so soon into this new age of peace, this disruption of a female heir might break it."

"There will be no peace, not if he plans to steal my birthright. He must know this."

Mother gives me a look, one filled with cruel truths.

"He doesn't see me as enough of a threat to be a problem if the time comes," I say for her.

"The time won't come, sweet victory, I've raised you, you've trained with the Thrice-Blessed, you've got the blood of old wolves in your veins, and even older magic."

"But I don't have allies like sweet father has."

Mother raises her chin slightly, a defiant edge in her eye that I feel deep in my soul."Then make them."

"You speak treason, sweet mother of mine."

"I speak justice. I speak for my daughter who speaks for the she-wolves and women of the new dawn."

+

When I feel my father's coldness far too deep in my bones I just remind myself that I'm not alone. I'm not the only alpha female firstborn.

I finish up my 107th letter to Audhild Harou, rightful heir to Pack Harou. She's less than moon's turn younger than me. Many blame my mother for her birth, saying she unleashed a curse upon all Alphas.

She is not as lucky as me. She has a brother usurper, a year younger than her. Her father has already named him his heir.

It's strange to look at her name and my own so close to each other. Victorine Aaliyah Eskelson and Audhild Harou, the only of our kind with our own blood waging open war against us.

Do you feel it? She asked me. Do you feel the tides turning?

Yes, I respond, in our favor or we will raze the oceans and seas to nothing until there are no tides to turn against us.

+

"Victorine," Alpha Eskelson says as I finish up the penultimate chapter of the 1083th edition of The History of Wolves. A gods fucking awful book.

"Yes, Alpha?" I don't look up. He's never asked me to call him father. I wonder if it's from guilt or lack of caring. My mother said he cried at my birth but any time I look in his eyes, I can't see him crying for me.

"Victorine," he repeats, crueler and colder and so like him.

I look at him and smile so wide my canines show. Sharper than his now. I wonder if he feels age eating away at his flesh, down to his very bones. I hope he aches from it.

He clears his throat, the only sign that he is even vaguely uncomfortable. "Your instructors have praised you highly over the last few months. Their reports seem to point to you being strong both mentally and physically."

I laugh, it stings coming up, like razors slitting my throat. "Have my instructors told you that? Or the little men you have follow me around to make sure I speak no treasons against your honorable name?"

"Victorine," he warns.

I sit back in my chair, perfectly straight and poised. "Alpha," I bow my head. "I have upset you, for that I am deeply sorry." A doll. He wants a doll, to play the she-wolf, to be the blade when needed and then step down when the 'true' heir comes.

"VICTORINE!" he shouts. His eyes flash gold then a glimmering black. He's furious.

The wolf-blood in my veins sings and I have to stamp down a wicked grin.

Even though I know I should I can not bring myself to cow in the face of his anger. My pride won't allow it. All I will give him is my silence.

"Victorine." He rubs his hand down his face, scratching against his unshaven face. "I am offering a chance for you to prove yourself to myself and the pack."

I tilt my head up. "Alpha, why didn't you say that right away? I am but a humble servant to Pack Eskelson. Whatever she needs, I will give it gladly."

He scoffs, bitter and ugly. He doesn't understand that that is the most honest thing I've said to him yet. He knows so little of me, of what makes me.

"Pack Malvo is causing some problems at our border. Nothing too serious, just a few pups not seeming to know the lines."

"And what, Alpha? You'd like me to go down to Pack Malvo to speak to a few drunk boys stumbling over borders? That can't be it, unless of course you are so insecure about our security."

There's something else going on. Eskelson does not waste time on such trivial things.

He sighs. "Informants have mentioned some talks of rebellions. They seem to have problems with your mother and her supposed curse."

I can hardly contain my smile. "And how should this visit go, Alpha?"

His eyes flash. "Peacefully, Victorine. This should be in the interest in brokering peace, and peace only."

I bow my head to hide the curling of my lips. 

"Of course, Alpha."

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2,502 words

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