Chapter 615

Arslan explained it without theatrics.

No embellishment. No pride. Just facts laid out like a battlefield map: Ludger returned, brought wolves, forged bracers with rune pulses, started integrating them into Lionsguard. Not pets. Allies. A message wrapped in fur and teeth.

Torvares listened in silence, arms folded, eyes narrowing and widening in small, controlled movements as the implications stacked up. The dire wolf sat beside Arslan like a shadow with breathing, unbothered by noble gardens and trimmed hedges.

When Arslan finished, there was a brief pause, just long enough for the manor’s calm to pretend it still existed. Then Viola moved.

She had been standing off to the side, jaw tight, eyes bright with that familiar mix of anger and excitement. The moment Arslan’s words settled into something real, she turned on her heel and started walking.

Not toward the dining hall. Toward the gate.

“Viola,” Torvares called, voice sharp.

She didn’t stop. “I’m not waiting for dinner,” she shot back over her shoulder. “I want one too.”

Torvares blinked. “One what…”

“A dire wolf,” Viola said, as if that was obvious. “If Ludger is handing them out like weapons, then I’m getting mine before someone else does.”

And then she was gone, boots striking stone with purpose.

Luna appeared behind her a heartbeat later, as silent and inevitable as a knife in the dark. She didn’t ask permission. She didn’t announce herself. She simply followed Viola the way shadows followed light.

Torvares watched them leave through the garden arch, the hem of Viola’s cloak vanishing into the corridor like a storm slipping out of sight.

He sighed, slow, heavy, and deeply resigned.

“She has matured lately,” Torvares muttered, almost to himself.

Then he added, voice drier, “But she’s still impulsive as ever.”

Arslan’s mouth twitched faintly, but he kept his posture neutral.

Torvares’s gaze returned to the dire wolf, then to Arslan. “Is this… this

wolf business

… Ludger telling the Regent he won’t bow?”

Arslan didn’t answer immediately. Because Ludger hadn’t said it in clean words. He hadn’t declared rebellion. He hadn’t shouted defiance. He hadn’t written an insult on a banner and marched it through the gates.

He’d done something worse, something smarter. He’d made himself harder to ignore. Arslan finally nodded once, slow.

“He didn’t say it clearly,” Arslan said. “Not with words.”

Then he met Torvares’s eyes.

“But it’s fair to assume so.”

Arslan kept it simple, the way you did when the truth was already sharp enough.

“Sigrid told him,” Arslan said, “that he could find three masters in the north with unusual arts.”

Torvares’s eyes narrowed slightly. He already knew Sigrid’s reputation, ruthless organizer, pragmatic to the bone, the kind of woman who treated violence like currency and tradition like a tool.

“Ludger went,” Arslan continued. “And he returned.”

He didn’t say

alive

because that was implied. Ludger didn’t go places halfway.

“And it’s fair to assume as well,” Arslan added, voice steady, “that he wouldn’t have come back without mastering what he went for.”

Torvares’s gaze drifted again, briefly, to the dire wolf sitting beside Arslan like a patient threat. The animal didn’t move. It didn’t need to. Arslan’s jaw tightened.

“He’s gotten stronger,” he said. “But he’s not arrogant enough to declare we’ll fight the capital head-on. That’s not how he thinks.”

He paused, and his tone cooled.

“Still… it seems like we need to prepare for the possibility that we don’t accept the Regent’s offer.” He looked at Torvares directly. “No matter the cost.”

The words hung in the air like frost. Torvares went silent, fingers still at his chin, thumb slowly rubbing over the line of his beard as he stared into the garden without seeing the flowers.

For a long moment, the only sound was the soft shift of the dire wolf’s breathing. Then Torvares spoke, quieter than before.

“I wanted you to accept it,” he admitted.

Arslan didn’t interrupt.

Torvares’s eyes sharpened with calculation. “Even with Eclaire there. Especially with Eclaire here.”

He exhaled once, controlled.

“Accepting the offer makes the Regent

less

suspicious of us,” Torvares said. “It makes us look compliant. It gives us legal standing. It buys time. It buys influence. It makes it harder to label us traitors when knives start moving.”

He stopped, thoughtful, and the silence that followed wasn’t hesitation, it was a man rechecking his own logic for hidden flaws.

“Perhaps,” Torvares said slowly, “that is me being shortsighted.”

Arslan didn’t smile. He didn’t need to. Because the problem wasn’t whether the offer was tempting.

The problem was that Ludger had apparently decided temptation was just another form of control, and he was building teeth fast enough that refusing might soon become the safer option.

Arslan’s shoulders sagged a fraction, like admitting it out loud made the weight real.

“If this is Ludger’s final decision,” he said, “then I don’t want to go against him.”

The words tasted bitter, because Arslan didn’t enjoy gambling. He didn’t enjoy uncertainty. And he especially didn’t enjoy putting his family in the path of men who moved armies with signatures.

“Even if it makes me fear for my family,” Arslan continued, voice low, “and for the future.”

He looked down at the dire wolf beside him, then back at Torvares.

“But Ludger has earned trust,” Arslan said. “Considering everything he’s accomplished.”

Torvares scratched the top of his head, an uncharacteristic gesture that made him look less like a lord and more like a tired old man staring at a storm. Then he nodded.

“Very well,” Torvares said.

He exhaled once, controlled. “I’ll send the response. We do not accept the offer.”

Arslan didn’t relax. He couldn’t. Declaring it was easy. Paying for it was the real part. Torvares’s eyes sharpened again, calculating costs the way other men counted coins.

“I will prepare for political and economic retaliation,” Torvares said. “Pressure through trade. Permits. Inspections. Title disputes. ‘Random’ audits. A slow squeeze.” His gaze fixed on Arslan. “You should prepare for it as well.”

Arslan nodded once. Torvares added, “If the Regent tries something too big too soon, he’ll gain a bad reputation. The capital doesn’t like obvious thuggery when it inconveniences other nobles.”

He paused, then gave a thin, humorless smile.

“So he’ll do it slowly. He’ll make you reconsider. He’ll try to make refusal feel expensive enough that accepting becomes ‘reasonable.’”

Arslan nodded again, jaw tight. Torvares’s eyes narrowed. “But he isn’t the patient type.”

Arslan’s mouth twitched, dry and grim.

“Neither is Ludger,” he said.

For a moment, Torvares looked almost amused, then the amusement faded into something harder. Two men without patience, both with pride, both with leverage. That wasn’t a negotiation. It was a countdown.

Arslan left after that, dire wolf padding beside him like a silent oath. Torvares watched him go, then turned back into his manor with the same expression he wore when he was about to move pieces on a board most men didn’t even know existed.

He worked through the night. Not on one plan, on ten.

Routes and ledgers. Which merchants could be leaned on and which couldn’t. What taxes the Regent could “adjust.” Which inspectors might suddenly find their way to Lionfang. Which noble houses would pretend neutrality until the wind changed. How to keep the guild supplied if permits vanished. How to keep whispers from becoming warrants. How to make refusal look less like defiance and more like inconvenient bureaucracy.

Contingencies stacked on contingencies. By dawn he hadn’t slept. By morning he’d stopped pretending he would. When noon arrived the next day, Torvares was still in his office, eyes tired, mind sharp, quill scraping in short bursts as he shaped plans that could survive betrayal.

Then he heard it. Footsteps, light, quick, familiar. And another set behind them, quiet enough to barely exist. Viola and Luna. Torvares expected the door to swing open, expected Viola to charge in with a story and a demand and that bright, angry energy she carried like a banner.

Instead, the noise drifted away. Not toward the manor’s interior. Toward the garden. Torvares frowned, set the quill down, and went to the window.

Outside, in the trimmed green of the courtyard, Viola sat on the grass with a dire wolf cub in her lap. The little beast was all paws and fluff and attitude, biting gently at her sleeve like it was testing whether noble fabric tasted different. Viola laughed and shoved it away, only for it to tumble back into her with offended determination.

Nearby, Luna sat as well. That was the shocking part.

Luna, who normally stood like a shadow behind Viola, always scanning, always ready, never truly relaxing, was on the ground with another cub nosing at her gloves. Her hand moved slowly, careful and precise, scratching behind its ear with the same controlled gentleness she used when handling blades.

The cub leaned into it. Content. Torvares stared. He’d assumed Viola would pick an adult dire wolf. Something big enough to drag into battle, something she could ride into the next problem with and dare the world to object. But she’d chosen a cub. She wanted to raise it from the beginning. To build the bond the hard way, day by day, until the beast thought of her as pack instead of rider.

It was… unexpectedly patient of her. Then his gaze lingered on Luna again. Luna had chosen the same. And that was even stranger.

She had been acting off lately, subtle changes, small hesitations, a softness that didn’t match the knife-edge discipline she’d worn for years. Torvares had noticed. He’d filed it away. He hadn’t commented, because Luna was the kind of person who became dangerous when cornered by questions.

But watching her sit in the sun with a wolf cub pressing against her hand… Torvares felt something ease in his chest that had nothing to do with politics. Maybe this was good. For both of them. For their friendship.

For whatever strain the capital’s secrets had put on them. Viola leaned over and whispered something to Luna. Luna’s lips twitched, almost a smile, small and private, and the cub in her lap yawned like it approved.

Torvares exhaled slowly, then turned away from the window. He still had plans to write. Enemies to anticipate. A Regent to refuse. But for the first time in a long night, he allowed himself a thin, tired thought:

At least they’re building something that isn’t just war.

After Luna and Viola left, with cubs tucked into their arms like they’d stolen fluffy little disasters from fate, Ludger found himself pausing in the guild yard, watching them disappear down the street.

For a moment, his mind snagged on something unexpectedly… normal.

Is it fine to separate small animals from their parents that young?

He hadn’t exactly asked for permission. He hadn’t held a meeting with the wolves and negotiated custody rights.

He’d just… assigned cubs like equipment. That thought made his brow crease. Then he glanced toward the adult dire wolves nearby. None of them looked distressed.

No snarling. No frantic pacing. No pack uprising. If anything, the adults looked mildly pleased, like sending the young ones off with strong humans was an investment, not a loss.

And the parents didn’t object.

They’d watched. They’d sniffed. They’d accepted the exchange with the calm practicality of predators that understood territory and survival better than sentimentality.

So it seemed… fine.

Ludger filed the concern away anyway. He wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t have a conscience just because he didn’t advertise it.

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