The first time Juno heard the song, it was badly played on a beaten-up lute by a wolf who couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.
It was three nights after Helvar’s delegation left, taking Irena and Nyra with them down the eastern trail. The den had felt oddly hollow that morning; the absence of the old witch’s muttering and Nyra’s dry commentary had left a gap in the usual noise.
By evening, that gap had filled with other sounds.
Laughter. Arguing.
And song.
The Hall was crowded. Snowstorms had blown in hard and fast over the last two days, making outside work miserable and patrols shorter. Wolves clustered around the fire, around tables, even on the stairs. Sari had declared it a stew-night and cooked enough to feed a small army.
Juno sat at a corner table with Mira and Kellan, a bowl in front of her and a half-finished report on patrol routes under her hand. Riven had been dragged away earlier by Garrik to help tally new trade goods, and she kept half an ear open for his voice—even when she wasn’t trying.
“Leave it,” Mira said, nudging the report with a spoon. “It’ll still be there when Lysa pretends she hasn’t already memorized every trail on the mountain.”
Juno smirked. “You do realize I like maps,” she said. “I’m not just doing this to keep Lysa from chewing my ass.”
Mira grinned. “You like pretending you’re not just doing this to keep from thinking about kissing,” she said.
Kellan choked on his ale. “Mira,” he hissed.
“What?” she said. “We’re all thinking about it. Might as well get it out there so it stops buzzing.”
Juno glared at her. “Can you go one evening without mentioning my personal life?” she asked.
“No,” Mira said cheerfully.
Before Juno could retort, a familiar voice at the fire called, “Oi, Soren’s boy! That’s not how you tune that thing!”
Juno looked up.
At the far end of the Hall, near the big hearth, a lanky young wolf with a mop of dark hair hunched over a battered lute, grimacing as he twisted the pegs. He wore a travel-stained coat and had a Silver Peak sigil tattooed on the inside of his wrist—one of Soren’s “bards,” undoubtedly.
He plucked a string experimentally. It made a noise like a strangled chicken.
Laughter rippled.
Sari smacked him lightly with a wooden spoon as she passed. “Play right or don’t play at all,” she said. “My ears are old enough to deserve better.”
“Working on it, Auntie,” he said, cheeks flushed.
He adjusted again, plucked, winced, then nodded, apparently satisfied.
“I present,” he announced grandly, “the world premiere of ‘The Wolves Who Made the Maw Choke.’”
Juno’s stomach dropped.
Mira squealed quietly. “Oh gods,” she whispered. “It’s happening.”
Kellan groaned. “Soren works fast,” he muttered. “We’re all doomed.”
Juno felt heat crawl up her neck. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. I’m leaving.”
Mira grabbed her arm. “You’re staying,” she hissed. “You have to hear this. For…legal reasons.”
“What legal—” Juno began.
The bard strummed the first chords.
They weren’t terrible.
Simple. Minor key. A little dramatic.
He cleared his throat.
“In the mountains where the blood moon burns,” he sang, voice wavering on the high note, “where the stone remembers every fall—”
“Already wrong,” Kellan muttered. “Stone forgets plenty.”
“Shut up,” Mira whispered, eyes shining.
“—there walked a wolf with teeth turned inward,” the bard went on, “a blade that cut his pack and all.”
Juno flinched.
Riven.
The room quieted.
Even the pups scooting dice across the floor paused.
“A beast in chains beneath the mountain,” the bard sang, fingers finding a surer rhythm. “A leash of rot around his throat. A voice that whispered, ‘Bite, my darling. Tear and drown the world in throat.’”
Ivo choked on his drink. “Poetic,” he whispered. “And gross.”
Juno couldn’t look at Riven—though she didn’t even know if he’d returned to the Hall yet. She fixed her gaze on the bard, jaw clenched.
“And in the circle where the red moon bled,” the bard continued, “another wolf stood on the stone. A mountain’s child with eyes like winter, who’d howled four years and found no home.”
Mira’s hand found Juno’s under the table and squeezed.
Kellan’s expression had gone carefully blank.
“She looked and saw the chain-bound monster,” the bard sang. “She thought, ‘The moon has made a joke.’ But when their gazes locked like lightning, the Maw herself began to choke.”
A smatter of appreciative laughter.
Juno wanted to crawl under the table.
“Too much,” she muttered. “Too on the nose.”
“It rhymes,” Mira whispered. “It’s perfect.”
“As jaws met jaws and hearts met horror,” the bard intoned, “they bit the hand that held the leash. The Maw screamed down in all her hollows, ‘How dare my dog deny my feast?’”
Someone whistled.
The bard grinned, leaning into it now.
“The mountain sang with teeth and fury,” he went on. “Three packs howled as one bright flame. The leash snapped off, the rot-bit shattered—”
He punctuated the line with a sharp chord.
“—and now the dark remembers names.”
His gaze slid very pointedly to Juno as he sang that last word.
Heat flooded her face.
Mira looked like she might cry from sheer glee.
Kellan’s mouth twitched reluctantly.
The chorus came next—of course there was a chorus.
“Oh, bite-back wolves, oh, teeth turned round, you chewed the Maw and made her spit. Now every den that hears your story will sharpen jaws and follow it.”
Voices picked up the tune hesitantly, repeating the last line.
“Sharpen jaws and follow it.”
Juno’s wolf wanted to howl.
She told her to sit.
The bard launched into the next verse—embellished, of course. He added a line about Juno “standing, bloodied, blade in hand,” which was completely inaccurate, and another about Riven “spitting roots like curses,” which wasn’t terribly far off.
He did, to his credit, mention Bram’s wolves by name in a softer bridge, something about “Torun, Shale, and young wolf Viri, whose voices echo in the stone.” Bram, sitting near the back of the Hall with a mug in his hand, lifted it once at that, face unreadable.
By the time the bard finished, the entire room was humming bits of the chorus under their breath.
“Oh, bite-back wolves, oh, teeth turned round—”
The bard bowed theatrically. “Requests?” he asked.
“Something that isn’t about rot?” Sari suggested dryly.
“Play the one about Soren falling in the river!” Ivo shouted.
Laughter rolled.
The tension broke.
Juno sucked in a shaky breath.
“Well,” Mira said, eyes bright with unshed tears. “That was…epic.”
Juno scowled. “That was…embellished,” she said. “And embarrassing. And epically mortifying.”
Kellan nudged her shoulder. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “He left out you almost puking afterward.”
She elbowed him.
Mira fanned her face. “He called you ‘the mountain’s child with eyes like winter’,” she sighed. “Juno, that’s…romantic.”
“It’s inaccurate,” Juno muttered. “My eyes are brown.”
“Artistic license,” Mira said.
Movement at the edge of her vision snagged Juno’s attention.
Riven.
He stood near one of the support pillars, half in shadow, arms folded. His expression was…complicated.
His jaw was tight. His brows drawn.
But there was a strange light behind his eyes.
Juno slid off the bench.
“I’ll be back,” she told Mira and Kellan.
Mira winked.
Kellan rolled his eyes.
She wove through the crowd toward Riven.
He watched her come.
“Let me guess,” he said as she reached him. “You’re going to tell me you hate it and want to strangle the bard.”
“I don’t hate it,” she said.
He blinked.
“I hate parts of it,” she amended. “But…I don’t hate that it exists.”
His lips quirked. “You like being immortalized in bad rhyme?” he asked.
She snorted. “Not particularly,” she said. “But…Helvar was right. Stories matter. If wolves hear ‘the Maw choked,’ maybe they’re less likely to crawl into her caves on purpose.”
His gaze softened.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Maybe.”
She tilted her head. “You okay?” she asked. “Hearing…that. About you.”
His shoulders lifted and fell. “It’s strange,” he said. “Hearing myself called ‘beast in chains’ and ‘teeth turned inward’ in the same breath.”
“You are both,” she said.
He huffed a laugh. “I know,” he said. “I just…I spent a long time thinking the best thing I could do for the world was disappear. Be forgotten. Seeing a roomful of wolves sing about me instead…” He shook his head, eyes distant. “It feels…wrong. And…a little bit like revenge.”
Her brows knit. “Revenge?” she echoed.
He met her gaze.
“On her,” he said simply. “On the Maw. For all the times she used me as a cautionary tale. ‘See what happens when you bargain. See what happens when you love.’ Now *we’re* the story that bites *her.*”
A slow, fierce satisfaction uncurled in Juno’s chest.
“Gari,” she murmured.
He smiled.
His hand brushed hers briefly, fingers grazing her knuckles.
Her heart thumped.
The bard launched into a new tune, something bawdy about Soren and a witch with too many tattoos, drawing whoops of laughter.
The focus moved.
The Hall resumed being a Hall.
Juno and Riven stood in their small pocket of space amid the noise.
“You realize,” Riven said, voice low, “that song is going to mutate. In a few months, we’ll be three wolves. Or five. Or someone will decide we fought with flaming swords.”
“Absolutely not,” Juno muttered. “No swords.”
He grinned. “We’ll correct them,” he said. “With teeth.”
She rolled her eyes.
His smile lingered.
Silence stretched.
Then, softly, he asked, “Do you…want to get some air? Before Mira starts reenacting the kiss in the middle of the Hall.”
As if on cue, Mira’s voice rose somewhere behind them: “No, no, Juno’s head tilted *this* way…”
Juno groaned. “Yes,” she said. “Outside. Now.”
They slipped out into the cold.
Snowflakes drifted lazily under a sky pricked with stars.
The air bit at her cheeks.
Their breath steamed.
They walked without speaking for a bit, boots crunching on packed paths, the muffled sounds of the Hall fading behind them.
The den looked softer under snow. Less like a fortress, more like a cluster of burrows huddled against the dark.
Juno’s shoulders relaxed.
“You handled that better than I expected,” Riven said at last.
She glanced at him. “The song?” she asked.
He nodded. “If someone had written about me like that a year ago, I’d have tried to tear their throat out,” he said wryly. “Or run.”
“You ran a lot, didn’t you,” she said quietly.
He stared out across the snow.
“Yeah,” he said. “From everything. The pit. My past. People who saw too much. I thought if I stayed moving, I wouldn’t have to…feel.”
She knew that logic far too well.
“You’re not running now,” she said.
He huffed a breath. “No,” he said. “You keep standing in front of the doors.”
She smiled, small. “Useful skill,” she said.
They stopped at the edge of the courtyard, where the ground fell away into a slope of unbroken snow, the tree line a dark fringe below.
The night was clear enough that she could see the faint smear of the blood moon’s path, still echoing red in her mind’s eye.
Riven leaned on the fence, staring out.
His profile was stark in the starlight—strong nose, scarred jaw, the faint line at the corner of his mouth that deepened when he smiled.
Her hand itched.
“Slow burn, huh,” he said suddenly.
She blinked. “What?”
His lips twitched. “I heard Mira use the phrase earlier,” he said. “She told Ivo they’d been ‘waiting for this slow burn to ignite’ since the night we nearly climbed into each other’s heads.”
Juno groaned. “She would,” she muttered.
He looked at her.
“Do you think it is?” he asked. “Slow.”
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
She thought of the first time she’d scented him—raw, feral, chained. The weeks of pushing him away and pulling him closer, of arguments and near-misses and rule-making and root-ripping.
She thought of how fast the bond had hit.
How *long* it had taken them to let their mouths meet.
“It feels like both,” she said finally. “Like it’s been an eternity and five minutes at the same time.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah,” he said. “Same.”
He shifted, turning to lean his back against the fence, facing her.
The tips of his boots almost touched hers.
Their breath plumed between them.
Her heart pounded.
His eyes searched her face.
“So,” he said quietly. “We kissed. We survived. The world didn’t end. No one died. Lysa didn’t decapitate me.”
“Yet,” she muttered.
He huffed.
“What now?” he asked.
She exhaled.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “We keep…doing what we’re doing. Training. Fighting. Talking. Not…hiding.”
His shoulders loosened.
“Can we…” He hesitated, then squared his jaw. “Can we do more of the kissing part too?” he asked, almost sheepish.
Heat flared in her chest.
She took a step closer.
His breath hitched.
“Yes,” she said. “We can do more of that.”
He swallowed.
“Good,” he murmured.
She reached up, fingers brushing his jaw.
He leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering briefly shut.
Her thumb traced the faint line of a scar.
“This is new,” she murmured.
He huffed. “Wolf bit me when I was sixteen,” he said. “Said I talked too much. Probably right.”
“Probably,” she agreed.
His lips curved.
Her fingers slid to the back of his neck, into the hair at his nape.
He shivered.
“Cold?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
She smiled.
Then she kissed him.
This time, there were no whoops, no sleds, no spectators.
Just them.
His hand came up to her waist, tentative, settling there with care, like he was touching something fragile. Her body flared hot where his fingers pressed through the layers of fabric.
His lips moved against hers, slow at first, exploratory.
She met him, matching the pace, savoring.
The bond brightened, not with the white-hot flare of magic, but with a deep, warm glow.
His other hand slid up her back, flattening between her shoulder blades, pulling her a fraction closer.
She went, willingly.
Her own hands cupped his jaw, thumbs brushing the roughness of his stubble.
He made a low sound in his throat, something between a groan and a sigh.
Desire coiled low in her belly, sharp and hungry.
Her wolf purred.
Too much, too fast, her rational mind warned.
She ignored it for another few seconds.
Then forced herself to ease back, lips parting from his slowly.
They stayed close.
Foreheads resting together.
Breath mingling.
His eyes opened.
They were darker now, pupils blown, the hazel ringed in almost gold.
“Fuck,” he whispered, voice rough.
She laughed breathlessly. “Yeah,” she agreed.
They stood like that for a long moment, just…breathing.
Then the Hall door banged open.
“Juno!” Sari’s voice cut through the night. “If you’re out there kissing in the cold, at least bring in more wood!”
Juno groaned, dropping her head briefly against Riven’s shoulder.
He chuckled, the sound rumbling under her ear.
“Later?” he murmured.
She sighed. “Later,” she said.
The word tasted good.
Dangerous.
But good.
They separated reluctantly.
She grabbed an armful of wood from the stack by the door.
He did the same.
They went back inside together, cheeks flushed, lips tingling, hearts pounding.
The slow burn had fully caught.
Now they just had to keep it from consuming them at the wrong time.
And hope the Maw didn’t decide to toss oil on it.
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