For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten (freda ebook reader .txt) 📕

answer, pushing back his hair again. The tips of his ears burned scarlet. “The Wilderwood is trying to re-create what it had before, with Gaya and Ciaran. We can’t give it that, not exactly, but we can get as close as possible.” He flipped the dagger nervously between his fingers. “A marriage like they had would be a good step. And I think it might make your magic . . . easier to manage.”

Red’s mouth worked, but she wasn’t sure how to shape the knot in her middle into language. “Oh” was all she could muster.

Another, heavier silence hung, and in those few seconds, Red’s life up to this point crashed lightning-quick through her head. When Neve first bled, and their mother began speaking of betrothals and alliances. When Red did, a few weeks later, and none of the same conversations happened— she was spoken for, had been since she first drew breath, and no suitors would be coming for her. Those first few desperate times with Arick, thinking it was as close to cherished as she could get. Her life had been a house of cards, pieces stacked delicately on top of one another more by ease of construct than by a choice truly made, because weren’t things hard enough without her making them any harder?

But here was Eammon. Far from the monster she’d been told to expect, far from anything she’d managed to imagine. Eammon, offering her a choice.

He needed her. She doubted she’d ever hear the words from his mouth, but it was clear in everything that had happened since she crossed the border of his forest, in the words of the Wilderwood earlier as they faced each other in the fog. There had to be two, but he wouldn’t force her to stand with him. Wouldn’t make her do anything she didn’t wholeheartedly choose to do.

Her pulse thrummed in her throat.

Eammon watched her face, the play of incomprehensible emotion across it, and shook his head. “Forget it. I’m not even sure if—”

“It’s a good idea.”

His teeth clicked together.

“Worth a try, anyway.” Red took a tentative step forward, pulling her tangled braid over her shoulder, untying the bit of twine that kept it bound. Her hair was still damp, wavy from where she’d braided it wet. She shook it loose, lifting her chin to meet the Wolf’s gaze.

“If this is a proposal,” Red said quietly, “my answer is yes.”

He swallowed, a click in his throat, that unreadable light flickering in his eyes. Then he nodded.

The space between them felt cavernous. Eammon moved first, cautiously. He held the dagger out by the hilt. “You first.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Call it an exercise in trust.”

“You’ll have to sit somewhere.” Red waved her hand at his head. Truly, the man’s height was ridiculous. “I can’t reach.”

A pause— the only place to sit was the bed, and both of them seemed to realize it at the same time, if the sudden widening of eyes was any indication— then Eammon knelt. “Better?”

She nodded, once. Something about his posture, kneeling like a penitent, made her insides unsteady.

His hair was softer than she expected, smelled like coffee and old books. “Did you do this with the others?” Red forced a laugh, but it sounded as nervous as she felt, and her stomach flipped end over end. “How many wives have you had now?”

He was still beneath her hand, his voice low. “Just you.”

So he hadn’t married the other Second Daughters. The fact, inexplicably, made her stomach feel tangled with her spine. “Why not, if the Wilderwood is trying to re-create what it had?”

“Didn’t need to.” He shifted on his knees. “The Wilderwood re-created it in other ways.”

It did nothing to untangle her stomach from her spinal cord, but it did make her cheeks heat, a flare of irrational embarrassment she was glad he couldn’t see. “Lucky us.”

A low grunt.

Red picked up a lock of hair behind his ear and managed to cut it without bloodshed. “Done.”

Eammon stood gracelessly. His unbound hair fell over his forehead as he held out his hand for the blade.

Red turned, breath shallow as the Wolf’s scarred fingers lightly touched her neck, warm and rough. He plucked up a lock of hair from the same place she had, brushed the rest of it over her opposite shoulder. A soft snick, and a length of dark gold shone in his hand.

“Does it matter how we tie it?”

“We have to do it together, but that’s it, far as I know.” His eyes flickered to hers, a tentative curve to his lips. “This is my first marriage, remember?”

Further stomach tangling.

After a moment of hesitation, Eammon pulled the white bark from his pocket. Messily, they wound the strands around the shard of the sentinel tree. Their hands kept bumping together.

Something else happened as they wound their hair around the bark. Red . . . loosened. If her chest was a knot, her rib cage made of tangled rope, it felt like that knot unraveled, an inverse reaction to what she and Eammon did with their hair. The splinter of magic coiled in her center felt lighter somehow. Less like something lying in wait to wreak havoc, more like a tool she could take hold of if needed.

Eammon had said that a marriage might make her power more manageable. It seemed he’d been right. Binding herself to him— to the Wilderwood he ruled— made the shard of it she carried feel more like an integrated part of her, rather than something she had to cage.

When it was done, the pale bark was almost completely hidden in gold and black. Red looked toward the window and the forest outside, not sure what she expected to see. “So this will make the Wilderwood better?”

“It should.” Eammon pocketed the wood shard. He flexed his hands, once, as if searching the atmosphere for a change. “The sentinels want you . . . closer.”

“Marrying you certainly brings me closer.”

A flash of color across his cheekbone again. “That’s