Garrick led them through the trees without much conversation, and Hazel spent most of the walk simmering over his earlier comment about her being the pathetic excuse for a man.
Aldrien, meanwhile, seemed to find the entire situation far more amusing than it deserved, glancing at her every so often with something dangerously close to a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Garrick glanced back at her more than once, clearly still puzzling over whatever he thought he’d witnessed back at the campsite.
“You let your wife walk in front of you?” he finally asked.
Hazel nearly combusted on the spot.
“Apparently,” Aldrien said quietly, “I’m the wife now.”
She shot him a look sharp enough to draw blood, and he had the audacity to look pleased with himself.
The cabin appeared through the trees a while later, small and sturdy, clearly built by someone who’d spent years learning exactly what the forest demanded of a shelter.
Garrick introduced himself once they were inside, explaining, without much prompting, that he’d lived in the Wildwood longer than most maps had existed, and knew the surrounding land better than any cartographer ever could.
He wasn’t unkind exactly, just blunt in a way that made every question feel like an accusation.
He asked where they were from, and they gave him the story they’d rehearsed, newly married travelers on a pilgrimage to Asterra.
Garrick didn’t look entirely convinced, his eyes narrowing as he studied them both.
“Why was the husband hiding during that attack?” he asked, nodding toward Aldrien, still under the impression that the man standing in Hazel’s body was the one who’d cowered behind a tree.
“He panicked,” Aldrien said smoothly, without missing a beat.
Hazel stared at him.
He was protecting her reputation, sacrificing his own in the process, lying about himself so easily it barely registered as a lie at all.
Garrick handed Aldrien a woman’s blanket a moment later, along with a spare set of clothes, clearly still convinced he was looking at the wife of the pair.
Then he shoved something heavy into Hazel’s arms, a sack of supplies meant for the woodpile, and Hazel struggled under the weight, unused to the size and strength of the body she was currently wearing.
Garrick’s expression soured at the sight.
Aldrien noticed immediately and quietly took the sack from her without a word, carrying it the rest of the way himself.
Hazel felt a flicker of irritation at being handled so easily, followed almost immediately by something warmer she didn’t particularly want to examine too closely.
Dinner came together simply, stew and bread eaten at a rough wooden table, and Garrick asked how long they’d been married.
Hazel and Aldrien navigated the answer carefully, neither wanting to contradict the other in front of a man who was already suspicious enough.
“Was this marriage arranged?” Garrick asked next, watching them both closely.
Neither answered right away.
“Yes,” Hazel finally said.
Garrick nodded slowly, like he’d already suspected as much.
“I thought so.”
It gave them an odd opening they hadn’t expected, a chance to talk around the arranged marriage without having to explain the parts that actually mattered.
Garrick assumed, reasonably enough, that they’d married for the sake of political peace between two packs, and neither of them corrected him.
He noticed the map partway through the meal, glancing at it long enough to recognize the destination marked near its edge.
“Asterra,” he said.
Hazel nodded.
He warned them the road through the Wildwood wasn’t the route most travelers used anymore, too overgrown, too unreliable, and told them that half the merchants who once passed through had rerouted years ago rather than risk it.
Then he mentioned an old hunters’ trail that cut through the forest, one that could save them days if they knew how to find it.
The catch, he added, was that it passed close to territory where rogue wolves tended to gather, which explained why most people avoided it entirely, even seasoned travelers who knew these woods well.
It gave them a real path forward, even with the risk attached to it, and Hazel filed the information away carefully once Garrick finally excused himself for the night.
Alone in the small guest room, Hazel admitted something she hadn’t planned on saying out loud.
“I was actually terrified during that attack.”
Aldrien looked at her.
“I hate that I froze,” she continued.
“Fear doesn’t make you weak,” he said.
She looked at him, waiting for the rest of it.
“You were afraid,” he continued.
“And you still tried to help anyway.”
Something in his tone told her he wasn’t just saying it to make her feel better.
He genuinely meant it, and hearing it from him, of all people, landed somewhere she hadn’t expected.
“I knew you’d protect me,” she admitted quietly.
He didn’t answer right away, and the silence that followed carried far more weight than anything either of them could have said.
There was only one bed in the guest room, exactly the way there’d been every other night, and they both stared at it for a moment before Hazel spoke first.
“I’ll take the floor.”
“You’re exhausted,” Aldrien said.
“So are you.”
“I’m used to sleeping anywhere.”
She looked at him, something almost fond creeping into her expression despite her best efforts to keep it out.
“You’re not supposed to be the considerate one.”
He nearly smiled at that, and in the end neither of them won the argument outright, settling instead into the bed together, the space between them smaller than it had been that first terrible night, though neither of them mentioned it.
Just as Hazel felt herself drifting toward sleep, Garrick’s voice carried through the thin wall from somewhere outside.
“And don’t wander off in the morning. There are more rogues in these woods than the one you met tonight.”
Hazel opened her eyes and glanced over at Aldrien, who was already looking back at her.
Their journey had just gotten more dangerous, and Asterra still felt impossibly far away.
Dear readers, I’m setting some update goals for the book!