The sea wall ate my hacksaw blade one tooth at a time, and the wind kept throwing salt in my eyes.
I did not stop. Copper sold by the pound, and the pound bought Oren another week.
Thirty feet down, the flood gates sat black and rusted in the dark.
The same gates Galen opened two years ago. I sawed their cable like it was his throat.
Boots hit the stone behind me. Two men, and one of them was already laughing.
Jarvis: Well. The scrap rat is cutting the Alpha's cable at midnight. That is a collar for sure.
Jarvis got a fist in my braid before I could stand. He hauled me up and my knees cracked on the stone.
Jarvis: Did I say you could stop working, bitch?
Jarvis: You hear that? The flood bitch is stealing from the very gates that drowned her own mother.
Jarvis: What do you reckon, lads? Does she cry about it, or does she spread her legs for the Alpha and call it grief?
The other one laughed so hard he had to hold the rail. The sound got into my teeth.
I spat on his boot. So he pressed my open hand down on the cut cable end and leaned his weight on it.
The wires went into my palm. Blood ran hot over my wrist and dripped on the stone.
Aria: Get off me, you sick bastard!
Jarvis: Say one more word and I'll take the boy's ear for bait.
Jarvis: Nobody is walking this wall for you, whore. It is just us and the water.
I believed him. My mouth went dry, and that was the worst part. I believed every word.
Then the wind dropped, and the whole wall went quiet.
Galen: Let go of her. Now.
Jarvis let go of my braid like it had caught fire and put his hands up.
Jarvis: Alpha. She was cutting the winch cable. I caught her at it.
Galen: I saw what you were doing. Get off my wall.
Galen came down the stones with his coat open and his chest bare in the cold, like winter was a thing he had already beaten.
Jarvis and his friend were gone before I got my feet under me.
Galen looked at my dripping hand, then at the sawed cable, then at my face.
Galen: That cable runs the east gate winch. Cut it through and the gate cannot close in a storm.
Aria: Good. Maybe this time the water takes your house instead of mine.
My voice shook, and I hated it more than I hated him.
He moved faster than a man that size had any right to. His fingers caught my jaw and turned my face up.
The grip left white marks that would go purple by morning.
Galen: Say that again with a straight face. I dare you.
Aria: You opened those gates. My mother was on the lower road. My father went in after her and never came out.
Aria: You killed them. And now you stand here counting your cable.
He did not look away. In two years he had never once looked away from me.
Galen: I would open them again.
The words went into my chest like a nail.
Aria: Say it to my face again, you coward. Say it slow.
Galen: Held shut, that surge goes over the wall and takes the pack house, the infirmary, every pup in it.
Galen: I picked the lower town. I would pick it again tonight.
Aria: You picked wrong.
Galen: Maybe. But I am the one who has to pick, and I still sleep at night.
He let go of my jaw. The marks of his fingers throbbed in the cold.
Then the bond pulled at me, low and warm and shameless, and my eyes went hot.
Aria: I do not want your bond. I do not want your gates. Leave me my brother.
Galen: Your brother is still unlisted. Remember that when you come asking for the cable price.
He walked away, and the wind came back like it had been holding its breath.
My hand bled into my sleeve. My chest hurt worse, and that was not the cut that scared me.
One vial left. One brother waiting. And one word my body kept saying. Mine.