Chapter 26: Flaming Wolf Said Hold My Beer

Nova was in the middle of a holy forest having an existential crisis because a princess just offered her a piggyback. Abduction? Fine. Bomb threat? Whatever. Kai Starborne? Survived. A princess saying "hop on"? That was the final straw that set the camel on fire.

"Thank you," Nova managed. "I don’t know how I can ever repay you for this help."

The kindness was hitting her in the chest and a simple thank you didn’t feel like enough. She swallowed hard against the lump that climbed her throat.

"You can repay me by not making this weird." Maria was already stretching like the emotional portion of the evening was over. "And if you could try to keep your ankles and wrists away from my wolf’s skin, that would be ideal. Silver burns and I would prefer to arrive at the Ancestral Grounds without bald patches. The fur is also less ideal than skin for contact, so pull your jumpsuit sleeves over the cuffs when you hold on."

Nova pulled the tight jumpsuit legs over her ankle cuffs until the silver was covered by fabric. Her sleeves went next, stretched past her wrists until the cuffs were buried under black material. It wasn’t perfect. It was the best she could do with a suit designed for a testing facility and a situation that no one on the design team had anticipated.

"—also we might be family soon if my brother ends up buying you. I hope he does. Is it rude to say? Buying you? I mean you are for sale. But if it is, I apologize. Actually, I probably shouldn’t have said anything at all. My brother will not be happy about this. Whoops. If anyone is streaming this, please disregard. Doubtful that anyone is, considering the Moonfire is about to start. But just in case."

Nova’s face flushed red immediately. Masters did not buy slaves for family. The gap between what Maria thought "buying" meant and what it actually meant was wide enough to park a hover yacht in. The innocence was beautiful and devastating and Nova wasn’t about to crash-land the truth into that gap.

Maria Emberclaw didn’t wait for a response, already shifting. Except it wasn’t a shift. It was a spectacular, soul-shaking, holy-shit spectacle.

Nova stared in awe as Maria phoenixed. Flame swirled around her body, engulfing her fully. Then the flames collapsed into a wolf, crimson from nose to tail, fur still burning. Her wolf was easily the most beautiful that Nova had ever seen and she couldn’t help but smile.

The wolf was on fire. Actual fire. Nova looked at her fabric-covered wrists. Looked at the wolf. Looked at her hands again.

Risk assessment complete.

"Please let me know if I am hurting you," Nova said softly.

Maria huffed like that was an insult and knelt down.

Wolves were large enough for two humans to ride with ease. But it was not common because most wolves had too much pride. Nova’s hands shook and she let them because some things were too big to hold still for.

She climbed on, placing every limb with the caution of a girl who understood that the creature beneath her was doing her a kindness that could cause her pain and the least she could do was minimize the cost.

Maria ran.

The speed was instantaneous and it was terrifying and it was nothing Nova had been prepared for. Trees blurred into walls. The forest kaleidoscoped around her. The trail vanished under them faster than Nova’s eyes could track.

Holy shit was an understatement. Holy shit was the floor. Nova was several stories above holy shit and climbing. This beautiful, burning wolf was running like hell itself was chasing them.

Wind hit her face hard enough to steal her breath and her hands grabbed fistfuls of fur through the fabric of her sleeves and held on with everything she had. It was easily the speed of a Beta, maybe even an Alpha. Whoever said that female wolves did not do that had never met Maria Emberclaw.

That thought registered after a minute when Nova’s brain caught up with her body and realized that the princess wasn’t holding back. She was sprinting. Full speed. Four legs covering ground at a pace that would have put them at the Ancestral Grounds in six minutes.

A trail of flame followed in their wake. Actual fire, burning along the path behind them in a ribbon of orange and red that died within seconds but lit the forest floor like a runway. Nova could feel the heat but it wasn’t touching her. It wasn’t burning the fur beneath her either. The fire moved around them like it knew where it was welcome and where it wasn’t, curling behind Maria’s paws and spiraling into the dark like a signature.

Nova wondered if the wolf controlled the flame. Who it burned and who it didn’t. Whether it was instinct or intention, biological or chosen, a weapon or a gift or something the Emberclaw bloodline had carried for so long that the distinction between weapon and gift had stopped mattering.

She was in no position to ask. She was in a position to hold on, which she did, with fabric-covered hands and tucked-in ankles and a heart that was beating so fast she could hear it over the wind.

If you had asked Nova an hour ago whether she would be riding a flaming wolf through a sacred forest at full sprint, she would have laughed and said, what. Then she would have asked you to repeat the question because surely she had misheard it. Then she would have laughed again because the question was funnier the second time.

And yet.

She assumed Maria would shift back a mile or so out from the ritual grounds, find a discreet spot in the tree line, let Nova slide off, and the two of them would walk in separately like strangers who had never met and certainly had never committed wolf-mounted overland travel together.

That assumption was wrong.