The Traveller’s Rest
The travel from office desk to motel hideout consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The clock struck midnight. In the hallway, a floorboard groaned. Footsteps, rapid and hard, rang out on the stone. “Dorian—Ashby’s security chief—burst through the door. ‘Your Grace—Pemberton riders are at the gate.’ Julian closed the ledger. ‘Then we ride for the shadows. Eli’s life begins tonight.’”
The ledger’s leather cover met the oak desk with a soft, definitive thud. Julian didn’t look at Dorian, his gaze fixed on the single candle flame guttering in the draught from the open door. He was already counting. Twenty seconds, perhaps thirty, before the Pemberton men found their bearings in the darkened courtyard. Before they thought to check the postern gate.
“How many?” Julian asked, his voice low, stripped of the courtly cadence he wore like a second skin.
“Six, maybe seven. Silas’s hunters, not the hired sort.” Dorian’s hand rested on the pistol at his hip, his knuckles white. “They’ve come prepared to track, not to parley.”
Prepared to take Eli. That was the unspoken clause that hung between them, bitter and sharp.
Julian crossed the room in three strides, pressing his palm against the hidden seam in the wainscoting. The panel slid open with a whisper of oiled wood, revealing a narrow wardrobe crammed with rough-spun clothes and a heavy traveller’s cloak. He pulled the cloak over his shoulders, discarding the fine wool of his coat with a shrug that felt like shedding a skin.
“The boy,” he said, not a question.
“Freya has him. They’re in the tunnel entrance now.” Dorian’s eyes darted toward the window, where the shadows in the courtyard had begun to shift. “Your Grace, I can hold them here. Buy you a quarter-hour.”
Julian’s gaze snapped to his security chief, a flash of cold steel in his eyes. “You’ll do no such thing. We ride together. All of us.” He grabbed the small leather satchel from the desk—the one packed days ago, waiting for this very moment—and slung it across his chest. “Eli needs his wolves, not a corpse for a sentinel.”
They moved through the dark, familiar corridors of Ashby Hall without need for candlelight. Julian’s feet remembered every creaking board, every uneven flagstone. The house was a living thing, and tonight it held its breath with them. From the kitchens, they descended into the cool, earth-smelling dark of the old wine cellar. The air changed, growing damp and stale. At the far wall, a figure waited, silhouetted against the faint glow of a lantern.
Eli stood with his hand clutched tightly in Freya’s. The boy’s eyes were wide, but his mouth was set in a thin, determined line that reminded Julian so acutely of his mother it physically ached. Freya’s face was pale beneath the hood of her dark cloak, but her gaze was steady. She had the look of a woman who had already fought every possible battle in her mind and had decided to survive.
“Papa,” Eli whispered, the word barely more than a breath. “Are we playing a game?”
Julian knelt, bringing himself level with his son. The boy’s cheeks were flushed with cold and fear, his small frame trembling despite the heavy cloak Freya had wrapped around his shoulders. Julian’s hands settled on Eli’s arms, warm and solid.
“A very serious one,” Julian said, his voice soft as stone rolling in a stream. “And in this game, we must be very quiet and very fast. Can you do that for me?”
Eli nodded, a small, jerky motion.
Julian’s thumb brushed a stray lock of hair from his son’s forehead. “Good. Now, do you trust me?”
“Always,” Eli said, without hesitation. The word hit Julian in the chest with the force of a physical blow.
He stood, his hand finding Freya’s elbow. The contact was brief, tactical, but the current that passed between them was anything but. She didn’t pull away. In the dim light, her eyes met his, and for a fleeting second, the years of cold silence and polite distance collapsed. They were just a mother and father again, united by the singular, primal need to protect their child.
Dorian pulled the hidden door in the cellar wall aside, revealing a rough-hewn tunnel leading out into the night. The air that rushed in was cold, carrying the scent of wet earth and pine. Julian gestured for Freya and Eli to go first.
“Stay close to the treeline until you reach the stables’ back entrance,” Dorian whispered to Julian. “I’ll have the horses saddled and waiting.”
They moved. The tunnel was a mouth of darkness, swallowing them whole. Eli’s small hand found Julian’s in the black, and Julian clutched it, a lifeline against the chaos closing in behind them. Above, through the muffled earth, they heard the distant, muffled shouts of men. The Pemberton riders had breached the main gate.
Silas had acted with alarming speed. Julian had expected a letter of protest, a legal maneuver, a drawn-out siege of influence. Not soldiers. Not a night raid on Ashby Hall. The man was desperate. And desperate men were the most dangerous kind.
They emerged into a thicket of yew trees, their branches casting skeletal fingers against the bruised purple sky of a late autumn dawn. The cold bit at Julian’s cheeks, but he barely felt it. His focus was a laser, cutting through the gloom to the low, dark shape of the stables. He could see Dorian’s tall silhouette moving among the horses, two mounts already saddled: a sturdy gray gelding and his own black stallion, Umbra.
Freya helped Eli onto the small, gentle mare Dorian had prepared for him. The boy knew how to ride, had been trained almost as soon as he could walk. His small hands found the reins, and he sat with a surprising for a child his age. Julian swung into Umbra’s saddle, his body moving with a fluid memory of countless hunts and border patrols. He guided the stallion alongside Freya’s mount, his eyes scanning the dark line of the forest.
A shout echoed from the direction of the Hall. A sharp, triumphant cry. They’d been seen.
“Ride,” Julian commanded, his voice cracking like a whip.
They burst from the cover of the trees, a trio of riders pounding across the frost-hardened meadow toward the old Bristol road. Behind them, Julian heard the thunder of hooves and the angry shouts of their pursuers, muffled by the distance. They were fast, these men, but the horses were fresher, and Julian knew every fold and dip of this land. He didn’t take the main road, instead veering them onto a narrow track that wound through the hills, a smuggler’s path that cut miles off the journey to the coast.
For what felt like hours, they rode in a silence broken only by the drumming of hooves and the labored breathing of the horses. Eli rode between them, his small body hunched, his head low against the wind. Freya’s face was a mask of concentration, her grip on the reins white-knuckled. Julian cast his gaze back, repeatedly, checking for the tell-tale glimmer of lantern light. Nothing. They’d bought themselves time, but time was a currency that could be stolen.
The first pale light of true dawn was streaking the sky when Dorian pulled up his horse, raising a hand. He pointed to a low, timber-framed building set back from the road, smoke curling from its chimney. A sign, weathered and peeling, hung crookedly above the door, groaning softly in the wind.
“The Traveller’s Rest,” Dorian said. “The innkeeper is a reliable man. A friend.”
“No one is a friend tonight,” Julian said, but he reined in Umbra nonetheless. Eli’s shoulders were drooping, and the boy was swaying slightly in the saddle. They needed rest, warmth, and a plan.
The inn was half-timbered and sagging, smelling of woodsmoke, stale ale, and boiled cabbage. The innkeeper, a portly, balding man with rheumy eyes, took one look at Julian’s face, the hard cast of his jaw and the flash of gold at his cuffs, and wisely asked no questions. He led them to a private room at the back of the building, a space warmed by a small fire in a stone hearth, furnished with two narrow beds and a basin of cold water.
Dorian locked the door and slid the heavy oak bolt across. He moved to the window, a sliver of space between the heavy curtain and the frame, and scanned the empty road. His movements were fluid, but as he shifted his weight, a small hiss of air escaped his teeth.
Julian’s head snapped around. Dorian’s hand pressed against his shoulder, his fingers coming away dark with blood. The black wool of his coat hid the wound, but the fabric was wet, tacky.
“A graze,” Dorian said, seeing Julian’s look. “One of Victor’s scouts got a shot off as we crossed the ridge.”
Freya was already on her feet, moving toward him with the brisk efficiency of someone who had tended more than one injury in her life. “Sit,” she ordered, her voice brooking no argument.
Dorian, the man who faced down armed guards and cutthroat politics without flinching, sat. He accepted the basin of water and the linen strips Freya passed him, but it was her hands—gentle, sure, steady—that did the work. She peeled back the torn wool, revealing a shallow but ugly furrow torn across the meat of his shoulder.
Julian stood by the fire, watching the scene unfold. Freya’s head was bent over Dorian’s wound, her dark hair falling forward to curtain her face. He saw the care in her hands, the unwavering focus. She was a woman of books and quiet drawing rooms, but in this moment, she was the steadiest person in the room.
He had fallen in love with her under a summer sky, in a garden overflowing with roses. She had been reading a book, her brow furrowed, and she’d looked up and caught his stare. She hadn’t blushed or looked away. She’d simply tilted her head and asked if he, a duke’s heir, had ever read a book in his life. He hadn’t. That had been his first lie to her. He’d told her he hadn’t, and she had launched into a passionate defense of the written word that had entranced him more than any ballad. He had loved her, truly and foolishly, a love so bright it had blinded him to the machinations of his own family. They had pushed him toward a match with a wealthier, more powerful house. Silas Pemberton had been the chief architect of the scheme, weaving a web of debts and obligations around the Ashby name.
They had made him choose: his name or his heart. He had tried to be both, and he had failed. He had let her walk away, carrying his child, because he thought it would protect her from the wreckage of his own life. He had been a coward, then. Watching her now, seeing the iron resolve in her spine as she tied the bandage on Dorian’s shoulder, he realized she was more Ashby than he had ever been.
“You’ll live,” Freya said, sitting back on her heels. Her voice was clipped, but her eyes held a ghost of a smile for Dorian.
“I intended to,” Dorian grunted, flexing his shoulder experimentally.
“Papa?” Eli’s small voice came from the bed nearest the fire. The boy had been so quiet they’d almost forgotten he was there. He lay beneath a rough woolen blanket, his face pale against the pillow.
Julian crossed to him in a heartbeat, his tall frame blocking the firelight. “I’m here, Eli.”
“Are you a ghost?” the boy asked, his eyes searching Julian’s face with a disarming seriousness. The question was so raw, so honest, that it brought a sharp sting to the back of Julian’s throat. He thought of the years of absence, the glass case he’d put himself in to keep his distance, to keep him safe. From his son’s perspective, the man who was his father had been a myth, a rumor, a portrait on the wall.
Julian sat on the edge of the bed, the ropes of the frame groaning under his weight. He took Eli’s small hand in his own, the boy’s fingers cold and fragile. “I’m not a ghost, Eli.” He paused, searching for words that could bridge the chasm of a childhood’s worth of longing. “I’m the Wolf of Ashby.”
Eli’s brow furrowed. “Wolves are scary.”
“They can be,” Julian agreed. His voice dropped, intimate and fierce, a promise sworn in the quiet and the firelight. “But a wolf’s first, most sacred duty is to its pack. To its cubs. And a wolf protects its cubs with its life, with its teeth, with everything it has. Do you understand?”
Eli’s eyes, so like his mother’s, studied him for a long moment. Then, slowly, a small, trusting smile touched his lips. He shifted, turning on his side, and his hand came up to tuck inside the lapel of Julian’s heavy cloak, curling around the rough cloth like it was a talisman. His eyes fluttered shut. Within a minute, his breathing evened out and deepened into the boneless, absolute sleep of a child.
Julian didn’t move. He couldn’t. The warmth of his son’s hand against his chest felt like an anchor, a tether to a life he had thought lost forever. He was vividly, painfully aware of Freya’s presence on the other side of the room.
“We can’t stay long,” Dorian said, his voice a low murmur from the window. He hadn’t moved from his post. “If Victor’s scouts are this close, they’ll be sweeping the Bristol road by midday.”
“I know,” Julian replied, his eyes still fixated on the sleeping boy’s face. He traced the delicate line of Eli’s jaw, the soft curve of his cheek. He had missed so much. The first word, the first step, the first time he’d laughed. He was not going to miss anything else. Not another breath. “We’ll move at dusk. I have a contact in Bristol who can get us on a ship.”
“And if they’ve guarded the ports?” Freya’s voice was quiet, but the challenge in it was clear.
Julian finally tore his gaze from Eli. He looked at Freya, the woman he had never stopped loving, despite every attempt to convince himself otherwise. The firelight caught the gold in her eyes, turning them to embers. In that moment, he wasn’t the Duke of Ashby. He was just a man, terrified and determined.
“Then we make them think we’re somewhere else,” he said. His mind was already spinning, weaving the next layer of the deception. He was a wolf, and he had a pack to save. He would burn every bridge, every allegiance, every identity he had to do it.
A soft chime cut through the quiet, a high, urgent buzz that was utterly alien to the centuries-old stone and timber of the inn. It came from a small, metal-encased device Dorian had tucked into his saddlebag, a piece of their more modern world, hidden away. The tracking alert.
Dorian crossed to it, his movements tight. He looked at the small, glowing screen, and his face went pale. His head came up, listening. The sound of the wind against the window had changed. It carried the rhythm of hooves, now slow and careful, not riding hard. Stopping.
Then, nothing. Silence.
Julian’s blood ran cold. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, his body interposing itself between the door and the bed where Eli slept. Freya moved too, not toward the door, but to the wall, pressing her back against it, out of the line of sight. Her eyes were fixed on the space where the door met its frame.
Boots sounded on the stair. Heavier than an innkeeper’s. The tread was measured, deliberate. They stopped on the landing outside the room. A low, clear voice drifted through the wood, too refined for a common scout, carrying the sharp, cruel edge of a man who enjoyed the hunt.
“I am Victor Pemberton. I have a magistrate with me,” the voice called out, each word precise and laden with official menace. “And a warrant for the arrest of one Elias Ashby, for the crime of bastardy and fraud against the Pemberton family.”
On the other side of the room, Dorian’s hand went to his pistol. His knuckles were bone-white. He looked at Julian, and the message in his eyes was clear. There was no escape that way, not through the door.
Victor’s voice was closer now, and a new, harsh note crept into it. “Open this door, or we will break it down in the King’s name.”
Julian pulled Freya and Eli toward the window. The firelight flickered. The click of a hammer being cocked was a loud, sharp crack in the sudden silence. Then the door splintered.