“What do you want, Roland?”

Something inside me clenches at the question. A minuscule of hope rises before it’s squashed by reality.

The scent of sap and wood meets with the alfalfa and pipe smoke of David and the sweat and blood of many townsfolk preparing. All along the parapet, men and women set up spears and arrows and acids to toss down on the unlucky invaders. Behind me in this very watchtower is a large balista on a swiveling base, armed and ready should another dragon attack. When another dragon attacks.

I look over as David leans against the watchtower wall beside me, watching the trees in the distance sway beneath the morning light as the black shadows in the sky draw ever closer.

“Sir, does one such as me get such luxuries? How am I supposed to have the privilege of wants when everyone needs?” I ask, my voice holding a bitter edge I try to hide.

Why does his question needle me so?

Something deep inside, something near to death and buried even further than Beast, whispers what I once craved in my childhood.

A place to just… be. A place to just… live. Without demands and fighting. Without broken trust and death.

A memory from long ago takes me to a place I’d almost given up for lost.

The palace was rife with life that spring. A long winter had given way to the green buds sprouting between the remnants of melting snow and ice.

The sheep of the mountains had lambed, and the little four-legged fluff balls scampered and frolicked behind their placid mothers.

Some tousled with each other, and others, mere days old, napped between bouts of play.

The cry of a newborn babe shook the castle, every Shifter wincing at the sharp cry that pierced straight through sensitive eardrums to the brain.

“Roland,” Sir Rey said from behind me, recently granted his knighthood from my father. “Come meet your brother.”

I turned from the sheep and my book. I had been frantically waiting to hear something other than the sharp cries of my mother. The gentle smile on my friend’s face and parting the peach fuzz on his cheeks that he’d been trying to grow for months made my heart swell in my chest. The man was the only one who treated me as a person, not a prince or a child or a rival.

I respected him for it. Perhaps even loved him for it.

He gestured behind him, and I froze.

I could hear the gurgling coos and the soft voice of my mother. My father was gone. His war with the Were took him from us more often than not. But I think we all breathed a silent sigh of relief when he was gone.

We were free to be us, mother and I, as only we could when just the servants were around. When we didn’t have to put on a show or be perfect.

But the future was… terrifying. I wanted a sibling—but I questioned if this was only the beginning of the end. If this little brother would be the one who Father would finally love.

I tried to be the perfect prince for my father. I tried to smile less, speak with cordiality but not be a rabbit before wolves, and I tried to love him enough for him to love me.

It never worked. It was never enough. I only learned recently that he could not give love he did not possess and nothing I did could ever make him love me.

But as a child who had yet to realize such things—I wondered if I would have to split the little scraps of attention and gifts from my father I already desperately craved and would do almost anything for.

“Roland?” Sir Rey’s voice snapped me from my fear and I stood, nodding to him with a forced smile as I took my small feet from the lambs up the steps to the palace entrance and beyond to meet my brother for the first time.

And then I saw him. He was the ugliest little skrisour I’d ever seen.

His skin was all wrinkly and prune-like, and he still smelled terrible, a mix between the metallic hint of blood and something I couldn’t name but smelled like a dead animal mixed with grease. Not pleasant.

But Mother beamed at me, her face flush and limbs shaking, but as she held my baby brother, she smiled. It was a smile of joy. A smile I had not seen in quite some time, ever since Father forbid her from riding through the countryside with me.

And that was the moment I realized that the little ugly goblin may actually change some things for the better.

So I looked down at him, sucking his thumb, and his squinty eyes popped open, the blue so bright it almost seemed like a clear blue sky in the middle of winter. He held out his slobbery fist, something in his eyes I couldn’t name.

I let him wrap his fist around my finger, enamored by his gaze.

Then he jerked my finger to his mouth with surprising strength and started suckling.

I looked at Mother with wide eyes, trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do.

She laughed, a breathy sound that seemed to take more out of her than she had, but she gently extracted my finger from the baby’s tight grasp, replacing it with her own.

“This is your brother, Roland. I’ve named him Alec.”

I jerked my head up, watching her. Even at that age I knew she was courting fire naming him while Father was gone. And I knew Father wanted to name him after his great-great grandfather. Alex was the name of Mother’s niece, and she told me she wanted to leave her legacy behind, as well, by matching up the names. It was apparently something her home did—and I now know that to be the Mages. I’m not half-human after all. I’m half Mage.

After Alec’s birth and christening, I came to realize it was her own small form of rebellion, a tiny thing she could do that my father did not control.

Alec became much more to me than a pesky little brother. He became my best friend and my fellow mischief maker.

Until the day he died, he was glued to my side, and I hope he’s found the peace with the Allfather I still yearn for.

“Roland?” David snaps his fingers in front of my face and I blink. I dart my eyes over at him, surprised by the strength of the memory. “Where did you go?” His brows are pinched and he watches me with concern.

I rub my thumb over a dagger, polishing the handle with my skin. “A memory, this one surprisingly pleasant.”

“Did it have anything to do with the answer to my question?”

“You’re quite stubborn, you know that?” I reply.

He chuckles, running a hand over his dirt-streaked hair.

“It seems trouble follows you, Roland. It seems nations are after what is in your possession. But there is a dream in your heart, a dream of what you long for. So I will ask again. What do you want? Until you find your why, you will wonder until you find yourself once more at the mercy of those you despise.”

I run an agitated hand down my face, my foot tapping against the floor until I still it.

“I want to be free,” I whisper at long last.

He nods, smoking on his pipe that smells of sweet and tangy herbs. “And what does that look like?”

“A library with books overflowing to the edges of the continent. Children racing through the aisles. I see a field of lambs in spring, bedding down beside dragons. Children, from Humans to Mages to Shifter to Were to Other playing in the streets. I see men of honour taking the mantle of leadership, providing safety and peace for the peoples and granting hope for the first time in centuries. I see a babe with blue eyes, who knows only freedom, joy, and love in her life that we payed for in blood.”

My chest heaves, and I walk from the edge of the parapet, pacing as the internal war scours my soul. That is what Pa, my real father, dreamed of. For peace. For a world that knew love over hate and forgiveness over vengeance.

His legacy is mine to uphold. Both by training Barry and Jed and protecting their mother, but also by seeking a truth to his vision of a peaceful world. A vision that is remarkably similar to my own.

I stop, looking back at the fields before me, checking to ensure I missed nothing in my distraction.

I was supposed to be watching the enemy, but David found me.

He always seems to know where I am, perhaps because Tim and Jace are still my babysitters. And now Flash has joined them… something I find terrifying. Tim and Flash have a love for all things food and mischief related—they embody the meaning double trouble. I find it unlikely those three can sneak anywhere, which means everyone knows where I am at all times, no matter if I’m silent as a mouse.

To my annoyance, Flash can follow me anywhere. He’s my match in stealth, and Jace and Tim have learned not to let the Were out of their sight if they want to find me.

It’s terribly inconvenient.

“Hey! Whatcha doin’ with my yums?”

“You yums? You yum yum,” Tim says, his large chuckle rumbling from his chest.

“Nope. You aren’t taking mine, mate,” Flash says, and I can see him jumping away from Tim as the man tries to steal his food, which appears to be some sort of chocolate drizzled pop on a stick.

“It seems you are chasing a dream for the sake of our children’s children,” David says.

I snort. “I have no children, sir.”

“No, but there will come a woman who will show you that sometimes love is worth the risk.”

I raise a brow. He watches me, puffing on his pipe, the smoke billowing around his face.

We both know he’s right.

But how can I trust a woman in the midst of this life? And how could I possibly bring someone like that into such a life as my own?

It wouldn’t be fair to her or my children. Which is why I must bring an end to that dream and be content making the world a better place for all—even if the children I saw racing through that library were little wolves, some with black eyes.