Scene 1: Dawn's Reluctant Light
Morning came to Valerious like an unwelcome guest—gray, damp, and grudging. The fog that had swallowed the village the night before lingered in low-lying pockets, turning the central square into a shallow sea of mud. Roosters that had survived the winter crows cautiously from hidden perches; otherwise the village was silent except for the drip of melting frost from eaves and the occasional creak of a shutter being cracked open to peer out.
Elizabeth had barely slept.
She had lain in the narrow bed of her chamber until the small hours, body restless, skin too hot beneath the thin linen shift. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the stranger's face: the storm-gray eyes, the faint silver in his dark hair, the way his throat moved when he spoke of monsters as though they were old enemies rather than nightmares. And lower—God forgive her—the hard line of his body beneath the black coat, the breadth of his shoulders, the promise of muscle and scar.
She had touched herself in the dark, fingers slipping between slick folds, chasing relief that never quite came. Each stroke brought his face sharper into focus until she bit her lip bloody to keep from moaning his name—Frederick—a name she should not even know so intimately yet.
Now, armored again, hair tightly braided, blades freshly oiled, she descended to the square.
The villagers were already stirring. Women carried buckets to the well with hurried steps; men checked barricades with the grim routine of the perpetually besieged. They gave her wide berth—not out of fear, but respect laced with pity. The last Valerious. The one who would either save them or doom them all.
She spotted him immediately.
Frederick stood near the blackened well, coat draped over one arm, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He was cleaning a silver-bladed short sword with slow, deliberate strokes of a whetstone. The rasp of metal on stone carried across the square like a warning bell. His horse cropped grass at the edge of the palisade under the watchful eye of the same nervous boy from last night.
Elizabeth's boots sank into the mud with soft sucking sounds as she approached. She stopped five paces away—close enough to be heard, far enough to draw steel if needed.
"You rise early for a Vatican man," she said. Her voice carried no warmth.
Frederick did not look up immediately. He finished the stroke, tested the edge with his thumb, then sheathed the blade at his hip.
"I rise when the monsters do," he replied. Only then did he meet her eyes. "And you?"
"I never truly sleep."
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth—gone so quickly she might have imagined it.
**Scene 2: The Confrontation**
Elizabeth closed the distance in three strides. Mud splashed against her boots. She drew the dagger from her boot sheath in one fluid motion—the short, wickedly curved blade the villagers called a "widow-maker"—and pressed its point to the soft hollow beneath his jaw.
The square froze.
A woman dropped her bucket; water spilled in a dark fan across the mud. A child was yanked back inside a doorway. No one breathed.
Frederick did not flinch.
He raised both hands slowly—palms open, empty—until they hovered at shoulder height.
"If you mean to kill me," he said quietly, "do it quickly. I have things to do before noon."
Elizabeth pressed harder. A tiny bead of blood welled against the steel.
"You come into my village. You speak my family's secrets. You look at me like you already know my sins." Her voice dropped to a hiss. "Who sent you really? And why should I trust a word from a man who smells of Rome and death?"
Frederick's gaze never wavered.
"Because if I wanted you dead, you would already be bleeding out in your own hall." He spoke without bravado, only fact. "And because the thing in the mountains wants you both alive and broken. I am here to make sure it fails."
Elizabeth searched his face. No lie flickered there—only the same weary certainty she had seen in her father's eyes before he rode out to die.
She hated that most of all.
Her body betrayed her again.
Pressed so close—chest to chest, hips brushing— she felt the heat of him through leather and wool. Felt the unmistakable thickening of his cock against her lower belly as blood rushed where it should not. Her own traitorous nipples drew into tight peaks beneath the bodice, scraping against linen with every shallow breath.
She hated him for it. Hated herself more.
"You're hard," she whispered, venomous, so low only he could hear. "Is that how Rome trains its hunters? To rut at the first sign of danger?"
Frederick's pupils dilated, black swallowing gray.
"No," he answered, voice rougher now. "That's how a man reacts when a beautiful woman pins him with steel and fire in her eyes."
The words landed like a slap—and like a caress.
Elizabeth's hand trembled. The dagger nicked deeper; another ruby bead slid down his throat and disappeared beneath his collar.
She should kill him.
Instead she leaned in—close enough that her lips nearly brushed his ear.
"If you touch me without permission," she breathed, "I will carve that cock from your body and feed it to the wolves."
Frederick exhaled through his nose—a sound that was half laugh, half groan.
"Noted."
Scene 3: The Standoff Breaks
Slowly—agonizingly—Elizabeth lowered the blade.
She stepped back one pace. Then another. The space between them felt colder than the mud underfoot.
Frederick touched the shallow cut on his throat, looked at the blood on his fingertips, then wiped it on his trousers without comment.
The villagers exhaled as one. Whispers erupted like sparks.
Elizabeth sheathed the dagger with a sharp click.
"Come," she said. "If you are to stay, you will see what you are truly up against."
She turned on her heel and strode toward the keep's sally port. After a beat, Frederick followed—coat slung over his shoulder, stride long and unhurried.
Scene 4: The Armory
The armory occupied the lowest level of the keep: a vaulted stone chamber lit by narrow arrow slits and a single hanging brazier. Racks held what remained of the Valerious arsenal—short swords, crossbows, silver-tipped quarrels, flasks of holy water long since diluted by rainwater leaking through the roof. A workbench was littered with half-repaired blades and jars of wolfsbane paste.
Elizabeth lit an oil lamp, throwing harsh shadows across the walls.
Frederick surveyed the room without comment, then picked up a silver dagger whose edge had been notched by something impossibly hard.
"Werewolf," he said. Not a question.
"William's last hunt." Elizabeth's voice was flat. "He took the good silver. Came back with nothing but blood on his coat—and then nothing at all."
Frederick set the dagger down.
"How long?"
"Three weeks tomorrow."
He nodded once.
"You think he's dead."
"I think he's worse than dead." She met his eyes. "I think Nicolas has him. Turned him. Or is using him. The howls we hear some nights… they sound like him."
Frederick stepped closer to the workbench. His fingers traced the gouges in the wood—claw marks, deep and deliberate.
"Then we find proof," he said. "And if he is turned, we end it cleanly. If he is captive, we take him back."
Elizabeth laughed—a short, bitter sound.
"You speak as though it were simple."
"Nothing about this bloodline has ever been simple."
He turned to face her fully.
She realized too late how close he stood again. The armory was small; there was nowhere to retreat without looking weak.
Frederick's gaze dropped—deliberately—to her mouth, then lower, lingering on the rise and fall of her breasts beneath the leather.
"Your heart is racing," he observed quietly.
"Anger does that."
"Is it anger?"
She swallowed.
"Don't."
"Don't what?" His voice was velvet over steel. "Name it?"
Elizabeth's hand shot out—fingers curling into his shirt, yanking him forward until their foreheads nearly touched.
"I will not be another notch on a Vatican hunter's belt," she snarled.
Frederick's hand came up—slowly—cupping the side of her jaw. His thumb brushed the corner of her mouth.
"I have no belt," he murmured. "And I have no interest in notches."
"Then what do you want?"
For a heartbeat he said nothing.
Then: "To keep you alive long enough to see the sun rise over a world without Nicolas in it."
His thumb pressed—just enough to part her lips.
Elizabeth's breath shuddered out.
She shoved him back—hard.
He let her.
Scene 5: The Pact
Elizabeth paced to the far wall, putting distance and cold stone between them.
"We leave at first light tomorrow," she said without turning. "North, toward the old hunting paths. If William is alive, that is where the trail begins."
Frederick nodded.
"I'll need to see the maps. Any records of Nicolas's movements. Anything your family kept."
"There is a journal—my father's. In the library." She paused. "You may read it. But you touch nothing else."
"Understood."
She finally faced him again.
"One more thing."
He waited.
"If the brides come tonight—or any night—you do not play the hero. You fight beside me. Not in front of me. Not behind me. Beside."
Frederick inclined his head.
"Beside."
Elizabeth studied him a long moment—searching for deceit, finding only the same steady storm in his eyes.
"Then get some rest," she said. "You will need it."
She moved to leave.
At the doorway she paused.
"Frederick."
He looked up.
"Do not mistake my body's reaction for weakness," she said softly. "It changes nothing."
His mouth curved—small, dangerous, knowing.
"It changes everything," he answered. "And we both know it."
Elizabeth walked out without another word.
But as she climbed the stairs to her chamber, thighs slick again beneath the leather breeches, she knew he was right.
And that terrified her more than any monster in the mountains.