The second the words leave my mouth, the warmth slowly but surely leaks out of the room, leaving only an icy chill.

Wolf's reaction makes me almost regret what I just said. If I thought his face was harsh and humorless before, it's nothing compared to now. His yellow eyes blaze fire as his bushy eyebrows slam down over them, cutting a severe line on his forehead. His temple wrinkles, his jaw clenches such that his cheekbones are stark, pushing underneath his skin. A singular vein throbs near his mind.

“Tell me.”

I swallow but hesitate cowed by his response.

“Tell me,” he repeats, in an even darker tone, carefully spoken as though he's on the edge. As though warning me to tread lightly.

Suddenly I'm tongue tied, and guilt laces my bones.

Maybe I should have chosen a different strategy.

Wolf’s mother, Errila, was very popular in the Accacia. Not necessarily in the way most people are popular because she is not royalty, neither is she from a prestigious Northern family. There's no grand fame or acclaim to her name.

But Errila did have the best bakery in the town square, and her rolls were said to be one of the King’s favorite desserts. The palace would often order shipments of rolls practically every week and I would see wagons of it roll by every time I went to the market.

Occasionally, the King would invite Errila to the palace to bake for him personally, a privilege offered to none other than his private palace chef. It showed the amount of trust and affection he had for her, set her apart from any other woman in town, even his acclaimed lovers.

But that wasn’t the only reason Errila was popular and so beloved by everyone. Although it was hard to pinpoint just one reason why, I would attribute it to her affect, the way she treated everyone kindly foreigner or not, and the dimpled smile she offered that made her wrinkled face shine with beauty.

She was simply someone that everyone wanted to be around.

Which is what made it so devastating when she went missing a year ago.

No turning back now.

“A year ago, about," I start. “I visited her bakery. It was in the late afternoon and I was loitering about because I- I didn’t want to go home.” My mother was particularly vicious that day, angry over a broken dish.

I don't need to explain that to him so I move on with the rest of the story.

“Sometimes I liked to sit in the alley behind the bakery because the smell of the bread calmed me. Usually, I don’t make my presence known but that day I was careless and your mother caught me. She invited me in and gave me bread. Saw my bruises and tended to them. Sang me a song to soothe the pain when I cried. That was the song I recited at the Hovel."

My story is stirring a visceral reaction in him. As much as he tries to control his features he can't. His mother has been missing for a year and he probably has been searching for her all that time. This is the first true lead he has found.

“I went back again to her bakery," I continue. "Two more times. That was all I could allow because I couldn't let my mother know where I was going."

"Why not?"

"The day after she tended to me, Errila stopped by my home to see me, to check if I was feeling better. My mother was there and after your mother left, she was furious. She thought that I talked badly about her, and gossiped to people in town about how she abused me. And then she beat me again. Forbade me from ever going back to the bakery. But I couldn't just leave without telling Errila thank you. I went back twice more." I pause for breath. "The second time, I noticed she seemed worried about something. She said she didn’t have time that day, that she needed to go to the King's Castle to deliver an item quickly. She gave me some bread and then sent me on my way.” I pause before I level the last blow. “That was the last day she was seen.”

Wolf growls something then. I don't know what it is, because it's in a language I don't understand. Or maybe it's not a language at all.

Either way, I can hear it sounds pained and angry.

With his free hand, he buries his fist into the stone wall.

I jerk. The entire building shakes from the force of his fury.

He says the words again and again hitting the wall. I imagine who he's thinking of hitting though. The King.

My guilt expands. I didn't expect him to react this violently. I also didn't want to cause him such pain. A part of me regrets telling him this story.

Most of all, I regret that it's not true.

At least not all of it. It's true that I went to Errila's bakery on that first day, and she gave my bread while she tended to my wounds. But I never cried and she never sang me that song.

It was Wolf who sang me the song in my third life when I was sick with the Red Fever. He told me it was a song his mother used to sing to him whenever he was sick, so I went off that with my story.

Furthermore, after Errila treated my wounds, I only returned to the bakery once. His mother wasn't there when I got there, and I never saw her the day she went missing either.

Everything I constructed regarding her making a delivery to the King's Castle was false.

But it was close enough to the truth to be convincing. That's the thing about Wolf. He could immediately tell an outright lie, but I learned over the few months we traveled together in the future, that I could sometimes get away with bending the truth.

And the truth is that Errila did go to the palace that day when she went missing, even though I didn't see her or know it at the time.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

And the King was indeed behind her disappearance.

Wolf suddenly turns to me with a visage so fierce that it would have made my knees shake if I were standing. He looks angry enough to raze everything to the earth.

“You told no one this,” he barks, blatant accusation in his tone.

“Who would I tell?” I shoot back. “The guards? The Accacians? The investigators who work for the royal family? My mother?”

“You should have told me.”

“I didn’t know you back then. You were like a myth, the man who lived in the Dark Forest and came out only once in a blue moon. Even if I found you, and mustered up the boldness to approach you, how was I to know you would believe me, the Muzungu?"

"You should have known," he says stubbornly.

"Would have believed me?"

“Yes.” His words are harsh but decisive. “Yes, I would have believed you.”

These words strike at something inside me that breaks and heals all at once.

“I’m sorry,” I say, and hurry to ease his pain by telling him one truth. “But that’s why I’m here now. Your mother’s alive.”

The expression on his face freezes. "You don’t jest?”

“I don’t jest,” I say. I know for a fact that his mother is alive at this point in time because Errila and I will share a prison cell in the future. “And I can help you find her.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Why would you? And how do you know these things? How can you find her?”

This next part is tricky. I can't tell too many lies at once, or he'll catch on.

“I can’t tell you," I decide.

His next sound is a humorless laugh, right before his large hand wraps around my neck and his eyes swoop in inches from mine.

“We’ve gotten far beyond you keeping secrets, little bird. You will speak to me at once."

“I can’t,” I whisper, fearful of the hand around my throat. “But please just give me some time and I will tell you.”

“Till when?”

"The second trial,” I say. “I will tell you after the second trial, in return for you training me till then.”

His face grows fiercer and I rush to say. "You won't understand it now, even if I did tell you. I don't entirely understand it either. I need more information to know for sure where your mother is. To get that, I will need to pass the second trial. I need your help, Wolf."

“How convenient,” he snarls showing off sharp teeth at each corner of his mouth. “Answer me this. Had I refused to help you would you have told me this truth about my mother?”

“Yes,” I answer truthfully. “I would have told you the truth regardless. Like I said, I care for your mother and I would have tried to get her back myself if I could. But I need your help. And you need my help too, but I cannot help you if I do not pass the trials.”

His face doesn't soften, not even a bit. His eyes still blaze. “And is this just about you finding my mother? That’s what your aim is?”

I shake my head. “My aim is beyond that. But finding your mother ties into it. And you do too. I won't lie to you and say I'm only helping you out of guilt or kindness. I don't have very noble goals. The truth is I need you to keep me alive, at least until the trials are over. And I need to keep you alive too."

He snorts at that, but it's harsh and humorless. "You think you can keep me alive?"

"I know I can," I say confidently. "As strong as you are, you're not invincible. We need each other."

His index finger, long and firm shifts up my neck to under my chin, a smooth move that has me swallowing because it almost feels like a caress. His eyes hold mine, seeming to peel off every layer of secrets I've ever had. They seem to look far beyond the surface.

"Fine," he says finally. "But if I find out at any point that you've lied to me–"

"I know. You’ll flay the skin from my bones and gobble up whatever's left.” His eyes slither down my neck to where my pulse is likely trying to pound out of my skin. Then it comes back up to mine.

He releases me so suddenly, that I nearly fall over.

"Have it your way. Come.”

"Come where?"

He's already at the door, pulling it open.

"You said I had to train you,” he says. “So let’s train.”

Now? I didn't expect everything to happen so quickly, but I guess I should be grateful for it.

Go before he changes his mind.

“Oh. Alright.” I rise but then a loud growl stops us in our steps.

This time it's not from Wolf. It's my stomach.

Heat spreads across my face, as Wolf's eyes flicker to mine, drops to my stomach, then back up again. He rolls his eyes as he shuts the door, and mutters to himself as he walks to the other side of the room, where the wooden stove is.

What comes next is a cacophony of movement, involving a slamming cupboard, banging around pots and pans, uncovering a large pot and pulling out herbs and a large slab of red meat.

It takes me almost a full minute to realize that he's cooking.

“Oh,” I say, immediately alarmed that he would go through the trouble. "I didn't mean – You don't have to–”

His brief glare silences me.

Right. I do have to eat and I have nothing with which to buy food with. The stipend from winning the first trial won't come for another few days, and that will all go to my mother.

As much as I hate to admit it, right now, I am his charity case.

"Thank you," is all I can say to Wolf and he doesn't even give me the courtesy of grunting out a response.

I feel stupid standing there so I go to him and say, “Can I help you?”

“No.” His tone is final and he points with a spatula to the pink chair behind the dining table. “Sit.”

As I reluctantly obey, he deftly begins chopping up the herbs and then massaging them into the meat. He beats the meat with the side of his cleaver several times, before massaging it again. Then he places everything in a big pot, pours some water in, and then lets it simmer.

I watch him while he works. It's an interesting thing, to watch such a large man be so domestic. It's odd but also erotic in a way.

I have to admire the way that his brutishness contrasts with the domesticity of his movements. His shoulder muscles shift smoothly almost gracefully, even as he makes enough sound to wake the dead. His methods are coarse and unrefined but effective given the delicious aroma that soon rises in the atmosphere.

And then finally, he reaches into the cupboards and grabs a wooden bowl into which he ladles some of the contents of the pot.

Then he brings it to me placing it on the table.

“Eat.”

There's steam coming out the top and he tosses me a spoon. I catch it, and his presence makes me so nervous that I immediately scoop some of the broth and bring it to my lip, ready to sip it.

“Stop,” he says and touches my wrist. He takes the spoon from my hand carefully not spilling a single drop. He brings it to his lips and blows on it, his eyes meeting mine for a split second.

I don't imagine it this time, the sensation that punches into my stomach.

I swallow it down, ignoring the feeling. He's not for you.

Wolf blows twice before bringing the spoon to my lips.

I open and close my mouth around it without saying anything, surprised by the burst of flavor on my tongue.

"This is good," I announce

"You sound surprised."

"I am." I take the spoon from his hand, inhaling another sip and then another until pretty soon I’m slopping it all up in an undignified matter like I haven't eaten for years. After I'm done with the broth, I get to the thick cuts of meat, chewing and closing my eyes to savor it.

This is the best thing I've tasted in...well, ever.

Meat was not a luxury I had in my old home. It was expensive, and what little we did get was reserved for my mother and her occasional guests. I was left with whatever chunks remained on the bone after she was through with them.

Wolf observes me quietly as I eat. What a turn of events. Just minutes ago, he had his hand around my throat. And now he's feeding me.

That should teach you something, the voice in my head says. Be careful with this one. He's more unpredictable than you realize.

When I’m done Wolf takes the bowl and ladles some more broth with chunks of meat.

I should deny it out of propriety but I truly want more of the tender meat. Wolf sits on the crooked chair and watches me pointedly until I start eating again. He nods with approval at different intervals.

This time I only get halfway done with the bowl before I sag back against the chair feeling like my stomach is going to explode.

Wolf drags the bowl back to himself and downs the rest of it, practically in one gulp.

“Rest for now," he says. "Then we train."