Chapter 15: Structural Distractions
Three days after Vash the Lion Kin had departed, Elian discovered that the prospect of more armed Vanguard scouts arriving at his door was an excellent remedy for ordinary fatigue. Panic, when harnessed properly, turned out to be almost energizing.
It had taken a grueling seventy-two hours just to split the remaining Iron-heart logs into usable planks, a process that nearly broke his dwarven-forged wedges. To ensure the new seating wouldn't warp as the season deepened, he had bartered two hot meals to a passing pair of trappers—a sullen Northman and a half-starved Orc—in exchange for a bucket of rendered pine-pitch. He specifically recalled the sealant's necessity from an old Ironforge Guild manual he had studied back in the archives, and applying it had consumed an entire evening.
Now, he stood in the middle of the Oaken Hearth covered in black sawdust from collar to boots, sleeves shoved to the elbow, a stub of charcoal tucked behind one ear while he leaned over the second set of Iron-heart timbers. The new booth was halfway assembled. One mortise sat just slightly too narrow, and the oak peg he needed to drive through it would either seat cleanly or aggressively split his mallet head if he misjudged the angle. He squinted down the line of the joint, measuring the problem in his head, judging how much force the dense timber would tolerate.
The front door scraped over the stone floor with that familiar dragging complaint.
Elian did not bother looking up right away. Freezing air moved in first, carrying the sharp scent of pine and the metallic edge of coming snow—a clear reminder that Icethra’s true winter was rapidly approaching the Wilds. A second later came the steady thud of iron-shod boots. He knew the sequence by now. Rylia had arrived.
She stepped inside and stopped just beyond the entry, already reaching for the heavy buckles at her chest. One by one, the pieces of frost-rimmed armor came off. The scarred boiled-leather breastpiece hit the floorboards first with a blunt smack. The iron-braced greaves followed. Then the armored faulds at her hips. She unbuckled the outer shell of the Vanguard easily, leaving her in under-armor designed purely for unobstructed movement. She wore a sleeveless linen tunic and dark woven trousers fitted close through the leg—practical garments meant to sit under heavy plate without catching or binding. On anyone else, they might have passed without comment.
“I brought firewood,” Rylia announced. Her deep voice rolled through the room and set a few loose tools on Elian’s bench humming softly against one another.
“Stack it by the hearth,” Elian said, still bent over the booth frame with his chisel in hand. “And don’t drop anything near Barnaby. He’s currently pretending management has overextended him.”
Barnaby answered with an indignant bray and one hard stomp of his forehoof, formally entering his objection into the public record.
Rylia made a low, rumbling sound that might have been amusement. A moment later, Elian heard the solid, rhythmic thumps of split pine logs being set neatly against the hearthstone. He gave the chisel one last measured tap, brushed the black sawdust from the joint, and straightened up. He meant to turn around and ask whether she wanted her dark tonic now or later.
Instead, the entire thought vanished in transit.
Rylia was bent at the waist, setting the last of the firewood into place.
Without the outer armor obscuring her, the physical reality of the Frost Wolf Alpha became impossible to ignore. The dark cloth of her trousers pulled tightly across her hips and thighs. The line of her back and the spread of her stance lodged in Elian’s attention at once and absolutely refused to leave.
His iron hammer lowered a few inches in his hand.
He stared.
There was nothing accidental about it. His mind halted all nonessential tasks, fastening itself to the sight with complete, appalling sincerity. Somewhere during this catastrophic mental collapse, the traitorous, analytical part of his brain found itself genuinely wondering what sort of heavy weave and seam reinforcement a pair of woven trousers required to survive a Frost Wolf's musculature.
Look anywhere else. The patched rafters. The scrubbed floor. The half-finished booth. The inside of your own skull. If she catches you doing this, she is going to fold you cleanly in half and use the pieces for structural lessons.
He did not look anywhere else.
Across the room, Barnaby stopped chewing. A long strand of hay dangled from his mouth while he looked from the bent Frost Wolf to the perfectly motionless human standing near the workbench. Then the mule let out a slow, exhausted breath and lowered his heavy head behind the stall rail with the distinct air of a creature refusing to witness an entirely avoidable death.
Rylia’s white ears twitched.
They tipped back just slightly, instantly catching the sudden change in the room. The rhythmic tap of hammer and chisel had completely stopped. The workbench had gone silent. The only sounds left were the fire shifting in the hearth, the soft scrape of wood against stone, and Elian’s breathing, which had become far more noticeable than he would have preferred.
She did not straighten at once.
Instead, she lingered. She rested one hand on the final log while her hidden awareness sharpened the tension in the room. Her weight shifted, widening her stance a calculated fraction. The line of her back changed with deliberate slowness as she finished arranging the stack.
The dark fabric pulled tighter.
Elian made a small, strangled sound in the back of his throat that would have been mercifully unidentifiable to normal human ears.
Then Rylia rose, unhurried, to her full towering height and turned to firmly face him.
Only then did Elian violently wrench his gaze upward to her face.
Heat rushed through him so quickly it felt exactly like stepping too near an open forge. His ears burned. His neck burned. His whole expression, he suspected, had taken on the unmistakable honesty of a man caught in the act of having absolutely no defense ready.
“You stopped working, Elian,” Rylia noted.
Her voice had gone low again, utilizing that deep, humming register that never seemed especially loud and still managed to land directly against his ribs. She rested one thick hand on her hip and stood there without a single shred of embarrassment. Every inch of her imposing posture broadcast that she knew exactly what had just happened and was in absolutely no hurry to spare him.
“I was taking a break,” Elian said.
The lie came out with so little authority that he nearly apologized to it. He grabbed a clean rag off the scarred bench and started wiping down the head of his iron chisel with frantic, desperate attention.
“Standard labor practice,” he babbled. “Preventative measure. Very important in repetitive carpentry.”
“Is it?” Rylia asked.
She took one deliberate step toward him. The floorboards answered heavily under the shift of her weight.
“And what exactly were you resting your eyes on?” she continued. Another step. “The joinery?” A third. “The masonry?” She was close enough now that the room had begun to completely rearrange itself around her. “The ceiling?”
Heat came off her in a steady wave, carrying the cold pine from the trail, the faint musk of her heavy coat, and the clean outdoor scent of snow caught in fur and fabric. She stopped at the edge of his workbench. The immediate problem before Elian shifted rapidly from timber to the terrifying question of where a man was supposed to look when a Frost Wolf demanded accountability for his wandering eyes.
“I was actively assessing the load-bearing capacity of the immediate area,” Elian said, because apparently humiliation had not yet dulled his clerk's instinct for terrible phrasing.
His hand had found the edge of the workbench and locked there.
Rylia leaned in.
She placed both hands flat on the Iron-heart tabletop, one on either side of him, boxing him neatly between the heavy bench and the tool chest at his back. The predatory move was so smooth that by the time Elian registered it, retreat had ceased to be a practical option. Her face was close enough now that he could physically feel the warmth of her breath in the narrow space between them.
“Load-bearing capacity,” she repeated. The low amusement in her voice had sharpened into something altogether more dangerous.
“Yes,” Elian managed. The wooden tool chest pressed hard against the backs of his shoulders. “Crucial for long-term stability.”
From the stall, Barnaby knocked his forehead once against the wooden rail with a dull thunk, attempting to depart the conversation through blunt impact.
Rylia’s pale blue eyes dropped to Elian’s mouth for the briefest instant and then returned to his face. The small curve at one corner of her lips had become completely devastating.
“You are a terrible liar, human,” she said softly.
She tipped her head. The soft edge of one plush ear brushed lightly against his hair. The contact was so slight it might have been imagined if the rest of his body had not reacted as though struck.
Elian’s hand tightened on the bench. He did not move away.
“But you should know something,” Rylia continued, her voice dropping another shade lower, right at his ear. “If you are going to study me that closely, architect, have the courage to do it while I’m facing you. There is no need for frightened little glances when my back is turned.”
Elian immediately forgot how his lungs functioned.
The failure was total. Whatever part of him governed breathing had simply stepped aside and left him to perish where he stood, pinned securely in place by warmth, fur, and his own catastrophic lack of discipline.
Then, Rylia seamlessly pushed away from the workbench. She bent and scooped up her discarded armor with one massive hand. The heavy weight settled over her shoulder as casually as a simple woolen cloak.
“Have a large mug of tonic ready in an hour,” she ordered smoothly, already turning toward the wooden stairs that led to the upper loft. “I’m washing the road off.”
She climbed without looking back, her heavy boots sounding softly on the timbers as she ascended. Elian stayed exactly where he was, rooted in place, listening to the creak of the floorboards overhead long after she had gone entirely out of sight.
At last, he lowered his eyes to the iron hammer still hanging uselessly from one hand.
Then he turned very slowly toward the mule.
“Barnaby,” Elian said into the suddenly too-warm room, “I am not going to survive this business venture.”
Barnaby snorted, kicked over his water bucket with pure disgust, and turned his hindquarters toward the bar.