Raven The Alpha's Cursed Slave

"Why is there a baby in the middle of a crossroad?"

A younger guard asked for the second time.

Snow was falling sideways, hard enough to sting. Four border guards stood in a half circle at the edge of the crossroads, as far from the basket as they could get without looking like cowards.

In the middle of the road, where the Aquila track met the old trade path, a woven basket sat in the snow. Inside it, wrapped in a plain grey blanket, was a newborn.

Around it stood seven ravens.

They were not normal ravens. Each one was the size of a hunting hawk, and their feathers were so black they looked wet. They stood in a tight ring with their wings half open and their heads turned outward, like soldiers at a gate.

"Birds don't stand watch in a storm," the oldest guard muttered. "They don't do that."

"I tried to get close." Another guard held up his hand. Three red lines ran across the back of it. "One of them went for my eyes."

"Then stop trying, you fool."

"But we can't just leave her there."The young guard insisted.

"Yet we can't touch her either."

The older guard paused for a while.

"Go and get the Alpha," he said at last.

..........

Alpha Cassius came closer on foot, because his horse refused to go near the baby.

He was a broad man in his forties with stripes of white in his beard and a fur-lined cloak pulled tight at his throat. He had a hard face and a harder name. Beside him walked the pack mage, an old woman wrapped in so many layers of clothes she looked like a pile of laundry with eyes.

"A baby?" Cassius said. "You dragged me out of my bed for a baby?"

"Look at it closely, Alpha."

Alpha Cassius frowned and looked. Expecting a corpse.

After all a newborn left out in this cold should have been blue and stiff by now. He had already decided what he would say. Bury it quietly, and tell the guards to forget it.

But the baby was wide awake.

She lay on her back with her eyes open, watching the snow fall. Her skin was pink despite the unforgiving weather. Her breath made tiny clouds in the air.

And she was silent.

Not quiet. Silent. No whimper, no cry, no complaint about the cold.

Her eyes were amber, the color of honey held up to a fire. Cassius had seen hundreds of children in his life. None of them had ever looked at him like that.

Like she was deciding what kind of man he was.

"How long has she been out here?" he asked, his eyes not leaving her face.

"We found her an hour ago," said the older guard. "The ravens were already here."

His brows furrowed, "But Ravens don't come out in a blizzard."

"These ones did, Alpha."

"Seven," the pack mage said, shaking her head. "Count them, Alpha. Seven ravens at a crossroad."

His brows narrowed, "So?"

"My grandmother used to say that's how the sky announces ruin. A child left where four roads meet, guarded by black birds." She shook her head slowly. "That is not a baby. That is a warning."

Cassius snorted. "You want me to be afraid of a newborn."

"I want you to leave her. Let the cold do what cold does. Don't touch her, don't spill her blood, and whatever curse follows her stays with whoever left her here."

Cassius did not answer right away.

Aquila was a small pack. It answered to Novark just like every other pack, and the King of Novark did not like bad omens. Word of a cursed child could travel fast, and a pack with a bad name had very few friends.

He stepped forward anyway.

A raven snapped its beak an inch from his hand.

Cassius froze. He had been Alpha for twelve years, and in all that time nobody had ever made him stop in his tracks. Now a bird had done it.

The baby turned her head and looked straight at him.

She should be dead, he thought. Nothing that small survives this cold.

And then a second thought ran through his mind.

What if she became useful one day, surely this strange child should have some worth after all.

"Here is what we will do," he finally said, and the guards stood straighter. "Nobody touches her. No fire, no food, no wolf of mine goes near that basket. But If she is still breathing in three nights, she lives."

"Lives how, Alpha?" the older guard asked carefully.

"I will accept her into my pack, but only as a servant. She will work for every bite she eats, and she will never once call this pack her home."

The old mage nodded in agreement.

"And if she dies?" The old guard asked again.

"Then the mage was right," Cassius said, "and the cold saved us the trouble."

The pack mage said nothing. Her mouth was a thin, tight line.

Cassius took one step back, then another. He turned and walked away through the snow, and his guards followed him, one by one, glancing over their shoulders.

Behind them, the seven ravens folded their black wings over the silent baby.

They had left her alone in the howling wind.

......

The first night was the worst.

The temperature dropped so low that frost grew on the two remaining guards' beards while they watched from up the tree line, forbidden to help. They told themselves she would be dead by morning. They told themselves it was less trouble that way.

But she was miraculously not dead by morning.

The second night, the wind finally dropped. That was when a rogue came.

He was a lone wolf from the outlands, thin and half mad with hunger. He had been following one smell for two days: milk and fresh blood and something small and helpless.

He crept out of the trees on his belly, nose low to the snow.

The younger guard saw him first and alerted the older guard, who reached for his sword.

"Alpha said we can't—"

"I know what the Alpha said," the older guard whispered. He retracted his hand which was already on his sword.

The rogue reached the ring of ravens. He showed his teeth getting ready to attack.

The ravens exploded.

All seven went up at once, a storm of black wings and screaming. Two of them went straight for his eyes. The rogue wolf howled, a high, awful sound, and spun in circles with his paws over his face. Blood ran dark across the snow.

He transformed quickly into a lean man and ran blindly into the forest and kept running. His cries faded after a long time.

The ravens came back down. They settled around the basket, fluffed their feathers, and went still again, as if nothing had happened.

"Moon Goddess," the younger guard breathed.

The older guard did not answer. He was staring at the baby.

She still had not made a sound. Not through the howling, not through the ambush, not through any of it.

"How is she still alive?" the younger guard whispered.

"Don't ask questions I don't have answers for." The older guard snapped.

By the third night, the snow stopped.

The sky cleared and stars came out. The silence was so deep that the young guard heard his own heartbeat.

And at the center of the crossroads, the seven ravens kept watch over a baby who had still not cried.

Up in the tree, the older guard whispered shaking his head, "Is it normal, that she hasn't shed a single tear?"

......

Dawn finally came, and soon Alpha Cassius returned with his warriors and the pack mage, boots crunching on the crust of old snow. He had told himself all night that he did not care what he would find.

But he actually cared.

The ravens saw him coming. They did not scream or attack him.

They moved aside instead.

One by one, the seven black birds stepped back and opened a path through the ring, like servants making way for a master. They had not move for the guards. But they moved only for the Alpha.

Cassius walked through slowly. He could feel his warriors staring at his back.

He looked down into the basket.

Miraculously, the baby was still alive. Her cheeks were pink with warmth. Her chest rose and fell in a steady, even rhythm, and her amber eyes were open and fixed on his face.

She was silent and unharmed.

"Impossible," the pack mage whispered behind him. "It is not possible."

Cassius did not look at her. He could not look away from those little eyes.

For one strange second, he had the feeling that he was the one being weighed. Like she was looking through his soul.

He shook it off. Then he bent down and took hold of the basket's handle.

The ravens did not stop him.

He lifted her up into the morning light, the way a man lifts a lantern, and turned to face his mage and the guards.

"She survived," he said calmly. "And just like I promised she will be accepted into our pack. A deal is a deal."

The old mage looked a bit hesitant, "And what do we call her?."

Cassius looked down at the baby once more. Then at the seven black birds now perched on the rocks and the signpost, watching him without blinking.

He went quiet for a moment.

"....We shall call her Raven. For just like these birds, we do not know what curse she carries."