Page 52 of Cardinal House

Logically, nothing is wrong here at all.

I wanted him. He wanted me.

It was perfect, for us.

But all that’s happening to me is a sharp seizing sensation in my heart like locusts have hatched inside my chest cavity and are swarming wildly around my heart like a crop field they’re going to devour.

“Luna.”

“I need to clean the mess,” I mumble, shaky hands reaching out towards the sink.

My fingers fumbling over the taps, I swallow past the lump in my throat. I’m not even sure what this means, but I think about it, my virginity, and pure terror washes over me. I scrub my hands under the scalding water, lathering soap in my palms and slapping them against my thighs, clawing at the soapy, red skin.

“No, no, no, no.” A cry wrenches up my throat, dry and scratchy. “I shouldn’t have done that.” My fingers bend back with a sharp pain, the tape holding them together drenched, washing away the adhesive.

Wolf snatches up my hands as I cry out, pinning both of my wrists in one of his big hands, and raising them high, away from my legs.

I’m breathing hard, my eyes wide, bulging in their sockets and I have the most vivid imagery of them popping free, hanging down my cheeks.

“Luna,” Wolf grunts sharply, his free hand grasping my chin. “Baby girl, look at me.” He tilts my chin, my neck craning back, “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”

My teeth chatter, skin rippling with a tremor, “Something’s wrong.”

“Okay,” he replies calmly, just like that, listening, unquestioning, not making me feel crazy.

“I don’t know why,” my teeth chatter so hard they clack in my mouth.

“It’s okay,” he soothes, cupping my cheek, pulling me into his muscular body, moulding my softness into his hard ridges. “It’s okay.”

“Wolf,” tears streak down my cheeks, “I’m sorry.”

“No, no, no, Little Moon, you don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he tells me, “nothing, okay?”

“I don’t think I was supposed to do that,” I confess in a small voice.

I feel him inhale sharply, his grip on my wrists releasing to haul me into his arms. He sits on the lip of the bath, cradling me to his chest, his palm curling over my head, protecting me.

My armour against the world.

“I know things right now are hard for you,” wolf says calmly, his deep timbre gruff and low, softening, as it always does, for me. “But I’m not ever going to let anything bad happen to you. There will be no punishments, no scolding, no cross words. You could murder every bunny on the planet,” he snorts at that, as though he finds it amusing, “and I will still-” he inhales sharply, his chest expanding beneath my cheek.

I blink, feeling him hold his breath, his arms a tight barring around me. The rush of the shower pounding against the base of the bath echoes in the quiet like hail on a tin roof, the spray dusting us, him more than me because his big body shields me from it.

“You will still what?” I whisper, my fingers pressing firmly to his chest, my eyes on the lumpy, red scar.

I cover it with my hand, my palm directly over the thrashing of his beating heart. Something that stopped, multiple times.

Because I bring death.

There’s blood and bone and that putrid, sticky-sweet aroma filling my nose. It is sunken into the walls, staining the white ceilings yellow. The drapes are always closed, the fire always lit, but I am forever cold inside this house.

A spectre drifting through guarded halls, always watching and invariably watched.

“Luna?”

“There’s a house with big windows that never open and doors that are forever locked. A garden I can’t play in and guards always on watch.” The words stream out of me like birdsong at dawn. My eyes lift to Wolf’s perfect yellow-caramel orbs, “I think-” I glance back down staring at my pale fingers flush with Wolf’s suntanned olive skin. “I think I know where my house is.”

Wolf drives us slowly down the dark roads, it’s the first time I’ve left Cardinal House and the further away from it we get, the worse my tummy feels.

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