Page 5 of Wild Wolf

When I’d first come to live with my Aunt Bianca and her huge famiglia, she’d spent ten minutes in my company before patting the back of my hand and bustling off to clear out this old loft space for me. It was a long room with exposed rafters which ended in a triangular wall set with a single, circular window above the white iron bed. The window was in a white frame which was scuffed from the hundreds of times I'd swung it open and climbed out onto the roof beyond to sit beneath the moon.

There was no dust in here – Aunt Bianca kept the place spotless and the scent of lemons lingered in the air. She used them to make her own cleaning potion from the tree in the courtyard at the centre of the property and that sweet citrus mixture along with the view across the endless rolling vineyards sung a lullaby of home just for me. But it wasn’t home without Roary. Not anymore.

I ran my fingers over the mate mark on my arm that linked me to him, closing my eyes and praying to the moon for guidance. It wasn’t like my bond with Ethan – I couldn’t feel Roary’s pain, but I feared that if I could then I would have been screaming by now.

Roary needed me. I’d gone to Darkmore to save him and I had the terrible feeling that I’d only made his situation worse when I’d failed.

A single knock at the door made me look up, tension lining my body as I expected Ethan or Sin or maybe even Cain to have come looking for me, but I released a heavy breath as I found my aunt pushing the door wide instead.

“Rosa,” she said softly, the door snapping closed behind her before she approached me.

I swallowed thickly as she assessed me, this little woman with a heart bigger than the moon itself. She was short, her dark hair streaked in grey and coiled into her usual bun as she pierced me with eyes so like those of her son that I felt as though Dante were the one appraising me with that look. Bianca had stood at the head of this household for a long time since losing my uncle back in the gang wars which used to rule this part of the kingdom. She wasn’t our Alpha but she was our mama. Me, Dante, the rest of her blood born children and a hundred other Oscura waifs and strays besides. We weren’t all blood but we were all famiglia.

Bianca sighed as she took me in, carefully tucking a lock of ebony hair behind my ear, her fingers brushing against the rose vine tattoo that peeked out from the top of my shirt before she drew me into her arms.

I stiffened. I wasn’t like the other Wolves in this way – I didn’t need the constant tactile behaviour, endless hugs, or to sleep in a pack huddle. I liked my own space - which was precisely why she’d given me this room. Close enough to everyone here to know I belonged, but at enough of a distance to buy me the space I so often craved.

She murmured soft words to me in Faetalian and I slowly unravelled in her arms.

“Let it out, lupa,” she encouraged, her fingers stroking through my hair, and I cracked apart just like that.

A sob shook my chest and tears spilled once more. She didn’t ask anything of me. Didn’t need to. In this house news spread like wildfire and I was certain that by now every detail of our escape and our failure to rescue Roary would have circulated three times already, the facts mixing with fiction, embellishments at every turn but the truth of it immovable all the same.

“Who are you, Rosa?” Bianca asked me after the world had shattered around us and grown anew again, more twisted and darker than before, the void where Roary should have been taking up so much space that it was hard to breathe around it.

“I’m a failure,” I breathed.

“None of that,” Bianca barked, still holding me like a babe but no give in her tone.

“I am…” My mind whirled with all the answers I could offer to such a question.

I was a creature made of malicious design raised in a house of hatred then given a home bursting with love. I was brutal and powerful, fragile and fickle. I was a thousand unheard wishes and one potent demand. This world hadn’t offered me a place when I was born but I had carved out one for myself regardless. I was my scars and my pain, my honour and my love. I was a Wolf and a loner. I was a mate twice over, a lover more times still, a prisoner and yet freer than most Fae I’d ever met because in my heart I knew who I was and what I demanded from this life which was so prone to wickedness. I was Rosalie Oscura. And nobody told me no.

“I am Rosalie Oscura,” I growled aloud.

Aunt Bianca nodded firmly as she stepped back and looked me up and down. She didn’t wipe the tears from my face and neither did I. They were no sign of weakness but of the potency of my love for Roary Night and a mark of what I would do to get him back.

“A morte e ritorno, lupa,” Bianca said firmly. “You have work to do yet.”

“A morte e ritorno,” I echoed and strode from the room with my chin high and heart pounding because I knew what I had to do.

I moved through the twisting house, enduring the embraces and soft touches of my many family members as they slipped from rooms and made way for me to pass. Their eyes trailed me as I walked, each of them moving aside for me as their Alpha, a tension rolling through the household which had everything to do with my pain. They were my pack so they felt it too.

The kitchen was a grand room at the heart of the villa, a table big enough to seat forty - and yet still often not big enough for all of us - dominating the central space while work surfaces, the sink and ovens surrounded it. As usual, a meal was being prepped across the longest counter, vegetables chopped and diced, sauce simmering on the stove.

I found Ethan sitting at the table, his hands clasped around a mug of coffee while four pups – my cousins’ kids between the ages of six and nine - were huddled in close either side of him. They were petting his hair and prodding at the tattoos that were visible on his arms, asking for stories about each in turn. His eyes moved to me the moment I entered the room and I paused, the sight of him there among my famiglia so natural that for a moment I had forgotten that he had been so afraid to come to this place, to mix with the terrifying Oscura Clan.

I arched a brow at him as if to say ‘I told you so’ and he nodded, though the movement was a little uncertain and only grew more so as Dante strode into the kitchen behind me.

“What is this one for?” little Andre asked, poking the serrated crescent moon symbol of the Lunar Brotherhood where it was inked proudly across Ethan’s chest – which had only been revealed because Roberto had grabbed the collar of Ethan’s t-shirt and half ripped it in his eagerness to find more tattoos.

“You know that one, Andre,” Maria drawled, all seven-year-old sass. “It’s the same as Zio Carson’s – the one Zio Leon calls ‘his great shame’ when he has his short hair face on.”

“Maybe that one is a story for another time, eh kids?” Ethan suggested, trying and failing to yank his collar back up while giving Dante a wary glance.

I looked to my big Storm Dragon cousin, taking in the sadistic gleam in his eyes then I grabbed an apple from the bowl which was overflowing with them at the heart of the table and dropped into the seat opposite Ethan to watch the show.

“I hear you decided to mate yourself to my little Rosa while you were in that hellhole, Lunar,” Dante said, spreading his fingers against the table as he leaned down to get a good look at Ethan. “Tell me, did fate whisper her name in your ear the moment you laid eyes on her?”

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