Page 10 of Wild Wolf

“Take your hand off of me,” Jerome warned, the gravelly pit of danger in his voice making Rosalie pause. Yeah, my brother was a badass. The kind you didn’t cross or you ended up dead in a ditch somewhere. Or at least, some of you did. The rest might find its way into a sewer, burned in Faesine, or maybe fed to a few stray dogs.

Slowly, Rosalie lowered her hand, a beast in her own right, but a clever one at that. “A price. Name it,” she repeated.

“I’ll think on the price,” he said at last. “In the meantime, let me see what I can find out for you. I’ll stardust home and be back here in an hour.”

“We’ll come with you.” I stepped toward him.

“No,” he said quickly. “The FIB are crawling all over the streets looking for you. You’re safer here. I’ll be an hour, maybe less if I can work fast.”

“I’ll be counting,” Rosalie warned as Jerome took a small pouch of stardust from his pocket. The stuff may have been rare as shit, but my foster-brother knew ways of getting things that most Fae didn’t know how to even get a whiff of in their daily bore-fest of a life.

I wiggled my fingers at him in goodbye as he disappeared into a glittering mist and I was left with my honey pie. I smiled big at her, but her smile hid again and she headed out of a door onto the old platform beside the tracks. I trailed after her, sensing something was off. But I didn’t really know what. I mean, sure, Roary was lost and she had a thing for that Lion boy, but it was also sunny outside and the grass was so green. I’d never seen grass like that, I kinda wished I was a cow so I could enjoy the juicy lucys of it, but they had four stomachs – lucky mothercluckers – and I held just the one, dull stomach that only did the basics. Digesting grass wasn’t for me. Of course, I could always give it a whirl and see what happened, but getting the plops wasn’t on my agenda today.

Rosalie dropped onto the edge of the platform, her legs hanging down over the rusted tracks. I paced behind her, frowning then smiling as my thoughts flitted from one idea to the next while I tried to figure out what mood was ailing her. Always a challenge, these things. Moods and the like. Mine moved like the wind, this way, that way, but no weatherman could forecast me. Rosalie was different, but not how most people were different to me. She was a unique sprig of a dandelion. Blue or pink or any colour dandelions weren’t supposed to be. And when her petals turned to seeds, she deserved the right person to come and scatter them to the wind, setting her free. She had her moon mates, but she had me too. I was good for blowing seeds at least, so if that was what she needed now, I’d fill my lungs and give her all I had to give.

“Sad, that’s the one, ain’t it? I think I’ve landed on it, petal,” I murmured, moving closer. “I’ll help you turn into a seed and fly away on the breeze.”

She glanced back at me and I saw it at last, the raw pain in her eyes that she had done so well at veiling. Or maybe I was just a blind, blind man sometimes. It was difficult to see things through a clear lens when your mind was full of hopping rabbits and escaped crickets, but I had a view now and I was holding onto it while I could.

“That pain in you won’t do,” I said in anger, a storm riled in me by it. “I can’t have it. Won’t abide by it, in fact.”

She released a breath then turned her gaze back to the tracks that no longer led to anywhere. No more trains were coming to this station, and maybe that was how my honey pie felt. Like there was no way forward without her Roary.

“You see, I’m a man of many boxes. All of them stored inside me, some full of clowns and others stuffed with knives. But this one here that you’ve broken open just now, that one’s my darkest dealing, wild girl. I only open that one when I’m about to kill, you understand? I will bleed them out for you, cut down each enemy that stands along the path to your Lion. Because I will wage wars and raze hell to see you smile again.”

I moved to sit beside her, my legs swinging as I took her hand in mine, and she blinked up at me, gazing into my eyes and seeking something there I didn’t dare to hide. Let her see me, why not? Let her peel my skin from my bones and pick through each box until she finds out that I’m a monster made of many malevolent things. Let her find my wasted heart among them all too, discarded like the trash I’d often thought it to be and take it into her palm, caress it, stoke life back into its rotten core. She did it there and then, that look alone enough to heal something shattered in me, though I was the one who was supposed to be healing her.

I lifted her hand, kissing the back of it like I was some prince asking her to be my princess, but we were the opposite of that. A devil and his rogue beauty. Yes, we shared a dark kind of romance, she and me. We were cracked in all the hurty places, but together we filled each other’s wounds and laced each other’s scars in bliss.

“Kiss me now, pretty one,” I urged. “Let me scatter them seeds to the breeze. At least for a moment.”

“I think sometimes you see me like no one else quite does,” she whispered. “You see the lesions on my heart, Sin Wilder.”

“That’s where I love you deepest, Rosa,” I growled and she leaned into me at last.

I inhaled her scent before capturing her lips with mine, tasting her agony and letting it bind me to her deeper. My vows were unbreakable when it came to her. I would break bones and slit throats upon her word alone. Did she know how she quietened the demons in my head? How the world was so perfectly still when her mouth was upon mine?

I kissed her until the bitterness of her sadness sweetened just enough to know I had done right by her. Then we parted and I stared at my world, my reason for reaching for sanity, and I knew no face would ever compare to this one. I would stitch it into the backs of my eyelids so I could see it when I was away from her too.

She laid her head on my shoulder. “Tell me something good. Something that takes my mind off of everything.”

So I did. I told her about the first time I’d seen Mrs Piggles, and the second time, then the third. I told her of the scarf I’d tied around her neck – stolen from an uppity woman who had called me an uncouth ballsack, or something along those lines, then I told her about the string of pearls I’d gotten for Mrs Piggles too from an old lady who I’d helped across the street. Then I told her of the times Jerome and I had gone on adventures together; our first thefts, our first kills. I told her all I knew until Jerome finally reappeared and came striding over to us with a piece of paper clutched in his hand.

We both jumped up and I eyed the note excitedly. “Is that a recipe for a Victoria Sponge, I could reaaaaalllly go for one right about now.”

“No luck, Sin.” He smirked, then handed Rosalie the note. “It’s an address. Warden Pike’s home address to be exact. I didn’t see much on the camera feed, except the obvious fact that the Fae who captured Roary weren’t FIB. They were marked with a symbol for a company I tracked down called Drav Enterprises. A quick and very illegal hack of their accounts showed an account number that flagged in my database. It seems Warden Pike has been receiving money from them for a long time. She’ll have answers, I’m sure.”

“This isn’t close to done,” Rosalie warned. “Once I find Roary, you’ll help us get to him.”

“For a price,” Jerome reminded her. I’d seen a man or two promise my brother an untold price for help before then come up short on the pay-out. Not the best of moves on all accounts, but I knew my wild girl was good for it. Whatever it was.

“I’ll pay in pickles and pears,” I jibed, but neither of them smiled. They were staring at each other, a staring contest perhaps, and my girl won the trophy as Jerome blinked and stepped back.

“Contact me when you have more information.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, Sin, I have a job I need your help with and I’ve got a safehouse ready for you to-”

I shrugged out of his hold, taking a step away and shaking my head.

“I’m not going with you Jeromeo,” I said, frowning in confusion because surely he could see that – surely my love for this beauty beside me shone all around, lighting the space and screaming like a claxon that sang her name in a squawking tone that was impossible to ignore. “This wild girl stole my heart when she stole me from that prison. I’m her monster now. All hers.”

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