Page 56 of Widow

"His stubbornness." I grunted. Picard smirked at me and then went back to his place in Lia's bag.

His little body constantly created light magic now that he was the last of his kind. He was the most powerful creature in all of Inferna. In the wrong hands, all that powerful magic could end worlds. At least that's the story he told me.

I wasn't sure I believed him.

"Ric?" Lia was looking at me with a thoughtful expression on her face. I had zoned out there for a minute, stuck in my head.

"Sorry. Was your meal good?" I looked at the empty plate, and a grin spread over my face; she had definitely enjoyed her meal.

"It was absolutely delicious. What kind of animal was that? Actually, never mind. I don't want to know. It kind of tasted like chicken." She stretched her arms over her head and let out a yawn. "I need to use the little girl's room."

She didn't seem to mind that she was about to pop a squat in the woods. Kai and Lucifer were discussing angel business and looked in our direction. Lucifer gave me a slight nod and turned back to Kai.

It's not like I needed his permission to take her outside the cave. He was fooling himself if he thought he could stop me from doing as I pleased. Kai might have been a pushover, but I wasn't.

"I'll take you." I stood up and grabbed the remaining food to bury in the forest. The last thing we needed was a predator, such as myself, smelling the food, and trying to get to our cave.

She grabbed a small bag that had toiletries in it and followed me out of the cave. Typically, I would've laughed at the thought of needing toilet paper on such a journey, but she wasn't one of us. She certainly wasn't going to be okay with using leaves from a foreign land.

We made our way into the forest, and I found a thick tree for her to squat behind. While she was taking care of her business, I shifted my hands and dug a hole to bury our trash and scraps. I covered it back up and turned around to find her watching me.

"All done?"

She nodded and looked down at my claws. I quickly shifted them back and nodded to her little bag. "Did you want to wash up? There's a stream a bit farther that way." I jutted my chin in the direction of the stream that I could hear from where we were.

I hadn't gone in that direction yet. But when I sniffed, there didn't seem to be any troublesome smells in that direction.

"I would really like that. I feel so... dirty."

I laughed at her remark because she had another thing coming. Sleeping in a cave was no clean matter. She would be aching for a bath before she knew it.

Did she even take baths? Showers seemed to be popular in the human world. It was quicker. Everything on Earth was made to be fast. I could see how it could become addictive, taking shortcuts for simple things like cooking, bathing, getting from point A to point B.

I took off in the direction of the stream, and she fell into stride beside me. I kept looking over at her as she kept glancing at my hands. Had I freaked her out too much?

They were back hands again. I held one up and made hair appear on it.

"Does it freak you out that I can do that? I can also bring out my tail and my ears." Her eyes widened, and I laughed. "Sorry if it freaks you out. I know it's a little weird."

"It's not weird per se. It's just different than what I'm used to. It's a little hard for me to wrap my head around you being a wolf. Actually, it's a little hard for me to wrap my head around all of this." She gestured to the forest and let out a sigh. "But I guess it's a part of me now, so I need to get over it."

"Hopefully, it's not part of you for too much longer." I grabbed her hand and laced our fingers together. She looked up at me with a small smile on her face.

It was quiet in the forest. A little too quiet for my liking, but that could mean anything. I had never been this far to the outer edges of Inferna before. Even when I was no longer protecting the crown, I had stayed close to the castle.

"Did you just live in the forest?" she asked as we neared the stream.

"For part of my life, I lived in the castle we were just at. But then..." Thankfully, we came to the stream, and I didn't finish telling her the story. How would she react to the fact that I couldn't even protect the prince?

That day had been my fault. I had allowed the prince to be outside the castle walls with only me as his guard. I let my friendship with Reve, the prince, overrule my better senses.

We made our way out of the secret passage and into the Black Forest. The moon was high in the sky, perfect for smoking.

We walked quietly until we were a good distance away from the exit and then found our group of rocks we liked to chill on while we smoked. Seth pulled four smokes out of his back pocket and handed us each one. "Fellas, this is a new crop. Some of the best I've ever tasted."

Mike rubbed his hands together before taking his and pulling out his matches. "You said that about the last batch we smoked."

"I can't help that I keep getting better and better."

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