Page 15 of The Wolf's Secret Baby

“Part of my job is having empathy for people no matter what. I think you and Typhon need to ask yourselves what you really hope to accomplish, and what shape you want your lives to take. Nobody has to spend their life in misery. Only you have the power to change things for the better and you have a responsibility to yourself to make it happen. Nobody else is going to do it for you.”

I thought about her words carefully and found wisdom in them, although I wasn’t yet convinced that it was possible for things to change.

“Tell me about the man who was with you,” I asked. Ambrosia gnawed her lower lip and looked a little shaken.

“There’s not much to tell,” she spoke meekly and averted her gaze.

“He was not your mate?” I asked, frowning. I wasn’t displeased by this notion as anyone who would leave her like that was unworthy of her.

She laughed dryly. “Certainly not. No, let’s put him down to a mistake. I just had an idea that… well… I thought I could let off some steam. I thought he could give me something I needed. Instead, I found it somewhere else,” her voice dropped to a sultry tone and there was a warmth to her eyes. She referred to the things that we had done together. Heat bristled beneath my skin as I remembered the way her lips felt as they were locked around me, how her body glistened with sweat and looked as beautiful as the world when it was drenched in morning dew. I turned my body towards her, feeling tension crackle in the air. Her breathing was shallow. I could smell the fear on her, but it was mixed with something else, a look of yearning in her eyes. I came closer to her.

“For a human you are attractive,” I growled. There were rampant feelings inside me that had not been indulged as often as I would have liked. They pulsed within, hammering against my heart and making me feel as though I was going to explode if I didn’t experience them again. Hana had driven me crazy. I didn’t believe we were brought into this world alone. I craved the touch of another just as fiercely as Typhon craved respect.

There was something about Ambrosia that awoke something within. The way she gained insight in my mind made it feel as though she truly knew me, and I appreciated the way she empathized with our situation. It was hard not to be drawn in by the flaming strands of hair that lay against her milky skin, or the green eyes that promised so much allure. My gaze was drawn down to her breasts, which were barely contained in the tight fabric of her clothes. Beauty and arousal poured out of herand to my mind she would have been wasted on a human male. My lips curled as we came closer and closer. Then, I reached out and ran my fingers through her hair. She did not recoil. It was brave of her to give herself to wolves. I could see the longing in her eyes. I could feel the way she trembled with desire and all I could think about was how much I wanted to give in to her.

I pulled her close and kissed her madly, losing myself in her intoxicating taste. It was sweet and overwhelming, flooding into my mouth as our tongues warred together. I closed my eyes, and I was able to forget my surroundings and my troubles. There was only her, soft and adoring, with a wild streak that was most uncommon for her kind.

Chapter Eleven

Typhon

I was itching for a fight, whether it was with Kull, Vance, or anyone else who wanted to stand in my way and belittle me. Tension twitched inside and my eyes were throbbing. I stalked with purpose, glaring at anyone who dared look at me the wrong way. I wanted one of them to test themselves against me so that I could prove to them that I was strong and worthy of being counted among the most powerful warriors of the pack. I wasn’t about to let Siv take Ambrosia either. She may have been human, but she was one of the few things in the world that I had laid a claim to; and I wasn’t about to let her be emblematic of how the wolves treated myself and Kull. We deserved more than that. We deserved respect. I was getting sick and tired of how we were treated like swine.

Vance should have accepted our offering. He should have seen that bringing Ambrosia back was a fine way to begin the war and that she could have given us insight into the way humans fought. He was blinded by his arrogance and his prejudice against us. I could have given him an entire human city and he would have found fault with it simply because it was we who were making the offering rather than one of his prized pure blood wolves.

It rankled and my mood darkened. Anger swirled about my mind, and I was half-tempted to march up to Vance again and challenge him outright. Perhaps it was better if I just got it over and done with swiftly enough. He would surely beat me to a pulp but perhaps in death I would find a sense of peace that eluded me in this world. After all, I had always been taught thatI was an abomination and had never been meant to exist in the first place. It may have been time to correct that.

But I couldn’t, not yet, not when I had Kull and Ambrosia, I supposed, but Kull and I had been born together and I had always imagined that we would leave this world together. To die without him would have been a great betrayal and I would not have done that to my brother. Instead, I skulked through the pack and waited my turn to gather food. I was not refused service, but I was given the leanest cuts of meat, the scraps. I knew better than to argue. It was easier to simply accept my lot otherwise I would have been exhausted from fighting against all the injustice.

I had turned, preparing to march back to our alcove and speak with Kull and Ambrosia about our future plans when someone barged into me. At first, I thought it was an accident, but I was quickly beginning to realize that accidents did not exist. A hand struck the food from my tray, knocking it to the ground. Dirt clung to the meat. I could almost already hear the flies swarming towards it.

“Look where you’re going,” a wolf snarled.

“I could say the same to you,” I hissed back.

“Don’t test me, you lost me a lot of money today. You should have fought with your brother. It would have provided us all with some great entertainment. We could have truly learned who the weakest in the pack is,” he taunted me.

My lip curled and my heart flowed with anger. I told myself that this wasn’t sensible, that it would only lead to trouble. The best thing I could do was walk away. So, I lost the meat, fine. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. I closed my eyes and stepped away. It took everything I had to muster this level of self-control.

The wolf laughed. It was a grating sound, one that nagged at my soul. “There he goes, and he wonders why we treat himand his brother the way we do? It’s obvious that his blood is tainted because no true wolf would ever walk away from a fight, but this is the second time today he has shown his true colors.” He marched up to me and I felt a sturdy hand grip my shoulder. His nails were like claws, and he dug them into my skin, yanking me. “I know what you should do, since you are so subservient to us. You should eat that food. I would hate for you to go without nourishment. You need meat to keep your strength up.”

He pointed to the meat that lay on the ground. It was stained with dirt and now the flies had arrived. They hopped over the meat, spreading their filth over it.

“Eat it,” he said again, as though it was an order. By now others had been drawn to the commotion. I tilted my head to the side. I kept telling myself to walk away but I wasn’t to blame. He pulled me back.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, and if you insult me one more time-”

“You worry about being insulted? Your very existence is an insult to the rest of us. You do realize that the only reason we keep you around is because it makes us all feel better about ourselves? You show us how bad things can truly be, reminding us of the depths to which we must never allow ourselves to sink. You are no better than those flies,” as he said this he stomped on the meat with his heavy boot. A few flies managed to elude the impact and buzzed away, although they were caught in between their panic and their desire to feed. As this wolf peeled his boot off the meat, I could see the print of his sole and the squished flies that had been torn apart by the impact. The wolf picked up the meat and thrust it in my face, trying to get me to eat it.

I reeled back and grabbed his arm, twisting it around. I could feel the ligaments tearing inside. I put pressure on his shoulder joint and forced him to the ground, where I started battering him with all my might, unleashing all my fury. Hewanted a fight? He wanted me to prove how strong I was? Then I was going to go right ahead, and he would suffer for it. I was going to make him unrecognizable. I hammered my fists on his head, face, shoulders, chest, anywhere I could find. In my frenzy I think I even hit the ground more than once and the skin on my knuckles became grazed, but I didn’t care. Spittle flew form my mouth and there was a manic look in my eyes. I was ready to kill him. I would make him bleed and we would see how pure his blood was.

I never gave him a chance to hit back. The flurried force of my blows was too frenzied for him to strike back. He never stood a chance. However, he had one advantage that I did not. He wasn’t alone.

Without Kull by my side, I was devoid of allies. Nobody wanted to help me. The only people who were vaguely on my side were those who believed this wolf had invited such punishment, but they would not sully their reputation by attempting to help me. Instead, his friends rushed up and dragged me away. I watched him roll away, coughing and sputtering blood.

I smiled in my triumph, although it was short-lived as these wolves hit me and kicked me, pulling me across the rough ground before flinging me to the side. My body rolled and crashed against the ground, the impact shaking my bones. My mouth filled with the warm taste of blood. I spat it out and pushed myself to my feet.

I brushed myself off and walked away. It felt as though a day of reckoning was coming, a day when I would spill the blood of another wolf. They were pushing me harder and harder, and it felt like only a matter of time until I reached my limit.

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