Page 26 of The Howling
And this female smells like she was sent to me personally. If I thought her scent was good when I was holding her, it’s even better between her legs.
I know how to mate, of course I do. I’ve seen plenty of matings as my pack was open about everything, until the day their openness cost them dearly.
The day everything changed.
The day I became the black dog of death.
Reluctantly, I pull myself away and shift to my usual form. Wynter stares up at me. I don’t think she hates me, but I can’t work out what she does feel.
Then she shivers and my world falls apart instantly.
I thought I lost her once. I will never lose her again.
I’ve lost too much for one Barghest.
“This is yours. It will always be yours,” I growl, putting the dress in her hands. “All I have belongs to you.”
The darkness descends, the darkness which took me in the first place, which makes me do what I do, which makes me feel…lesser.
The darkness which failed to break through when I broke out of Lord Guyzance’s fortress but which is all too present when I’m here, with Wynter.
With my mate.
Before I can do or say anything, I leave her, doing my best not to look back, not to see her stood next to the fire, in her flimsy shift, which shows so much and yet so little.
I do not deserve something as fine as her. She is like a butterfly wing, so perfect, so delicate. I am simply the Reaper’s implement, rough, blunt, deadly.
Out in the courtyard, I take a breath of the air. It makes me feel alive, and at the same time, the mere fact I breathe pulls in all the guilt I feel.
I shouldn’t have taken Wynter from Lord Guyzance. I shouldn’t have brought her here. It was wrong. It will, eventually, result in her death.
“But she’s here now, Barghest, so what are you going to do?”
The irritating Hedley Kow is somehow standing at my elbow with a cup in one hand and a plate in the other. The plate contains something I know is cake. It’s a sweet treat I’ve occasionally stolen from villagers when I was terrorising their homes.
I like cake.
I might possibly be drooling a little.
It doesn’t help my guts are in knots, my prick is permanently hard, and my head feels like I’ve been dosed with wolfsbane again.
“Are you reading my mind?”
“I’m reading your pants,” she says knowingly.
I look down at the way my prick is distorting them and growl at it.
Then I growl at her. She sips her tea and blinks her big eyes at me.
“You have to make a decision, Reavely. You need to know what you want. While humans are Faerie playthings, they are also complicated. They need careful understanding, not like some pet.”
“I saved her,” I snarl.
“Means nothing.” The Kow takes a bite of cake. “If she is your mate, if she is to be your bride, you need to do more than just growlingmineat her.”
“I said nothing about her being my bride. That was all you.”
“I didn’t give her the dress,” the Hedley Kow says. “That was you.”
