Page 82 of Werewolves Don't Howl
I swallowed hard as he gestured at me, raising me in the air until I landed in his arms. That felt so weird, but good when I finally ended up where I belonged.
I gulped and clung to Lynx, who was still unconscious. “What are you doing?” I whispered.
“I don’t want your pity,” he said in a cold, booming voice. “You are the one who deserves pity, being adored by a monster like me.” He was so loud, so clearly out of control in a very public space so everyone could see exactly what the head of the House of Mercy was made of. It wasn’t mercy.
I cleared my throat and clung to his broad shoulders. “Senator Silverton, you aren’t a monster. You’re just having a hard time…Um…with the sudden death of someone close to you.”
He cupped my face, so I had to gaze into those painfully bright eyes. They swallowed me entirely. The moon in his eyes burned every thought out of my head, leaving only awe, fear, and aching desire. I wanted him more than I’d wanted anything, even yarn.
“I bind you to me,” he intoned, sending a wash of sensation down my left side. I felt like I was burning, also glowing, also melting, but not in an entirely painful way.
I shuddered and clung to him more tightly. “Does that mean you won’t drop me? I hope so. I’m tired. I want to go home and sleep in your bed. I want Manny to take care of Lynx so she doesn’t die. I want my mom to come visit and make cinnamon rolls. I want you to love me for real, not because of a spell or some magical force that compels you.”
He blinked and his eyes were slightly less blinding. “You want to sleep in my bed?”
That’s what he heard? I rolled my eyes and thumped his chest with my little fist. It didn’t make a dent. “I promised Lynx sushi. Not tonight. I lost so much blood fighting the Lo-Beast.”
He held me tight and then the world shifted and we were above his house, specifically over the balcony. He stepped on the railing and then on the deck, one smooth movement without a ripple of clumsiness.
The doors opened for him, creaking at the force of his will as he carried me inside his room. Flames in the fireplace sprang to life, the floors creaked, and the walls groaned. I gasped and tried to get down, but he didn’t release me, not until he’d laid me on his bed. With a gesture from his elegant hand, the vines fled, leaving me naked for the second it took him to pull the blanket over me.
And with that, the darkness was gone, leaving me with a shocked elf who tried to blink the moons out of his eyes without any success.
“I’ll take Lynx to Manny,” he said, carefully scooping up the kitten in his strong hands before he turned and strode out, leaving me tucked in his bed without any clothing. My left side burned. I carefully pulled down the blanket to see glowing lines vining through my flesh exactly like his eyes had glowed in the shape of the moon. It looked like constellations and vines, growing together in a mess that ran from my shoulder, down my arm, body, hip, and leg, all the way to my pinky toe. I wiggled it and then pulled the dark blue blanket back up when the door opened and Cross was there with a medical kit and piles of bandages, still looking bewildered, like he’d just woken up from a very strange dream.
Was the spell broken? Had he stopped loving me? I hoped so, then I could try to make him fall in love with me for real.
“What happened?” I asked. That seemed like a safe question.
“That’s my question.” He sat on the edge of the bed, carefully pushing back the blankets so he could see my wounds. “Or it would be if I didn’t intimately know these claws. You fought the beast? What about the kitten? Did it kill Forsythia? Does she need medical assistance?”
“She’s the one who infected me, but it was an accident. I mean, she didn’t know that it would turn me into a monster and…” He didn’t need to know about Elodie. Forsythia couldn’t just make someone disappear. What about the girl’s family? It wasn’t good for my friend, either.
Cross and I tried not to notice how naked I was. He spoke slowly as he cleaned the gashes in my arms. Ouch. Weird that I had anything left of them after that beast was finished with me.
“Forsythia was the beast?”
“No, that was Loren. She had a whole menagerie of experimental helpers, but Lynx saved me from them.”
“Lynx…” He raised a brow. “The kitten was also part of the experiment?”
“Yeah. She likes me better than Loren, even though Loren was a fauna empath. Now you. What happened to turn you into that…”
He focused on my wounds instead of looking into my eyes, almost like he didn’t want me to see his glowing moon irises. “After you left with Forsythia, freshly infected children were released into the party. They turned feral and attacked the crowd, so I contained them until Max got there. Everything was under control until Zephin Clay came to ask me where you were. And then I heard you scream.” He frowned as he carefully finished bandaging that arm and then looked at me with deep concern in his eyes.
He hesitated and then peeled off his shirt, revealing a design down his right side that mirrored my left. “This happened. It’s an elven binding between houses. I’ve abandoned my house, and your father’s is completely wiped out, but somehow at some point, the two must have made an agreement between them that was fulfilled in us.”
I stared at him while my brain tried to parse those nonsensical words. “I screamed, and then an ancient house binding went under your skin? How does that make sense?”
He sighed heavily and started working on my other arm, the side with the binding. Every touch over those glowing markings was bone-deep pleasure, completely eclipsing the pain. Interesting. Also made it hard not to hyperventilate.
He said, “It doesn’t. Sense would be me tracking you down and quietly killing any threat. Terrorizing the city and threatening to liquify it myself is not. Before the kids started biting guests, Zephin Clay asked me what I intended to do about your mother. Apparently, she’ll be quite upset if she discovers that we aren’t engaged. Bindings like we have,” he said, gesturing towards the glowing constellations and vines on the right side of his incredibly beautiful chest and arm, “Are much more serious than a conventional marriage. I will die without you. Due to such circumstances, perhaps we should consider announcing our official engagement.”
I stared at him and then sat up and threw a pillow. It hit his gorgeous face and fell into his lap. “Due to circumstances we should announce our engagement? What kind of marriage proposal is that? You’ll die without me? How can you make that not be romantic? You’re a positive miracle worker. Why don’t you make it sound like you can’t live without me as in you don’twantto live without me? Instead, it’s just one more obligation you owe me. Forget it! I don’t know what weird thing happened to make you compelled to love me, but it has nothing to do with me.” I scowled at him while he stared back.
He suddenly smiled, but his eyes flickered violet and moonbeams. “You want romance? I can do romance.”
I threw another pillow at him. It hit his perfect face, then joined the other one in his lap. “You are proving that you can’t. I don’t want you to want what I want! I want you to want what you want! I don’t want you to play a part for me. I want to be the one person in the world who gets to see you exactly as you are! Because you’re the only one who truly sees all the pieces of me. Even the vicious elf. You see her too well.”
