Page 40 of Hunted By Wolves and Shadow
My last reasoned thought as cascades of blinding sparks stole my vision, and my hearing exploded in a deafening shriek, was that I'd never helped anyone, not really. Not back home, not in the Mist, not here, not now.
I'd been blind to the suffering of others. Whatever this pain was, it was a poetic penance for the harm I’d willfully ignored.
But I was a coward, and so I reached for the beckoning dark and let my mind conjure Wolf. I could embrace the agony and welcome the way it blocked out the fear and guilt, but surely I could allow myself one bit of warmth too, a piece of the desires I’d shoved down. Sinking into the fiery pain, I turned myself over to the burning flame of that kiss. I felt his lips against mine, more perfect than I’d dared to imagine. I let the binding pressurearound my chest be the weight of his arms around me, not as they had been while he showed me how to escape him, but as they could be if I said I didn’t want to anymore.
I lost myself in the black, and there I found a pair of silvered eyes and I drowned in their tortured depths.
When I couldn’t take the sweetness and anguish any longer, I embraced him in return, and surrendered to the tempting oblivion. And wasn’t that just one more way of being selfish…
Chapter 18
Wolf
Until I could speak to the Diamond Witch again, everything would go back to how it had always been. I would return to my family and the enclave, and we would do what we'd always done. Survive. Exist. Which didn't explain why my paws carried me in the wrong direction.
I had no reason to return to the cottage. Not a good one, anyway.
Emi wasn’t there. She wouldn’t be back. I told myself it didn't matter if Emi ever returned to these woods. I couldn’t care what happened to her. Our lives were never meant to intersect; she was never meant to be mine.
In fact, it would be best if she never returned. So why did that possibility make the unnamed ache in my chest start to throb and spread?
Nine days we’d spent together. We’d shared one kiss—andclouded hellwhat a kiss it had been—but it didn’t change the fundamental truth that gemstone witches were the cause of all our suffering. Knowing what Emi’s body felt like pressed against mine, or that her tongue peeked out the corner ofher mouth when she was pouring measurements, or that she was apparently naive to the evil purveyed by her grandmother, changed nothing. I couldn’t keep feeling this way about a woman I’d likely never see again.
Which. Was. For. The. Best.
I knew better.
Emi came from a line of gemstone witches that included the likes of the Ruby Witch. She’d told me she loved her grandmother, and what did that say about her, huh?
That she’s naturally trusting and loving...
No. I had to stop thinking that way.
In her world, with her skewed understanding and twisted loyalties, I was the villain. Undeniably. I always would be.
So why was I returning to the place we’d been pitted against each other between shared meals and endlessly engaging conversations? Why would I go back to where I’d seen her soft moments of grief, her fierce heartbeats of unbridled vengeance, and the quiet times in between where she struggled to wrap her mind around the truths rearing their ugly heads?
Why did I miss her so much it hurt? Why did I crave a single whiff of her lingering vanilla scent so badly that I’d return to this painful place just to sleep with her pillow one more time?
The cottage came into view through the parting Mist, looking as cold as I'd ever seen it. Confirmation that Emi wasn’t there made all four paws feel like dead weights on my legs. Powerful muscles became stones across my shoulders.
Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be my own man again. Even if I knew it couldn't last, the clearing beckoned to me and my jumbled emotions. I just wanted to feel like myself so I could sort through it all. Then I'd put Emi and all of this behind me and rejoin the enclave. Maybe soon, I’d get more answers and I'd have direction again, but for the next little while, I couldstand in that clearing on two legs with a clear mind. The pull was overwhelming.
I wanted it enough to drag my heavy body toward the garden wall.
I craved it so badly I let myself be consumed.
Snarling from my side was the only warning before the bush beside me erupted with a massive dark form. Gnashing teeth filled my vision.
The scent was immediately recognizable, testament to my distraction that I hadn’t picked it up before.
Grey fur covering the vicious fenriswulf had been turned nearly black by filth. I knew a heartbeat’s pity for Fenrir before he was on me. He was entirely lost to his monster, nothing but predator and survival instincts remained of the man I’d known.
I barely darted to the side in time to avoid the full weight of his body, longer and bigger than mine, as he tumbled into me. Pain seared up my side, the flaming agony of his claws raking my ribs before I could twist out from under him. My teeth snapped at the air between us as I regained my feet.
We circled, low growls and sharp snarls bouncing off the trees. With him between me and the cottage, the clearing that had seemed so close now felt beyond my reach. If only I could beat him there, I could take on Fenrir the man. I had no chance against his fenriswulf. They were creatures of legend for a reason. Impossibly strong. Incredibly fast. And once their jaws locked on their prey, they didn't let go.
Certain death loomed in front of me. I wondered who would find my body. I wouldn’t wish it on any of my family.
