Page 48 of Feral

“My gran lives with us, runs the house and keeps us all fed. Her name is Oona, but she’ll insist ya call her Gran. Angus will be…well, Angus. Samuel isn’t there at the moment, he’s in France for business. So that leaves Liam and Lowell.”

“The twins.”

I nod.

“Lowell is the baby, and he’s a bit of a ladies’ man, always datin’ someone new every week. And Liam…well, Liam is the quiet one, bookish. He was injured a few years back with a spelled bullet. Didn’t think he’d walk again but he did. Though sometimes his back hurts too bad and he has to be in the chair.”

“I’m sorry. How did it happen?”

I wiped my mouth and tried to swallow down the rage that always accompanied the memory of Liam’s injury.

“The previous director was angry at us because we refused to fall in line. She sent some men to our country seat. If it had been durin’ the full moon time, it would have been a different story. But this was just a normal weekend. Liam was in the house alone, lost in his books. They attacked and he fought back. Took half of them down before the bullet pierced his spine. Our clan witch healed him but the spell made her unable to do it fully.”

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. It was such a normal, fearless thing to do. The kind of thing friends do and it weakened the defenses I was having a hard time shoring up around this woman. I wove my fingers through hers out of a need to not break the contact and she let me.

“I’m so sorry you went through that,” she whispered. “I remember how frightening it was with her in charge.”

Anger rushed through me, hot and sharp.

“Did she do anythin’ to ya?”

“No. I never really saw her at all. But my department partner, Reggie, he’d been her prisoner since he was in an egg. He never knew his family. I know I’m fortunate, she never so much as glanced my way. I sometimes feel guilty that I escaped.”

“Don’t do that to yerself. I’m glad ya didn’t have those scars on yer soul.”

She smiled at me and withdrew her hand so she could finish her lunch. Stupidly, I had to stifle a whimper at the loss of contact.

“What is the full moon time?” she asked around a bite of sandwich. “I read a few things but I wasn’t sure what was truth and fable.”

“Well, it’s connected with our creation.”

“The Druids?”

“Aye. Do ya know much about it?”

“Only that you and Lycans are very different but that legends have sort of smashed you together.”

I could not suppress a growl.

“We arenotLycans. They’re created by a mix of lower demons and Mundanes. We were created by the Druids, the priests and priestesses that existed before the Romans came to conquer us. They needed guardians for the sacred groves, to protect their rituals. Our ancestors were the strongest warriors the villages had to offer and the Druids cast a mighty spell to merge us with the sacred wolves and bears of the grove. It took the power of the three nights of the full moon to accomplish this and ever after, we are tied to it. For those three nights every month we must go into the wild, the countryside and let our primitive urges out or risk losin’ control altogether.”

“So…do you eat animals or…”

Her eyes were wide, both from fear and excitement, and it thrilled me in a way I had not expected.

“It’s more about…well, other fundamental urges. Fightin’ and…and fuckin’.”

“Oh,” she said, and reached for her glass of water, taking a long drink.

It shouldn’t have made me as happy as it did to see how my words affected her. A part of me, that was getting far too brazen, was having a good time bringing up all the things that I could never explore with Daphne.

“Wait,” she said, “the full moon?”

“Aye. What’s wrong?”

She opened her mouth to answer when screams echoed down the hall not too far from our compartment.

The hair along my back stood up and a low snarl escaped through my bared teeth. There was something out there, something that could threaten my mate.

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