Page 30 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

I was released though, dropping from his arms and landing on my feet, wavering slightly when I got there, as I realised that everything the fathers said on worship days made sense now.

They spoke often of the inherent wantonness of women, of how our wicked wiles could ensnare a man, force him to commit terrible acts beyond his control. And what had I done? I’d been considering Kris’ plan coolly, seeing the flaws and the strengths and questioning how it might work… Then he’d kissed me, and every thought went out the window. I’d ground against him like a cat in heat and that’s when it all went to hell. It wasn’t because Kris and I shared something sweet and true, something only for us. It turned out I was just as indiscriminate as Cook’s cat when she came into season, waving her furry arse around so any of the neighbouring tomcats might service her.

And how I had been serviced. I glanced up at Weyland, saw his massive arms crossing his chest, his intense blue eyes staring down at me with thinly veiled irritation.

“Who made you feel more?” he asked. “Him or me?”

“That doesn’t matter—”

“If it’s of no consequence, then you’ll tell me. When he was grinding his cock on your cloth covered slit or when I placed my hand over your womb, who made you feel more? Did he get you off at least? Did he make your body feel like it was lit on fire like I did you?”

“How… how did you know?”

His gaze sharpened abruptly.

“Because that’s how it always feels between a warg and his mate. Your little knight errant there, he’ll have to fumble around, learn you, learn your body, if he can look beyond the stupid teachings of your pantheon to even care about a woman’s pleasure. But not me.”

He stepped closer then and I held my ground because I refused to back down to him. That was why I didn’t move, right? Then his hand dove into my hair, grabbing a handful of it at my nape and using it to hold me still as he closed the gap between us.

“I’ll always know what you want and what you need, the feelings will ache inside me until they’re satisfied, until you’re satisfied and the next time? It’ll be you, naked, spread out on my bed, perhaps chained to it as I satisfy you over and over, until there’s no way you’d ever think to pull away from me in shame. You’ll acknowledge that you want me and I’ll give you everything I fucking have. Now, tell me about the knight and his plans.”

“What?”

I was such a weak creature, caught up in the spell of this bloody animal’s words, able to see perfectly what he meant that, when he asked me about Kris, I struggled momentarily to recall the issue. Inconstancy, thy name is Darcy.

“We’re to marry,” I said.

“No, you won’t, but continue.”

My jaw locked tight, but I forced myself to speak. Even I had to admit that Kris had no chance against the warg and if I cared for him at all…

Did I care for him? Could I, if I was so easily stirred by another man? My head felt too full and so did my heart, as emotions swirled and clashed within me.

“We’ll leave the keep and marry and then get on a ship and go to another country. We won’t be able to remain in Grania, on the continent, for what we’re about to do to the king,” I said, hating myself for saying every word. “If you care for me at all like you say you do, you’ll let me go, even assist us. Don’t hurt the only man I’ve ever felt anything for, just because he was stupid enough to share those feelings.”

And just then, I could see it, the wargs using their power to assist the two of us. Perhaps they could help us get across the border to Strelae. As long as the king had his ore and I was married, why would the crown care beyond that? A future, bright and golden, rose in my mind, taking flight on fragile wings… only for the warg to tear them off.

“If you truly loved him, you wouldn’t be our mate,” Weyland said. “This is calf love. You’ve never felt the way I made you feel before, have you, lass?”

I just frowned mulishly at him, but apparently that was an answer in itself.

“You’re untried, unschooled and being led around by the nose by a fool who, if he actually cared for you, would have a much better plan than that. Your father is watching you and your Kristoff like a hawk. He’s already talked about plans to dispose of your little knight. If I go back there and beat him to death like my beast demands, His Grace will clap me on the shoulder and call me brother. Your father is a terrible man, not one I wish to leave you in the care of for a second longer than we must, but he is also a dangerous one. Though you already know that.”

He turned me around then with much gentler hands, but the strength there made it hopeless to resist. He tugged open the strings at the neck of my shirt and then pulled the collar back as far as it would go. He was looking down at my bare back, my corset, which should’ve induced vapours, but instead I just found myself enduring it stoically. Because when his fingers rubbed over the first ridge of scarring, it wasn’t a sensual response that filled me, it was one of resignation.

I’d had to be so careful to hide the marks of my shame. That my father found me so wanting he would scar my flesh over and over. That I was born to such a man who thought it an appropriate way of dealing with me. That I lived in a society that not only sanctioned this kind of behaviour, it gloried in it. The priests called the scars a woman wore her ‘Ladder to Heaven,’ each mark further evidence of a necessary correction made by the men in a woman’s life, to help perfect her in the eyes of the gods.

Yet somehow, no man needed such marks to ascend to the heavens when he died.

Would Kris want to add to them? I wondered idly, feeling empty and hollow as the warg inspected the damage that had been done to me. But when Weyland had seen enough, he did something so unexpected, I had no defences at all against it. He turned me around and held me in his arms, just wrapping me up tight and stroking my hair as I’d longed for someone to do all my life. But it’d come too late, I felt that deeply, even as I sank into the man’s embrace. If he’d offered this to me on the day they’d found me with the stag, I’d have run away with them that day, never to return. Instead, there was Kris, and Father, and the deal, and everything else, clouding the issue until my head began to ache.

“Shh…” he said, because apparently I’d begun to cry, tears feeling like acid as they escaped my eyes, burning their way across my skin. “We’ll get you out of that bloody hell hole and away from that man. No one strikes a woman in Strelae, not unless she’s willingly entered herself into a fight. It’ll take you some time, but you’ll see. The gods have their eye on you, Lady Darcy, and they’ll keep you safe.”

Hubris was a concept the fathers taught us, the innate human arrogance that made them think they could understand or predict the gods’ actions and I felt its shadow right then, shivering instinctively.

“Just don’t kill Kris,” I whispered.

Weyland’s hand stilled mid-stroke of my hair, but then pulled me tighter against him.

“Consider that your wedding present, my mate, because you don’t know what it is you ask of me.”

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