Page 60 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 26

There’s a strange kind of peace that comes from just walking. The endless rhythmic pace, not rushed like running, can help to settle you. And that, as well as the sights as I passed, first of the town, then the outskirts, then the foothills beyond, all helped.

Weyland, on the other hand, did not.

He wasn’t doing anything, per se. There were no smarmy lines or grand declarations this time, but his mere presence, the presence of any of them really, was enough to unsettle me and after a while, he seemed to feel that. He let go of my hand somewhat regretfully, if the intense way he watched me move away was anything to go by, but his eyes flicked up to meet mine, holding them for a moment.

“I’m not dragging you off to the tor to have my way with you, Darcy.”

“I admit, I hadn’t considered that,” I said, taking another step away from him, which just had him stepping closer. I held my ground then, knowing I needed to do that just as I did in a fight. While I occupied my space, he couldn’t take it, not unless I ceded to him.

“So why do I feel tension thrumming through you like a struck string?” he asked. “I’m trying to take this slowly. All I was doing was holding your hand.”

“And do you know how many men have done that?” I snapped back. He seemed nonplussed. “How many hands have you held, Weyland?” I saw his mouth open, then close as he considered his answer. “Well, for me, it’s been you and your brothers and Kris”—he snarled silently at the sound of the knight’s name— “and all of that only in the last week. I’m sorry that I’m not accustomed to it—”

He silenced me by moving closer, enough that there was barely a handspan between us.

“Don’t be,” he said. “I’m trying to understand. Well, that coupled with a bone-deep satisfaction that you’ve had so little experience with other men - and where the hell does that thought come from?” His hands sunk into his hair, fingers raking across his skull as he considered that. “I’ve never begrudged a woman her pleasures before, but now?”

He stared at me now, eyes slowly dropping down to my lips.

“You say I know nothing about you? But the same could be said of you for me, couldn’t it? You know nothing about what being two-souled means, though”—he picked up my limp hand, considering my now fully human nails before letting my fingers go— “I’m thinking you might soon.”

“You think I’m a warg?”

Why hadn’t that idea occurred to me? I’d transformed my teeth into fangs, my nails into claws. I’d demonstrated superior strength and speed and there’d been that alien presence that rose when I dispatched my father… What else could it be?

“For the sake of the gods, don’t use that term when we get to the capital. There are enough humans here in Bayard that you can get away with it, but there… Warg is a foul term used for a very specific kind of creature. One most of us work very hard to avoid being,” he replied.

“So, what do I call you?”

“Weyland,” he said, and I could hear the throb of passion in his voice when he did. “Love, my mate, something like that, when you come to feel the way I do.”

“You’re so sure I will,” I said, my eyes narrowing.

“Not sure at all.” There was something vulnerable in his smile now, something I didn’t think I’d ever seen in him, and that went some way to settling me. “Just determined to try as hard as I can to get you to see what I see. Now, if I’m dragging you up the side of this hill by the hand, with your hair standing on end like a startled cat, barely suppressing the desire to hiss your displeasure at me, that’s not going to help me present my case. I want to touch you. Sometimes it feels like my muscles ache all day from holding myself back from reaching for you, but if you don’t want that…”

He raised his hand, moving it slowly. Really it just hovered in the air, waiting for me to pull away or draw it closer.

I felt like my brows locked down super tight as I considered it. With Kris I’d just responded wholeheartedly, making love to a dream when he kissed me, touched me, and that had been enough to allow me to surrender to him, but with Weyland here, now? This was the first time I’d been given a choice and I admit I wasn’t sure which way to go.

He let out a hiss when the very tip of my finger touched the centre of his palm and even that small point of contact was enough to set a much gentler version of that pulsing pleasure going.

“Why does it feel like that?” I asked. “It didn’t feel like that with Kris. Do you feel it too?”

“Waves of pleasure?” he asked. “I feel it, lass.”

“And has it felt like that with another woman?”

“No, Darcy. That’s how we know. I might feel an inkling of it with a woman that was also two-souled. It’s what tells us who we’re compatible to mate with.” I let out a small little growl at that idea, that someone else had experienced the same thing with him as I did now, which made him grin. “But there’s only ever going to be you that makes me feel like this, as it will be only us making you feel the same.”

I thrust my fingers through his then, feeling his grip lock around mine. He could’ve pushed his advantage then, just as he had when he took me out onto the moors. But instead, we walked further up the hill, hand in hand, until we reached the top.

Pep had takenme up to a rocky outcropping the first day I was awake, and it had been astounding, but this? We stood on top of a hill that stared down at the town, nothing higher than us for miles. Wild wind whipped at our hair, making me chuckle until I quickly tamed my hair into a thick plait.

“You going to do the same for me?” he asked, his blond hair still whirling around his head.

“How is it that a man has gotten to your age and can’t plait hair?” I asked, then nodded to the flat rock in front of us. He sat down, eager as a child, and I went to work pulling the thick strands back with my hands and trying to braid it close to his skull, the way warriors did.

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