Page 72 of The Wolf Queen

“Not like this,” Bryson insisted and that was when the fire went out.

Chapter40

I was a bird, flying through the darkness. The air felt silky as it passed through my feathers, but I couldn’t focus on that. I had somewhere to be, something to do and so my wings beat hard, driving me onwards.

My bird self felt a pang of disquiet as we circled around the steeply pitched roofs of the Strelan royal palace. We didn’t want to come back here at all, but down we spiralled, in long lazy loops, the ravens perched along the pediments all croaking out their greeting as we arrived. We flapped, flapped, dropping altitude quicker to then land on the balustrade of the balcony.

“We ride for Grania,” Callum said, pacing back and forth. We noted the blood that trickled from his side and felt a strange kind of hunger. We knew what that black blood would taste like, thick and sweet like syrup. “She wants to run from the inevitable? She’ll see what happens to those she loves when she does.” He spoke to a room full of Reavers and they just nodded along. Some had singed fur or red raw flesh on display, but still they remained still and observant. “I only need some of them alive to persuade her to do what I need.”

“She is your power source, sire?” one of the Reavers asked.

“Darcy is your queen,” he insisted, skirting around the question. We fluffed our feathers at that, somehow unsettled by it. “And she will come to accept her place by my side.” He smiled slowly. “She won’t have any choice.” He glanced down at the map spread out on the table. “But first we need to send a message. We’ll decimate this keep on the border. It’s her father’s and no doubt there will be plenty of people she cares about. Once they’re dead, the girl will be a lot more compliant and finally learn her place.”

That was enough to have me setting flight again. To pass on a message and to try and escape it. My wings beat hard, every muscle working to lift my feather-light body into the air, then I caught a spiral of warm air. I followed it up and away from this place that stank of death and destruction. My beak ached for a taste of it, but still I beat my wings, flying out into the darkness.

Here the shadows didn’t seem quite so hostile. The endless darkness, I was one with it, my own black wings barely perceptible from the gloom. But the murk had its own currents and I followed them now, shifting up and down in a space that remained completely undefined.

Until two golden eyes appeared.

I knew them, somehow that was apparent, though in this form I couldn’t have said how. All the bird knew was that we were flying closer.

No, sucked closer.

Those currents? They were his breath, because out of the darkness he came. We flapped our wings, tried to stop our progress or at least hover in place, but there was no stopping this. We were just a tiny raven, but he… The shadows resolved themselves, all the gloom around him somehow lightening in his presence, because nothing was darker than this massive wolf.

Bigger than a horse, bigger than my father’s keep, bigger than a mountain, my brain fought to make sense of its size, but more than that. He was like a black hole, sucking in all available light but giving nothing back. His jaws opened as he panted lightly, fangs flashing, but it wasn’t those sabre-like teeth that caught my attention, it was his throat. A great vortex swirled there, one that drew me in.

My wings flapped harder, faster, fighting his pull like a bird would a storm, not wanting to be drawn into the maelstrom and spat out again.

But this beast wouldn’t be spitting anything out.

Because this was the wolf that ate the world.

He didn’t have such grand plans today, drawing his breath in and out in noisy rasps, each intake pulling me closer. My pinion muscles burned, feathers rattled in my wings and then were yanked free. I felt each one of them plucked from my skin, tiny starbursts of pain that came faster and faster until finally I could fly no more, spreading what was left of my wings wide. He didn’t eat the world, just me. I braced myself for the feel of his fangs, the crunch of his jaws but there was just a dizzying, sickening swirl and then this.

I jolted awake, blinking, blinking, able to see a similar pair of golden eyes staring into mine, though much smaller. They creased, then his hand went to my cheek.

“Darcy…? Darcy, you’re awake!”

Chapter41

“Bryson?” I asked, not sure what the answer would be, but I hadn’t expected this. He scooped me up, held me close, wrapped his arms around me and gripped me tight, so tight I could barely breathe.

No one had hugged me like this. No one other than my mates. So it felt strange to smell the spicy scent of amber incense and sandalwood of his expensive cologne, feel the strength of his body and—

“Get out of the way.” This was the Gael I met when he first came to my father’s keep, his hair falling over his ruined eye, but the other glared at the king just fine. “We’ll see to our mate.”

“Just as you got yourself out of the Reaver king’s chambers?” Bryson snapped back, those golden eyes hardening. “Out of Snowmere.”

“Enough of that.” Weyland climbed on the bed and stared down at me, touching me with a too gentle hand that shook as he tried to stroke my cheek. I gripped it with mine, feeling that pulsing warmth I always felt when we touched, but so much weaker now. Like the thready pulse of a dying man, I held his hand tighter, questions in my eyes, but he collapsed down beside me, burying his face into the side of my neck and just breathing me in. “Don’t do that again.”

That’s when his voice, my heart broke. Tears filled my eyes, at what I’d tried to do, at what I’d obviously done to him, them. The skin around Dane’s eyes was purplish and bruised, Axe looked deflated, as if someone had sucked the marrow from his bones and Gael? I studied his face, seeing that angry cat expression. He was fluffed up, trying to make himself look ten times as big to ward off a predator, but underneath it he was…

Scared?

“Please don’t ever do that again, Darcy. Promise me.”

Weyland sounded like a boy pleading with the monsters under his bed, not a grown man, a warrior, but I’d stripped that from him, hadn’t I? That burning need to incinerate Callum had resulted in me stealing their strength to fuel that hatred. My mates crawled onto the bed beside me, Bryson staying at the foot of it, exiled in his own chambers, but I saw something in those golden eyes. They knew something the others didn’t.

---