Who the Wolf Loves #6
I didn’t hear the part left unsaid; I didn’t realize you meant if we were going to live the rest of our lives as mundanes.
I assumed, at that point, all of this was temporary, that we were simply hiding out until we knew that the remnants of Valentine’s forces were vanquished, and we were safe to return.
I imagined, at that point, you might still think of the future in terms of we.
The Marché Vernaison at Clignancourt was no Shadow Market, but it was market enough.
Block after block of vendors, jewelers and cobblers and florists and seamstresses, artisans of every kind.
Tables and storefronts cluttered with curiosities, objets d’art, priceless antiques crammed on the shelf with worthless plastic souvenirs, and in the heart of the colorful chaos, you somehow found a buyer willing to pay your price.
It seemed low to me, a few hundred dollars for what you had to sell.
“I would pay far more to rid myself of anything that belonged to him,” you said. “And besides, it’s enough.”
I should have asked, Enough for what? But maybe that would only have hastened the end.
I’m the one who broke the rule you’d set for us, and made contact with the Shadow World.
How else were we to know if we were still in danger?
I’d spotted signs of a wolf pack the moment we arrived.
I ignored them; they left us alone. But I couldn’t help tracking their scent.
I knew they frequented an Italian restaurant on the northern edge of Pigalle, and it was no accident I offered to pick up dinner for us one night, and suggested you stay home and rest. You’d been feeling tired, your stomach upset. Stress, you said.
I was young. I saw what I wanted to see.
I picked up our dinner, took it around to the alley behind the restaurant, and waited. Soon enough, the man who’d been glaring at me from the corner of the bar appeared. He was stout and hairy, with yellowed teeth and pale brown hair, and he was ready for a fight.
“Qu’est-ce que tu veux?” he growled.
I told him I didn’t speak French, which was a lie, and then I told him I wanted no trouble, from him or the rest of the pack, which was true. I just wanted information.
“Valentine’s forces—what’s become of them? Has there been more violence?”
“Non. The beast is gone. Dead. There will be no more blood. We will have peace.”
“Then the Accords will be signed?”
He looked at me more closely then, and I wondered—how far had our notoriety spread? How much of the Shadow World knew me, would know me forever, as the fool who used to be Valentine’s right-hand man?
“The Downworlders have agreed. All will be as it was, for now.” He cast a hard look behind him, into the night.
I could sense the pack out there, tensed against threat.
Perhaps he could smell the Shadowhunter on me, whatever was left of it.
Or he simply assumed any outsider meant danger.
No one felt safe in those days. “But now we know what they think of us. Nous n’oublierons jamais. ”
We will never forget.
I didn’t tell you that part, when I got back to the hotel. I was trying too hard to forget it myself. Easier to believe we’d averted the crisis. We’d stopped Valentine in time—undone the damage we helped cause. We had atoned.
“It’s really over, Jocelyn. We did it.”
I’m not sure whether you gave yourself permission, for just that one moment, to believe it—or whether you saw how desperately I needed to.
Either way, you threw your arms around me.
You held on so tight, as if you were trying to crush our two bodies into one.
Your hair smelled like persimmon. I swear I could feel your heartbeat, but maybe it was my own.
“Was it worth it?” you said, almost too softly for me to hear. “Everything we lost?”
It was the closest you ever got to saying your son’s name.
“I don’t know what it would mean to be worth that,” I said. “But I know we did what was right.”
And then—
Why, Jocelyn? Why, when you knew what you knew, when you’d planned what you planned? Was it desire or pity? Was it simply goodbye? If you knew how often I’ve asked myself. If you knew how often I sink into the memory, revisiting each moment, each touch.
“I know it was right,” I said.
And then you leaned in.
And then you kissed me.
—
Sometimes I dream myself back there. Your lips against mine.
The kiss. Soft at first, tentative, like a question.
Then hungry. Desperate. An answer. And then we’re both laughing, giddy with it; we’re stumbling across the tiny room, entangled, in need, and you fling yourself against me and we fall together into the bed and I reach for you—
There’s always a moment, caught between sleep and waking, when I’m surprised to find myself alone.
—
We made love. That first, that only time. I have never told anyone. I wonder if you ever did. Somehow, I doubt it.
Somehow, that night was made up of hours that had been cut out of time.
We forgot everything but each other. We laid aside our pain and drowned in each other: in the rush of pleasure, desire, flesh, and heat.
In my arms braced over you, your hands on my back.
You kissed my shoulder where the wolf’s bite had left its scar.
I wanted to please you more than I had ever wanted anything.
I wanted to make you cry out with it, and when you did, you sounded almost surprised, as if you had not known or imagined what your body could give you.
You gasped and fell back against the pillows with your eyes wide, and then you pulled me hard against you and wrapped your legs and arms around me and whispered please, Lucian, please, and as I lost control, I felt my soul leave my body and join with yours.
For the first time, I was whole.
—
It didn’t last, of course. We were like mortals who stumbled into Faerie, into some enchanted land where everything is different, but return to find that nothing has changed.
—
When I woke up in the morning, the cheap hotel blanket tangled around me, I turned instinctively toward you, expecting to find you asleep beside me.
Instead, you were sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing a flowered dress you’d bought in the Marché Vernaison. Black sandals on your feet, your hands folded demurely in your lap.
“Oh, Lucian,” you said, and you sounded sad, so very sad.
I sat up, half-blind with terror. I reached for your hand.
“It’s all right. It was too much, too fast. I understand.
” I tried to smile, though it felt like a lie.
“It’s fine. We don’t even have to talk about it.
” I was talking quickly, to speed us past the moment, into an after where everything could be as it was.
“Maybe once things have calmed down, when we’re back home—”
“I’m not going home,” you said. “Not ever.”
That’s when you told me you were leaving.
You’d used the money from the amulet to buy a plane ticket—ticket, singular.
You were leaving, singular. You were never going back to Idris, you were never going back to the Shadow World.
You were leaving your life behind, forever.
And you were leaving me. When I said that was just your grief speaking, that it would pass, you took a very deep breath, white-faced, and said:
“Lucian. I’m pregnant.”
It’s shameful to admit now, but when you said that…a part of me died. The part of myself that had imagined we could erase the past. Move forward as if there’d been no Valentine, no Circle, no Uprising, no death, only the two of us.
I found words, somehow. “Did Valentine know?”
You shook your head. “I don’t think so. But it doesn’t matter.”
I understood. You were having Valentine’s baby, which meant it would never end.
If he was alive, he would come for you. If he was dead, and I was so sure—I wanted so badly to be sure—that he was dead, his followers, the Chosen Ones, would come for you, and for your child.
His child. I knew you would never let it happen, not again. And neither would I.
“Marry me,” I said.
And you laughed.
I’ve been sliced bloody, Jocelyn. I’ve felt ichor burn through flesh to bone, I’ve endured fangs, claws, curses, wounds that should have been fatal and nearly were—but nothing has ever cut so sharply as the sound of that laugh.
“I’m serious. I want to marry you.”
“You’re a good friend, Lucian,” you said. “But I could never ask you to do that.”
“You’re not—”
“I need to get away,” you said. “I need to disappear, so deep, so well, that he never finds us. I can’t ask you to do the same, just because you feel obligated. I don’t need your pity, or your protection, Lucian. I only need you to understand.”
I could have told you that you were wrong.
It wasn’t pity or obligation. I loved you.
I wanted, more than I’d ever wanted anything, to be by your side.
I could have said, I love you and have loved you since I drew my first breath.
I could have said, Please, join your life to mine, let me be the father to your child, the other half to your heart, let us be a family, let me throw away everything I know and everything I am to be yours.
But: After what had just happened between us, how could you not already know? The way I’d held you, kissed you, loved you…how could you imagine I felt only pity and obligation?
Unless…that was all you felt.
“It’s so early,” you said. “Let’s talk about it later.” You kicked off your shoes, lay down, and drew me down beside you. And I let you. I let you nestle into my chest and close your eyes. I willed myself to memorize the moment. Your warmth. Your presence.
I don’t know when I fell asleep. But when I woke, the sunlight had deepened into late afternoon. And you were gone.
The note you left read only: I don’t know how to say goodbye to you.