Chapter Five
T he Northlands kingdom stretches across the oval table between Blake and me. The wind hammers the rain into the arched windows, and the noise pounds through the gloom like the drums of war.
Alone at last, little rabbit.
When he first linked our lives together, I felt his emotions as strongly as my own. I think he has found some way to conceal them, because though I can still feel that dark part of him inside me, I can’t identify his intentions.
How I loathe this male. I think I may loathe him even more than James. I can taste my hatred, bitter on the back of my tongue. My teeth tingle, ache, like I want to sink them into his flesh. He used me. The worst part is how much that hurts.
I’ve never had friends. As the princess, I always stood apart from others. I wasn’t allowed to run around and play silly games with the other children. As an adult, no one talked freely around me. My brother, Philip, was cruel. Every male who ever spoke to me did so because they had something to gain from my father.
I thought this had hardened me, and made me a good judge of character. Now, I wonder if it made me even more susceptible to deception—so desperate to make a connection with someone, anyone, that I let myself be fooled by a snake.
It’s not that I ever fully trusted Blake, but Goddess, a part of me had wanted to. I enjoyed conversations with him, even when he was trying to provoke me. He spoke to me as if I was equal to him—more so, perhaps, than even Callum did. A horrible, weak, cringing part of me wanted to be his friend.
I loathe him, and myself, for it.
“How are you feeling, little rabbit?” His voice is carefully smooth, casual, as if he’s merely making small talk.
I may not have seen Blake’s poison until it was too late, but I know he gains enjoyment from other people’s pain. I won’t give him mine. I force my lips into a polite smile—the same smile I’ve given many obnoxious lords while I secretly recoiled at their presence. “I am well. Thank you.”
He tilts his head slightly to the side. I feel him, then. A cool prickle beneath my skin. The strangest feeling of shadowy vines that spread around my soul. When I felt his yearning, earlier, it seemed involuntary. This is different. It’s like he’s reaching for me, and trying to gauge my emotion. I tense, blocking the sensation, caging my emotions and keeping them close.
“Are you well rested?” he asks.
“I’m fine.”
“Callum said you had nightmares. What did you dream of?” There is something pointed in his tone, as if the answer is important to him, though I can’t fathom why.
“It was just the fever.” I keep my voice sweet as honey. “Thank you for your concern.”
I catch it. His slight flicker of displeasure. My smile aches a little less. My sweetness irritates him. Good.
He strolls toward me, his footsteps loud and steady on the flagstones. He stops close enough that his dark forest scent wraps around me, and he leans back against the table. It creaks beneath his weight. His face is close to mine, and his thigh almost brushes my hip.
I want to move back, to put distance between us, but I force myself to stay where I am.
This close, I see that he looks like he has not had much sleep, either. There are faint shadows beneath his eyes, and his dark hair is messy—as if he’s been dragging frantic fingers through it. A soft curl brushes his forehead.
In my fever dreams, he had seemed ethereal and untouchable—a monster made of death and shadow. The realness, the solidity, of him—corded forearms, broad shoulders, a hard chest straining beneath his white shirt—makes him seem even more dangerous, somehow.
“You defied James, dragged a blade across Sebastian’s throat, and all I get is a pretty smile and a ‘thank you for your concern’?” His voice is low and seductive. “How disappointing.”
“If I ever led you to believe I was trying to impress you, Blake, I apologize for the misdirection.”
A dimple creases his cheek. “Are you angry with me?”
“Can’t you feel it?” I ask.
“Right now, you’re guarding your emotions. As am I.”
Despite my unwillingness to ask for Blake’s help, the question slips out. “How? How does this... thing between us work?”
He looks like he’s considering whether or not to answer. “When I saved your life, I shared my lifeforce with you. It was like I gave you the end of a rope to pull you back, and I grabbed onto your lifeforce at the same time. I don’t know how it feels to you, but for me it’s like a thread of light from your lifeforce is still inside me. When you feel something particularly strongly, it wraps around my emotions and pulses, and I feel it too.”
“How do I stop you from feeling me?”
“I can stop it myself by imagining a cage around my emotions, to stop myself from touching your light. You could try that.” He cocks his head to one side. “Is that how it feels for you? Like a thread of light?”
I search inside me for that piece of him, that end of the thread, and shiver. “No. It feels like darkness.”
“Well? Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be angry?” I try to keep my tone smooth, but I can’t quite conceal the bite behind it. “You saved my life.” And linked our lives together without my consent, all as part of your plan to take the throne and kill Callum.
“We’re friends, then?”
My soul protests, and from the glint in his eye, he knows it. We’re not friends. I’m not sure Blake even knows how to make friends. Jack and Arran seem amiable enough with him, but Blake must have manipulated them in some way. Perhaps they fear him, like the Wolves at castle Madadh-allaidh did.
I force myself to smile. “I made friends with a man in the Southlands, once. My father thought he was plotting against him and I was told to dance with him, sit with him, fill up his cup. He was a devious, cruel man. He hurt one of my ladies-in-waiting, I think, but I made friends with him anyway. I found out he planned to take over a territory, and turn the army against my father. It could have cost my father his throne.”
“What happened to him?”
I recall that night when my father sent me away. I’d heard the shouting in the throne room, even from my bedchambers, as he tried to escape. “He died.”
“It seems that being your friend is dangerous, indeed.” Blake’s eyes reflect the flickering torchlight. “Tell me, do you seek your father’s approval, even now—knowing what he did to your mother?”
Rage billows in my chest like a tempest. Self-loathing crashes through me as well. I’m not sure why I told him that story. Did I wish to scare him? Impress him? I try to compose myself. I don’t want him to know that one of his blows has landed. Yet even if he could not feel my emotions, I know he’d be able to sense this change within me as a wolf.
I step back, and nod curtly. “Callum will be waiting for me outside.”
I walk toward the door.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted the other night.” There’s something suggestive in his tone, although I have no idea what the suggestion is. I know he’s trying to rile me. I know I should keep walking.
Don’t bite. Don’t bite. Don’t—
I turn back around. “What do you mean?”
“When you visited me in my bedchambers.”
I frown. Every muscle in my body tightens. Red hot images flash beneath my eyelids—Blake’s face soft with sleep, his hair mussed, his arm thrown back on the pillow, my blade pressed against his throat. His sheets were crumpled beneath my thighs, and the wolf shone in his eyes when he grabbed my wrist.
I’d thought it was a dream. A nightmare. A conjuring of the fever. It was... it was real?
Embarrassment, it seems, is a harder emotion to swallow than rage. It swells inside me until my cheeks are aflame and my pulse is pounding. I wish for the ground to open, to swallow me up, to take me away from the obnoxious snake before me.
Blake’s mouth curves into a slow, satisfied smile.
I raise my chin, even though I know my face must be redder than my hair. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I stride toward the door again. I’m trembling. I’m on fire. I’m mortified . “Good day, Blake.”
“Good day, little rabbit.” I feel the cool whisper of his amusement. He goes back to studying the map.
I open the door, step out of the council chambers, and close it a little too forcefully behind me.
Callum and Ryan look up abruptly from the other side of the corridor. Both seem annoyed. Ryan’s face is flushed, and Callum has his arms folded across his chest and his jaw is tense. Callum’s brow creases in concern, a question in his eyes. I nod. I’m okay. He offers me a strained smile before turning to Ryan.
“No,” says Callum. “And that’s the end of the matter.”
“But—”
“Everything okay, Red?” A deep voice comes from the shadows, drowning out Ryan’s protest, and I jump. Jack leans against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.
I frown as I recall him plotting with Blake in those dungeons I was brought to before I was presented to James. She smells like the Highfell alpha , he’d said, and suggested that Blake bathe me.
“How original you are,” I say. “Calling me Red on account of my hair.”
“On account of your hair?” says Jack. “No, I was referring to your blush, Red . Are you feeling flustered?” His grin widens, flashing white teeth, and my cheeks heat even more.
“What are you lingering out here for?” I try to appear more composed. “Didn’t anyone tell you it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
“My mother may have mentioned it.” He shrugs, then nods at the door to the council chambers. “Blake’s had more suitable accommodation prepared for you. I’ll take you there, now you’ve woken up.”
There’s a grunt of displeasure as Callum dismisses Ryan. The young wolf huffs and stomps away. Callum mutters something under his breath about insolent pups as he crosses the space between us and threads my fingers in his. The tension softens in his shoulders.
“Ready?” says Jack.
“Aye.”
We follow Jack through a labyrinth of corridors.
“What was that all about?” I ask under my breath as our footsteps thump against the stone.
“Ryan wants to go back to Madadh-allaidh.” Callum sighs, and again, he looks as if he’s carrying a great weight on his shoulders. “The lad’s come up with some grand scheme to rescue Fiona. He thinks he can trick James.”
“Oh,” I say softly. “That doesn’t sound like a sensible idea.”
“No. It doesn’t. He’s going to get himself killed if he doesn’t listen to me. And he has a history of not listening to me.”
“Is he close with Fiona?”
“Being part of a clan ... we’re family. She taught him how to ride a horse, and Fi, James, and I, we used to let him tag along when we went hunting.” He shakes his head. “I think he used to have a wee crush on her, before Becky.”
I squeeze his hand. “We’ll get her back.”
“Aye. And I shall make James pay for all of this—hurting you, claiming you, taking Fi. I could do without worrying about Ryan on top of everything else.”
Jack points things out as we pass them—the doors to Blake’s Great Hall, a drawing room, a corridor leading to the infirmary. Just like earlier, I notice the absence of any clan banners or tapestries within the castle. It’s quiet, too. We pass a few people in the corridors—two women in brown dresses having a hushed conversation, and an old man in a black and grey kilt carrying a box of fish toward the kitchens. A young child—around four years old—with a mop of black curls tears down a stairway past us, causing Jack to tell him to run faster if he means to outrun his mother. Either Blake’s clan is not very big, or they’re residing elsewhere.
When Jack gestures to a spiral staircase leading to a library in the tower, I make a note of it so I can visit later. I want to find out how Blake connected our lives, so I can disentangle myself from him. The library seems to be a good place to start.
Finally, we stop outside a door on the second floor of the castle. Jack opens it.
The room is much larger than I expected. A huge four-poster bed dominates the space, covered in furs, and two armchairs sit on a sheepskin rug in front of the roaring fire. In the corner, a wooden partition partially hides a dressing area and a sturdy oak armoire. Despite the lack of decoration, there’s a rectangle of lighter stone above the wooden mantelpiece, as if a picture once hung there.
“Blake thought it might be more suitable than the room you were in before,” says Jack. “The former alpha of Lowfell used to reside in here.”
“This was Bruce’s room?” Callum’s tone is dark as he looks around.
“You knew him?” asks Jack.
“Aye. Did you?”
Jack strides to the window, which looks out onto a vast expanse of water, and leans against the ledge. “Our meeting was short-lived.” His eyes glint in the grey light. “Blake took a particular dislike to him. It’s why he opted not to take this room for himself. He didn’t want to sleep in Bruce’s bed.”
Callum leans by the door, mirroring Jack’s easy posture. “Did he kill him in here?” He sounds as if he’s merely enquiring about the weather.
“No. He did it in the infirmary.”
A flicker of disgust surges through me at the reminder that Blake is a killer, who likes to inflict physical, as well as emotional, torment.
Callum’s mouth pinches at the corners, as if he doesn’t approve, either. “I see.”
A smile plays on Jack’s lips, as if our revulsion to his alpha is amusing to him. He straightens and gestures at the armoire. “There are some clothes that should be your size in there, Aurora, and the bath has been drawn if you want to freshen up.” He points at a doorway in the corner that must lead to a private bathing room.
“Thank you.” I keep my tone polite, despite my distrust of this male. It will probably work in our favor to keep Blake’s clan on side, if we are to defeat him.
Jack’s smile widens before he nods. “My offer stands, if you want to spar later, Callum.”
“Perhaps you could train with Ryan,” says Callum. “Keep the lad out of trouble.”
Something seems to pass between them both—a challenge of sorts that I don’t understand. Jack leaves and closes the door behind him. As soon as we’re alone, Callum visibly slumps against the wall. He meets my eyes though, a flicker of heat in them even as his expression softens. He crooks his finger.
“Come here,” he says.