Chapter Twenty-Six
M oonlight floods the room.
A low growl. Primal. Animal.
Bared teeth. Eyes glowing.
A whisper of fur. Two beasts. One black, one tawny. Both huge. A crash. Books cascade to the floor. A desk breaks. They’re fighting, I think.
Howls permeate the castle walls.
Amid it all, a thought.
I have not shifted.
***
I’m being torn apart.
My cheek is pressed against the floorboards. I whimper and push myself to my knees. A snarl makes my head rear up.
Callum and Blake have shifted. They’re both huge, the size of bears, though Callum is slightly bigger. The moonlight shines off their glossy coats. The desk is shattered around them, and glass glints on the floor in front of the fireplace where one of Blake’s bottles has smashed.
Callum has the scruff of Blake’s neck in his maw and as he bites harder, pain flares in the same spot on my neck.
“Stop!” I croak.
Callum’s head snaps toward me, and his growl dies when his green eyes lock onto mine. I feel him, sense him—his scent floods my lungs, and with it, a calmness settles over me. He’s still in there. He’s still Callum.
My eyes widen. Blake hurtles into Callum’s side. The tawny wolf flies across the room and slams into the wall by the door. He releases a whimper as he crashes onto the floor. Books, piled by the wall, cascade on top of him.
“Callum!”
I turn toward him, but there’s a thud, and Blake looms over me. His paws are huge, and his claws dig into the floorboards. I try to crawl away, but he sinks his teeth into the back of my dress and drags me across the floor. I land on my back by the foot of the bed.
“Blake, stop it!”
I try to get up. A great weight presses down on my stomach, squeezing the breath out of me. Blake’s body is stiff, his ears pulled back. Callum is on his feet, and the two lock eyes. Both growl.
I can tell Callum is still himself, but Blake feels different. Feral. Dangerous. His shadows, which exist inside me, move and spread in all directions, and I can make no sense of them. I shove him, and my fingers sink into silky fur.
“ Blake . Get off me.”
My vision blurs as Callum paces back and forth. Every time Callum gets closer, Blake’s growl vibrates through me, and Callum inches back.
Another surge of pain crashes over me. My soul feels frayed, like threads of it are being pulled apart. I stiffen, then whimper. Blake’s great weight pushes down on my stomach, squeezing the breath out of me.
Sweet darkness pulls me under.
***
My face is pressed against something hot and hard, and the scent of male and forests fills my lungs. My skin buzzes, but I no longer feel as if my soul is being shredded apart. A soft sigh escapes me. I peel open my eyelids. My heart stills.
My face is crushed against Blake’s bare chest. Our bodies are flush, and one of my hands is slung over his waist, as if I clung to him in my sleep. Blake’s fingers brush the back of my neck.
Adrenaline surges through my body. I suppress the snarl that builds inside me as my teeth tingle. Something whispers. Bite. Bite. Bite. There’s something wrong with me. Panic swirls in my chest, and my breathing is fast. I’m going to... I can’t stop myself from... I open my mouth.
Blake stirs. He dips his chin, and panic flares in his eyes.
He is wrenched away from me. There’s the thud of bare feet, the dragging sound of Blake trying to find his footing, then a slam and a rattle.
I push myself to my knees. Callum presses Blake against the wall by the cold hearth. My eyes widen. Both are naked. Their clothes are torn in shred on the floorboards, among splintered wood and books and parchment. Weak sunlight strains through the window and highlights the shuddering muscles in Callum’s back.
“What the fuck?” he growls.
Blake’s hair is a mess, and though he manages his usual bored expression, his cheeks are flushed. His eyes lock onto mine.
“Don’t look at her.” Callum grips his chin. “Look at me.”
“Your cock is touching my leg.”
Callum makes a frustrated noise in his throat. He releases Blake, but doesn’t step back. “What the fuck were you doing last night? You were guarding her. Why?”
“Why do you think?”
“You don’t want to know what I think.”
Blake exhales. “She has a part of my life force inside her. Of course I was going to guard her.”
“Oh, that was why, was it?”
I tune out their bickering. I sit back against the side of the bed. The fur that hangs from the mattress is soft against my back. I tilt back my head, and feel the Northlands sun on my skin. Outside, the wind rustles the trees and stirs the loch. The tips of the mountains are shrouded with mist.
Some of the anxiety that has been knotting inside me for weeks unravels. I still have too many questions about last night, about what’s happening to me.
But a slow smile spreads across my face.
I didn’t shift.
“Please. I have no interest in your pet,” says Blake. “You shouldn’t have brought her here on the night of the full moon. What did you expect?”
“For you to exercise a little self-restraint—”
“Next time, I will strive to be the picture of composure that you were last night, Callum—”
As they continue to argue, I cast my gaze around Blake’s chambers. I’d not taken it in properly, last night. It’s smaller than ours and simply furnished, despite him being the alpha of this castle, and having the pick of any room he wants.
The bed I lean against is barely big enough to fit two people, and is pushed against the wall. The mess is the outcome of the fight between Blake and Callum last night. The clutter, though. . . that must have been here already. There are books scattered across the floor, among the remnants of the broken desk, but they’re also piled against the stone walls and stacked in the corners.
While he’s distracted by Callum, I pick one up, curious about Blake’s reading choices. It’s full of sketches of monsters—winged beasts, half dead humanoid figures, a water creature with entrails curling out of its body like tentacles. My eyes lock with those of a serpentine creature, that—from the smudges around its scaled body—seems to wear shadows like a second skin.
There’s a mark on its tail. It’s the same symbol that is inked on Elsie’s wrist. When I turn the page, the mark has been drawn in greater detail on the end of a hot iron. These are Night’s prisoners, now bound to his prison in the sky. I wonder if Blake is taking the rumors about Night’s acolytes, and the Night Prince seriously. I put the book down.
Numerous bottles of liquor stand on his mantelpiece, and one rolls across the floor, near Callum’s feet as he continues to berate Blake.
The scent of lavender hits me, as well as another floral smell I don’t recognize. Dried purple and white flowers scatter the floor—among bits of parchment. The lavender provokes an ache, deep within me, and I pick up one of the sprigs and twist it between my fingers. My mother used to stitch it into pouches, and place them beneath my pillow before bed. She said they would help me sleep, and keep the nightmares away. I wonder if Blake uses it for a similar purpose.
I drop it, and it lands on a sketch of a labyrinth with a hexagonal center.
“Can you two put some clothes on, please?” I say.
Blake and Callum both shut their mouths. Callum looks over his shoulder sharply. His expression softens. He releases Blake, crosses the room, and crouches down before me.
Still unclothed.
I should be used to it by now, but heat stains my cheeks.
“Are you alright?” He cups my face in his big hand.
I keep my eyes resolutely on his as Blake walks to his armoire. When he opens it and pulls out breeches and a shirt, my resolve wavers and I look. Raised white ridges crisscross the muscles in his back. I overheard him tell Callum he was whipped for being a half-wolf.
“I didn’t shift,” I say.
A slow grin spreads across Callum’s face. “No. You didn’t. You’re not a wolf after all.”
I feel Blake’s emotion. That thread between us shudders, as if he is holding something back.
“You sound almost as relieved as I am,” I say. “Did you not want me to be a wolf?”
He brushes his thumb against my cheek. “I know it’s not what you wanted, that’s all.” I frown, because I’m not sure he’s being entirely truthful. “Come here.” He scoops me into his arms, and I reflexively hook my hands around his neck. Without a backward glance at Blake, he carries me out of the room.
“I hope you’re going to put some clothes on,” I say, as Callum carries me down the corridor.
“Don’t need them.” He kicks open the door to our chambers and grins. “Not for what I have planned.”
He drops me onto the bed, and I squeal. “Callum!”
“What?” he asks as he crawls over me, then drags his teeth along my throat. “You know, it would be nice if, for once, I could spend the morning after the full moon with you not smelling like my worst enemy.” He shifts down and plants kisses on my collarbone, then my torso, and then between my legs through the fabric of my dress. I breathe in sharply. “Last time, there was not much I could do about it. This time, I plan to rectify the situation.”
“Is that so?”
He kneels on the mattress. His eyes glint when they meet mine—full of mischief. “I promise it will be very pleasurable for you.”
Who am I to deny him?
***
Callum makes good on his promise.
We spend the morning in bed, with him drawing moans from my lips until I’m liquid in his arms. And then he starts all over again. He remains careful with me, though. Gentle. His promise to unleash himself upon me after the full moon is nullified. I didn’t shift.
At noon, after getting some food brought up from the kitchens, he goes to meet with Lochlan and Jack to plan tomorrow’s ambush. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading in the armchair by the fire, my legs curled beneath me.
As the sky darkens, so do my emotions. I was scared to shift, but being a wolf gave me an explanation for my mother’s death, and a connection to her. It connected me to Callum, as well. I’m sure his high spirits this morning were linked to my inability to shift. I think he’s glad I’m still human. Still weak , that wild part of me whispers.
I drop the book I’m reading onto the chair. I walk to the window. The bloated sky is dark grey, and shadows shroud the peaks of the mountains. The water ripples in the wind.
It doesn’t make sense. There’s something inside me, pressing against my skin. I’ve felt it since James bit me. I keep falling into fever. Lochlan believes my mother was a wolf, and my father must have thought I was like her, because he had me whipped so I would suppress it. I wanted to bite Blake last night. I wanted to bite him this morning. I almost did.
I can’t accept that the human part of me would ever do such a thing.
Movement draws my gaze. A dark figure walks to the water’s edge, hands in the pockets of his long coat. He looks out onto the loch, and the wind stirs his black hair.
I felt something from Blake, this morning. He knows something about me. Something he is concealing.
“Stay where you are,” I whisper, even though I know he can’t hear me.
I stride to the armoire, and pull on a warm coat and boots.
I’m going to find out what Blake knows.