Chapter Fifty-Four
M y heart is heavy as Philip and I ride away from Madadh-allaidh.
We must go west, to the small seaport at Glas-Cladach. First—on Callum’s orders—we take a route through a valley to the north to avoid Alexander’s army, who have been spotted riding in our direction.
I ride a small chestnut horse named Heather, prepared for me by Fiona, who hugged me tightly before I left and told me she hoped our paths would cross once more. Mrs. McDonald packed me a bag of bread, dried meats, and nuts—as well as another of her love stories, which she tucked within the other items with a wink. Callum brushed his lips against my forehead, eyes shining in the cold sun, and gave me the small silver letter opener I took from the Borderlands that I once tried to stab him with.
“Go for the throat,” he reminded me, his voice strained.
“I’ll find the Heart of the Moon, and I’ll come back to you,” I told him in response.
And then Philip and I were on our way.
I didn’t say goodbye to Blake, though the bond tugs as the mountains rise up on either side of us. Darkness grows in my chest, and I’m not sure if it’s linked to the sadness I feel, or whether I’m feeling his emotion. I think he knows I’m gone.
Philip rides ahead, his gait casual, only one gloved hand on the reins of his horse. He’s dressed in his long blue coat with a high collar, and the sword Callum gave him is strapped to his back. I know he has daggers attached to his belt, too. Other than grumbling about his slumber being interrupted, and his despair that we left before he could have breakfast, he has had the good sense not to speak.
I’m not sure if it’s compassion for my situation, or whether—like me—he feels awkward. We are both siblings and strangers. Back home, we played the parts of a prince and a princess who didn’t much like each other. So much has happened to both of us since then, it’s hard to know what roles we now fit into.
When clouds gather in the afternoon and the sky opens up, it does little to heighten my mood. I bring my horse beside Philip, irritated. “Are you sure you’re going the right way?”
“Yes.”
“How can you bear north when we cannot even see the sun? Callum said we should have reached a forest by now, at which point, we are to turn west.” I taste the rain, and my cloak is starting to stick to my body.
“If you wish to take the lead, be my guest, little sister.” His red hair is flat, and rain rolls over his mouth, but while I shiver, he seems at ease. “I didn’t ask to become bodyguard to your spoiled arse.”
“Must you be so constantly unpleasant?”
“Must you?”
I withhold my snarl, and turn my attention to the towering mountains, and the many shades of green and grey that surround us. Not for the first time since we set off, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing by traveling with him. I can barely stand his company.
By nightfall, I’m convinced we’re lost, yet Philip seems triumphant when a woodland comes into view.
“There, see? The forest we were looking for. We’ll make camp until dawn,” he says, heading into the tall trees.
I follow, because it’s better than roaming the mountains in the dark searching for the actual forest we were supposed to turn west at—I’m sure this is not it. The sound of the rain softens when I lead Heather beneath the evergreen canopy, and there is immediate relief from the cold wind.
Philip leads us to a clearing. We both dismount, and he orders me to light a fire while he waters the horses at a nearby stream, the sounds of which fill the pine-scented air.
I’m sitting on a log, warming my hands by the crackling flames, by the time he returns. He sits on a boulder opposite, and clasps his hands between his long legs. I pass him some food. We eat in silence. We finish. He sharpens his sword. I wring out my hair, and re-braid it.
A stubborn part of me wants to maintain the silence, to suppress all my questions because I don’t want him to get the incorrect impression that I care about anything that happens to him. My curiosity outweighs it. His past is my past. I need to know.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to you?” I ask.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether or not you ask me nicely.”
I glower at him over the crackling flames. “Oh please Philip, please tell me what happened to you. Because I really care.”
“Sarcasm is quite unbecoming of you, little sister.” He shrugs, then sheaths his sword. He props it against the boulder. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Everything. Did you know mother was a wolf? When did you get bitten? Was it before you left the palace, or after?”
“Before.”
Shock slams through me, and I try to pull back my reaction so he can’t see my hurt. If it happened before he left, he must have known about Mother—about me —and never told me. I should expect no more from him, yet he’s my family. His expression softens.
“I was not pleasant to you, growing up. I know that,” he says. “In my defense, I didn’t like you very much.”
My hurt turns into irritation, and my fingernails dig into my palms. “Oh, well that’s okay then.” A thick silence extends between us and I can’t stop the question that has plagued me for years from erupting. “Why?”
“I was jealous, I suppose.”
“Jealous? Of what?”
He sighs dramatically. “I don’t know. You spent your days swanning around the palace, dressing in fine clothes, preening, playing music, watching plays, embroidering. All the while, I had to train to go to war. I never wanted to learn to kill humans or Wolves. I certainly did not want to be up at dawn every morning, failing to impress our father, constantly being told what a disappointment I was.” He shrugs. “Before she died, you were always Mother’s favorite child, and I was Father’s. When Father sent me to war, it was to ‘toughen me up’ because he believed I was too soft. I didn’t see what was wrong with being soft. It always seemed to me that you got the better part of it all.”
I had never thought of it this way, yet I release a bitter laugh. “I didn’t, Philip. I was powerless. You have no idea what it was like to be a woman in that situation. I had no voice, whereas you always did. You got to escape it. Do you know what my escape was? I was supposed to marry Sebastian.”
He looks up at the tree boughs overhead—as if he can’t quite meet my gaze.
“I heard about that.” He runs a hand over his mouth. “Since I met Ingrid in the Snowlands... I realize some of my perceptions may have been incorrect. I’m just saying, that’s how I felt at the time. And, alongside my envy, there was a hunger growing within me that I couldn’t understand. I tried to drown it out with drink, and fill it with women and men, and appease it by picking fights... yet I was never sated. You always seemed like you were at peace—it never occurred to me that you may be going through the same thing and were more adept at hiding it than me.”
“You could sense you were a wolf?”
“I began to suspect it just before Mother died, yet I didn’t ask her. I was afraid, I think. Of the discovery, of the answers, of her outing me to Father. When she passed, I started looking into Wolves. I read everything I could get my hands on in the library. If anyone saw me, I told them I was researching my enemy, so I’d know how to kill them better. One day, one of the guards saw me. He told me there were Wolves in the dungeons beneath the palace, if I wanted to see one up close.”
Something coils, serpent-like, around my insides. Philip cocks his head to one side. “What?”
“Is that where you met Blake?” I ask. My voice is barely audible over the rain pattering on the evergreen canopy and the stream nearby.
“I’d seen him around, but that was the first time we spoke. One night, my curiosity got the better of me. I went to see what lay in the depths of our home. There he was.”
You’re looking better than the last time I saw you. Philip had said that to Blake when we were at Madadh-allaidh. “He’d been tortured.”
“Yes. So you can imagine how my fear of discovery grew, on finding him and the other prisoners down there.”
I shake my head, disgust writing within. “You did nothing.”
“Would you have done differently, little sister?”
“I...” I shake my head. I like to think that I would have tried to help, but perhaps that is fanciful thinking. Perhaps I’m as much a coward as my brother. “I don’t know, Philip.”
“I tried to distance myself from what I’d seen. I tried not to think about it. It haunted me, though. It would be my fate if Father ever discovered what I was. Honestly, it had never occurred to me that you would share the same affliction, the same fate. I was too wrapped up in myself. The only saving grace was that I knew I was a half-wolf, and I had not yet been bitten.”
“What changed?”
“The night of the full moon, I felt... restless. I snuck out to the docks, and drank so much I could barely stand. When I returned to the palace...” He shakes his head. “I was overtaken by a sick curiosity. I wanted to know what they looked like when they transformed.”
“You went back to the dungeons.”
A sorrowful look flickers across his face. “There were five of them in the cells. I was barely conscious, I was so drunk. I taunted a couple of them through the bars. I was bitten. I deserved it, I suppose.”
“Blake said he knew the wolf who bit you.”
“Yes. He’s at Madadh-allaidh now.”
My eyebrows raise. “Who?”
He snaps his gloved fingers, as if he’s searching for the name. “The man with the dreadlocks and the southern accent.”
“Jack?”
“Yes, that’s right. Jack.”
Shock blooms inside me. I had never asked how Blake met his right-hand man, but I didn’t expect them to both have been prisoners within my father’s palace. Darkness spreads inside me as something else occurs to me. “Jack is part of Blake’s clan. That makes Blake your alpha.”
The thought that Blake is playing a bigger game intensifies. It can’t be a coincidence that he has managed to become alpha to both the prince and the princess of the kingdom that entrapped him. As much as I protest that Blake is not my alpha, his bite still marks my shoulder.
Philip shrugs. “He certainly thinks he is. He tried to use the àithne on me when he had me in the infirmary.”
“It didn’t work?”
He shakes his head. “No. Although I let him think it did.”
“I did the same thing.”
A dimple creases his cheek. “After that, I realized I had to get out of the kingdom before the following full moon. Shifting in front of Father? Can you imagine?”
Despite my ill feeling toward my brother, the corner of my lip twitches.
Philip grins. “No, I decided I would spare myself that experience. I told Father I was ready to go to war. I took the guard who had told me about the Wolves in the dungeons with me, and—as soon as we had arrived at the war camp—we set off to the Snowlands in search of answers.”
“Did you find them?”
“I found a divided kingdom. I found the fear of the God of Night.” There’s a distant look in his eyes. “And I found Ingrid.”
“You love her,” I say softly.
“It doesn’t matter how I feel about her. It’s unrequited, I assure you. I did little to warm her to me when we first met. She is...” He bites his bottom lip, his face uncharacteristically serious. He looks almost like the prince he should be. “She is quite extraordinary.”
“Is that why you’re looking for the Heart of the Moon?”
He laughs. “Nothing escapes you, Sister.” He shrugs. “Yes, I’m looking for it. It wasn’t my primary reason for coming here, but I spoke to a tribe in the Snowlands who said it was sent here, years ago. Although they have a different name for it there. It translates to Blood of the Moon. I thought Ingrid might forgive me of my sins, if I found it.”
“The Blood of the Moon?”
“Yes.”
I bite my bottom lip. “And you decided to try and arrange a marriage between this extraordinary woman and the man I am...” The words die in my throat, and I shift on the boulder. I will return to Callum, and I’m going to fight for him, but he still wanted to end things between us. “The man I was courting. How brotherly of you.”
A dimple punctures his cheek. “What does it matter, little sister? Blake is your—”
“Don’t.” I push down the rise of panic. “How did you know about... about the bond?”
He pulls a face. “Aside from the fact it’s blatantly obvious?” He shrugs. “Every time you were both in the same room, he couldn’t take his eyes off you. Be careful around him, though. He’s changed since I met him. Back then, there was...” He shakes his head. “I don’t know. There was something ‘off’ about him. He hides it now.”
I agree that he’s hiding something, yet I feel a little indignant on Blake’s behalf. “Perhaps that’s because you met him when he’d just been tortured, Philip.”
“Perhaps.” Philip lowers himself onto the ground by the boulder, and puts his pack down beneath him to use as a pillow before lying down. “Perhaps not.” He closes his eyes. A smile spreads across his lips.
“What?” I say.
“Father would be so displeased to know what has become of us.”
I lie down on the pine needles, and settle down for sleep. “Two half-wolves, each helping a different enemy kingdom. Yes, he would be, wouldn’t he?”
Philip laughs. “Good night, little sister.”
“Good night, Philip.”
***
I open my eyes. I’m no longer in the forest. The scent of pine is heady in the air. A fire crackles in a black iron fireplace adorned with books and a decanter of whisky. Blake’s chambers. The mattress creaks behind me, followed by a muffled moan.
I turn and freeze.
I’m in Blake’s dream. There is a version of me on my knees on his bed, framed by the bedposts and the dark silk curtains. I’m naked, and my skin glows like moonlight.
Blake kneels behind me. One of his hands is cupped between my parted thighs, the other roughly squeezes my breast. His teeth are at my throat, and he thrusts his fingers into me. The dream version of me moans and pushes back into him, and he groans.
My legs turn to liquid. I feel him. I feel him everywhere. He’s not touching the real version of me, yet pressure builds between my legs, and my core aches.
I need to get out of here. But I’m transfixed. It’s not just the fervent nature of Blake’s movements, when he’s usually so in control. It’s the glow of my skin, almost goddess-like, as if that is how he sees me.
He pushes me down onto the mattress, and I snap to my senses. I stagger back. My back hits something solid and warm. I spin around.
Blake—the real Blake—stands before me. His gaze is fixed on the bed, and his lips are slightly parted. I grab his shirt, and push him against the wall by the fireplace. “Stop it.”
His eyes flit to mine. Panicked. “I cannot.”
A female groan—my groan—fills the air, and I can’t breathe. The creaking gets louder, faster, drawing Blake’s attention. The bond trembles, and I feel the word that builds like a growl. Hunt.
I glance over my shoulder, and my breathing almost stops. He has me face down on the mattress, one hand on the nape of my neck to hold me down, the other grips my hip as he thrusts into me. The look on his face... goddess... the look on his face.
My chest is too tight. My blood is molten gold. I swing back toward him. “Blake. You can’t... you can’t think of me like this...”
I feel the moment he changes. He feels like he did in the chapel. Feral. Animal. Not himself. His eyes shift, then glow. “No one would know.”
“What?"
Almost delicately, he takes a strand of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. The gentleness is at odds with the look in his eye, and what is going on behind me. My breath catches.
“It’s just a dream,” he says. “We don’t have to do it my way. I can be gentle, if you like.”
My mouth dries. “Blake. . .”
He cups my face in both hands. “Let me have you. Just once. Please.”
My insides combust. He is begging. Blake is begging. And I know he is manipulating me. I know he will do or say anything he needs to in order to get what he wants, because that is how his mind works. Yet my blood heats. I cannot move. I cannot think. He steps closer, and his body is flush to mine. His lips are inches away, and his breath brushes my mouth.
He smiles, a dark wicked smile, and tilts my head back. “It’s just you and me. He doesn’t have to know.”
He.
Callum.
Ice crashes through me and dowses the traitorous flames. I block the moaning, and the slapping, and the deep grunts. I stagger back.
“You cannot think of me like this.” I try to put a command in my tone, but my voice trembles. “This... this will never happen.”
He has the audacity to look sad. I turn and crash through the door.