Chapter Six
The woods breathe around us.
Cold air slides along my bare arms, yet my skin burns where his hands rest. Pale fingers slide along my waist, my ribs, my throat. They know the paths of me. They move with a certainty that unravels whatever holds me together.
His hair spills over my shoulder, drag across my throat, soft as smoke. A mouth finds my ear, words pouring into me in a low murmur I cannot untangle and yet understand in my bones. The sound alone slides travels through my body, slipping beneath skin and breath. My spine arches toward it.
His lips follow the curve of my throat. A slow press. A lingering taste. My pulse leaps beneath his mouth, rises to meet the rhythm of it. A shiver spreads through me and does not fade. It deepens. It opens me. I lean back into him without thought.
Teeth press to my skin, and for a heartbeat, I understand.
The shape before me is wrong for a man. The breath, rougher, the scent stronger. I feel it then—the wolf at my throat—and the knowledge settles into me without fear. The pleasure does not break. It deepens. Its jaws close gently and the pull begins.
There is no pain. Only a slow sweetness that spreads from the bite and floods my limbs. The trees blur as the sensation unfurls slowly, lifts me out of myself. I tilt my face to the sky and the moon hangs above me, white and endless.
A smile spreads across my lips without effort.
The pull at my neck deepens. Each beat of my pulse sends another wave through me.
I sway inside it, suspended, held fast between the cold night air and the burning point of his mouth.
My breath spills from my mouth in quiet bursts that turn to laughter before I understand the sound.
Leaves whisper. Branches sway. My blood answers in kind.
And the world shifts.
The ground slides beneath my feet. The trees lean. The moon stretches wide and thin across the sky. My hands are no longer empty. Something warm coats them.
I am crouched in the leaves. The taste of iron floods my mouth.
My teeth sink into flesh and the warmth floods in—rich, overwhelming. It fills my throat, my chest, my belly. The hunger inside me opens and opens again, and I drink until the world spins.
Fullness swells through me, and I lift my head.
Across from me, another body kneels in the moonlight.
Her throat is torn open. Blood runs down her neck and gathers along her collarbone. Her hair clings to the wound in dark strands. Her hands tremble faintly where they press against the earth.
Yet the lips of that broken body curve upward. She is smiling at me, eyes wide and calm as if the pain belongs to someone else.
Her eyes bore into mine.
My own eyes.
My own mouth, slick with blood.
My teeth sink deeper. The taste grows richer, thicker, unbearable in its sweetness. My hands clutch at my own shoulders, holding myself closer as the feeding continues.
The warmth between my teeth.
The slow pulse beneath the skin.
The body bending willingly toward the bite.
A harsh croak slices the air.
I lift my head.
A raven sits on a branch above me, black wings folded tight against the stormy sky. Its head tilts. Its eye shines like wet stone. Watching.
Waiting.
The smile beneath me grows wider. Another croak tears through the night—
And a crack splits the air.
The woods vanish as I tear awake.
I am upright in my bed, breath ragged, skin damp. Darkness presses close. A gust of wind sweeps through the house and the fire collapses into ash. Cold rushes over me.
Outside, the storm rages. Rain lashes the roof in hard sheets. The shutters rattle like bones. A candle flickers on the table, its small flame bending and trembling, throwing shadows that lunge and recoil across the walls.
Elena’s breath warms the hollow of my throat.
She lies on her side, one hand fisted in the wool between us, lashes resting heavy against her cheeks.
Her hair has come loose in the night. It spills across my arm, across the pillow, dark against the pale linen.
There is dried salt at the corner of her mouth where tears dried and were never wiped away.
I watch her chest rise. Fall. Rise again. A strand of her hair has slipped across her cheek. I reach and move it away with the back of my finger. She does not stir.
She would not leave her mother’s body. She clung to it until her fingers had to be pried loose. When they pulled her away, her voice broke into something I had never heard before.
She sleeps now because she must.
Cold creeps through the blankets, climbing my legs. The fire has sunk into itself. Only a dull glow pulses beneath the ash, faint and stubborn. The air bites at my throat when I inhale.
I ease myself from the bed, lifting the blanket slowly so the air does not rush in. Elena shifts once, a small sound escaping her throat, then settles. I wait until her breathing deepens again. The ladder creaks once beneath my weight. I pause, listening. Elena’s breathing remains steady above.
The floor is cold.
At the hearth, I kneel. The ashes are pale and fine, soft as flour when I push them aside. Beneath them, a thread of red waits, buried but alive.
I gather splinters from the basket and lay them carefully across the embers. A twist of dry straw. A breath. I lean close and blow. The ash stirs. A thread of orange pushes through the grey, then withdraws. I breathe again, slower this time, feeding it air.
The thread thickens. It spreads along the wood, catches, climbs.
Flame unfurls.
It licks upward, thin at first, then steadier, casting light across the beams and the hanging herbs, across the door, across my hands.
Warmth settles low in my chest as I rise and watch the flames take hold.
They rise and fold into one another, steady and alive.
Light gathers along the stones, softening their edges.
I breathe with it. The storm recedes to a distant roar.
For a moment, there is only the fire and the quiet pulse of heat against my skin.
My shoulders loosen. Breath leaves me in a slow stream.
A hand closes over my mouth.
The world snaps tight.
Cold seeps into my lips as the scent of him floods my senses—wet earth turned open, crushed moss, rain caught in dark soil.
Another arm bands around my middle and drags me back against a chest that does not yield.
My spine meets him. The hold is firm, unbreakable.
My heart slams against his hand. I try to gasp but my cry dies against his skin, swallowed by his palm.
I struggle to draw air through my nose. His hold tightens. My back presses fully into him. I feel the shape of him along my spine, the stillness in his body, the terrible patience in it.
His breath brushes my ear. It carries the chill of night inside it.
"You’ve been dreaming of me."
His voice moves through me like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. A shiver rushes through me.
"Shall I show you why?"
Before I can wrench free, he pivots us in a single motion. The room spins, my heels scrape against the floor. Firelight streaks across the walls and settles on the basin hanging beside the hearth. Its metal surface trembles with reflected flame.
Two shapes swim there, warped by the curve of metal.
Mine floats pale and wide-eyed, stretched thin by the curve of the bowl.
His looms behind me, folded around my shape.
Shadow pours from him and spills over my shoulders.
Dark hair falls across his brow, brushing my temple.
His hands glow faintly against my skin, long fingers splayed, bloodless and certain.
The fire finds his eyes and kindles them red. The colour blooms in the basin, deep and living. It stains the curve of his gaze, spills across the thin metal until it seems the whole room is watching me through it.
His hand lifts from my mouth. Air rushes in, but I do not scream.
I draw it through parted lips and feel his fingers linger.
They follow the line of my jaw, tip my chin, drift down the column of my throat.
My skin tightens beneath it. Every place he touches wakes in a single flare, alert and trembling.
His thumb finds the hollow of my throat and rests there. My pulse leaps against it. He feels it. I see it in the basin—the small flutter beneath his fingers, the way his gaze draws in as he watches it beat, a trapped bird beneath his hand.
He leans closer. His face shifts in the trembling metal as I watch his mouth open.
Firelight breaks across, and something inside it changes.
White glints where no light should catch.
His teeth lengthen, fine to a point, unfolding with a quiet, terrible grace.
The sight strikes through me. My breath falters. My stomach knots hard enough to ache.
The points hover at my neck.
Heat gathers there, a tight, aching focus. I feel the faint brush of his breath. It pools beneath my skin, spreads in slow circles. My heart hammers so hard it hurts. Each beat drives blood against the place where he waits. I feel it there, exposed and throbbing.
My neck tilts back before I understand the movement. The line of my throat opens to him. I watch it happen in the basin, my reflection baring itself with helpless clarity.
His lips stop a breath away.
"Say the word," he murmurs. "And I’ll taste you now."
My fingers close around his arm. I do not remember lifting them.
They grip hard enough to feel the strength beneath his clothed skin.
The fire snaps behind us. Its light shudders across the basin.
His teeth gleam there, suspended above the frantic beat in my throat.
My skin stretches toward his waiting mouth, aching for the contact I dread.
The heat of him presses along my back. It seeps into me and settles low in my belly, heavy and insistent.