Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
VALERIAN
We stop in a small grove where a mushroom ring promises some magical protection. I start a fire inside with the flintstone I’ve brought along and her knife.
She’s sitting cross-legged beside me, her torn petticoat peeking under her filthy, long dress, and her muddy shoes and stockings. Her dark hair is loose around her face.
She’s never been more beautiful. The more she relaxes around me, the more she lets go of her rules and inhibitions, the more radiant she becomes.
I stand no chance.
She’s so close to me. She keeps coming way too close. Too close for the tenuous leash I have on my self-control when it comes to her.
She should be afraid. Afraid of me and my animalistic needs. I could bite her, enter her, tear her apart. There is a battle between affection and violent desire inside of me, a push and pull. A tug of war.
And she doesn’t even realize.
I’ve never been so fucked up before. Never been so close to a brink from which I fear there may be no return. No reclaiming of my sanity. Just having her here beside me, with her fear and pain and soft curves, the tumble of her shiny hair and those blue doe eyes, is remaking me.
Changing me into someone else.
I want to stay with her, keep her with me, be the one to always look after her, take care of her, soothe her fears, and claim her tears. Kiss her mouth and plough her body.
I want her to be mine. She is mine, even if she doesn’t know it, but what I’m quickly coming to realize is that I’m hers, too.
I belong to her.
Another thing she doesn’t know.
Better that way. I focus on building up the fire to avoid looking at her. I need to starve the desire riding me. She’s my distraction, and now I have to learn to block out my distraction. I have to relearn to be me.
It feels fucking impossible.
“How did they capture you?” she asks when I hand her some of the dried meat strips I saved—my pants have hidden pockets. First rule of campaign clothes: pockets.
“Hm?” I realize her collar is undone, and I’ve been staring at neck, a man starved for a meal. Then I gaze lower, at her breasts, the way her bodice cups and presents them like offerings, round peaches, the skin peeking through her neckline creamy and smooth. “What?”
“How did Lord Sinen and his men capture you? Seeing you fight… it doesn’t seem possible.”
“Thank you for the compliment,” I mutter, if it’s a compliment and not a commentary on my half-beastly form from earlier.
“So… how? Did they trick you? Did they trap you?”
“There is no bait I’d have taken,” I say. “Except for you.”
“Me?”
Damn, my mouth is loose again, spewing whatever is in my head. “A pretty girl. I’m partial to those.”
Unbelievably, her mouth quirks. “I see.”
I heave a breath. She doesn’t really see, can’t see how badly I want to haul her into my lap and bury my nose in her neck, draw in that sweet scent of hers.
“You still haven’t replied,” she points out. “I wasn’t there when you were caught.”
“Busted.” I shake my head and give her a rueful smile, poking at the fire with a twig. “You want to know how the fearsome wolf was taken without an attractive bait? True, I didn’t see you on the hunt. Stupid on their part, wasn’t it? Think of all the wolves they could have caught.”
“Ladies don’t go hunting.” She frowns at the flames and toys with the strip of meat I gave her. “Ladies stay indoors to read and embroider. Which I enjoy, but—”
“But you’re bored.”
A slight shrug. “A little. Not that I’d want to go hunting. There are wolves who like to attack people. I’d have died from fright just from seeing one along the way.” She shoots me a quick, sideways glance. “Present company excluded.”
That strange warmth is back to take root inside my chest. Both that she excludes me from the creatures she’d hate to meet, and that she’s so honest. Opening up about her fear. Not pretending to be fearless, because maybe she’s starting to trust me.
So I reward that with a true reply. “I had been out asking about the whereabouts of the family who killed my mother, and your family name came up.”
“You knew my family name?”
I nod. “Your family was said to be in the know about what happened. I hadn’t realized just how involved.”
“Why come looking after all this time?”
I hide a wince. “Her disappearance was a mystery for a long while. We didn’t know what had happened to her.”
“But if my mother killed your mother,” she whispers, “that means your mother led the wolves to us.”
“She wouldn’t do something like that,” I say firmly. “That wasn’t like her.”
She lowers her gaze, but not before I see a flash of rage. “You don’t really know, though.”
“And who can tell me? I’ve been looking for the truth.”
“Yet, you waited over ten years to go looking for it.”
“I was occupied.”
“What a thing to say,” she whispers and casts me a withering look. “If you loved your mother as much as you say and wolves are as vindictive as they are said to be—”
“We are. And I did.” I rub my eyes. “I still do. I miss her… At any given time, random things remind me of her, and I want her back. I want her with me. But I know it’s impossible, and the least I can do is find out exactly what happened.”
The flames dance in her blue eyes. They look dark in the dimness, only the dancing flames betraying their hue. “You may never find out the whole truth.”
“I’d like to try.”
“I’ve always wanted to know why we were attacked,” she says, “why I was taken… why I was released later. But nobody ever had any real answers.”
“We’ll search for them together,” I promise her. “You and I.”
“You and I… isn’t a thing.” Her mouth twists. “Our paths will diverge soon. You will continue hunting the truth, and I will…”
“Marry,” I say flatly. “That’s the word you’re looking for.”
She blinks at me. “Yes. Marry. Does it bother you?”
“Me? Whatever for?” I keep digging among the flames with the twig until its end catches fire. With a curse, I hit it on the ground until it goes out.
“Yes, you.”
“It’s your life,” I grumble. “Do whatever you want. It has nothing to do with me.”
“Right.”
I realize she’s still looking at me, and I take a vicious bite from the dried meat strip I’m holding in my other hand.
“A werewolf,” she muses. “My bodyguard.”
“Yeah. Fate sure has a sense of humor,” I mumble around the meat as I chew thoughtfully.
“What are the odds? That Stepfather asked for a werewolf to be captured, and they caught you?”
“The timing was unreal. The hounds came baying, and there I was, hoping for some information on my mother’s fate.”
“And you got it,” she whispers, her soft mouth downturned at the corners. “More than you’d bargained for, too.”
“I did get more than I’d bargained for,” I agree, letting my gaze roam over her face, her hair, trailing down to her arms, her chest, her waist. “I never expected to meet you.”
“Such a blow, huh?” she says ruefully. “The daughter of your mother’s murderer.”
“I wouldn’t call it bad luck,” I whisper and smirk at her.
“Yes, it was,” she insists, cheeks reddening. She reaches for her collar, and her fingers twitch when she finds it undone. She starts buttoning it up. “Now you’re saddled with me.”
I can’t think of anything to say. Is she so clueless about my feelings, or taking it so hard that our families are entwined in such gruesome ways?
Getting to know her these days makes me think the latter.
She’s feeling guilty for something that not only wasn’t her fault, it marked her in ways that make me want to kill people.
There’s little I wouldn’t do to take that pain from her.
I’ve never had my fucking heart broken before, but I’m starting to realize I’m about to…