Chapter 10
Iscream.
My voice echoes around the silent forest and a flock of birds takes flight overhead. My sword slips from my trembling fingers and lands with a soft thud in the snow as my pulse hammers against my ribs.
The white wolf that has been following me for miles is gone, and in its place is Fox, naked and bleeding. He groans as he doubles over, jaw clenched tight while crimson ribbons snake down his arm and stain the snow around us.
My mind reels. I have so many questions I don’t know where to begin, but my immediate attention is on his injured shoulder.
I rush to his side and drop to my knees in the snow. His gaze burns into me, but I keep my eyes locked on the torn flesh of his shoulder. I see a flash of white between the torn flesh, and a wave of nausea washes over me. “You need to let me heal that. I can see the bone.”
“Leave it,” he says in a hoarse growl, then clears his throat and tries again. “I’ll be fine.”
“If you’d rather lose your arm, that’s your prerogative.”
“I’m not going to lose my fucking arm.”
His eyes are defiant as he reaches up with his uninjured hand, fingers digging into the torn edges of his own flesh, pressing the ragged skin together with a sickening squelch. Blood seeps between his knuckles, turning them slick and crimson as muscle fibers visibly realign beneath his grip.
My eyes bug out of my head, and my voice comes out shaky. “I take it you’ve done that before?”
He grunts, which I take as a yes.
“When?” I demand, horrified.
He doesn’t answer the question directly, just meets my eyes again with the same burning intensity. “It’ll fuse back together in a few minutes; I just have to hold it together in the meantime.”
“Brilliant,” I breathe, feeling slightly light-headed. I turn my back on him and walk a few paces aimlessly back toward the river. “That’s just…brilliant.”
“Aurelia?” Fox’s voice sounds slightly concerned, and I hear him getting to his feet. “Are you alright?”
“No. No, not really,” I mutter, my mind racing faster than I can put into words.
My stomach lurches, and I finally can’t hold back the nausea anymore. I double over, dry-heaving into the bushes.
“Is it the wine?” Fox asks.
“The…what?”
It takes a second to piece together what he’s implying.
“Do you think I’m sick from overindulging after the wedding?
My Gods, no, of course it couldn’t possibly be because I just saw the exposed bone of your arm, moments after I made that wound by attacking what I thought was a vicious wolf. No, that’s way too obvious.”
He blinks, his expression unreadable. “What do you want me to do?”
“You can start by putting some damn clothes on.”
He raises his eyebrows, eyes widening as if to say, “What exactly am I supposed to wear?”
I reach up to my throat, fingers fumbling with the clasp of my crimson cloak, then throw the bundle of fabric at him. He catches the cloak over his injured arm and lets out a harsh breath through his nose.
I turn my back, waiting for him to cover himself up.
I glance quickly back to make sure everything important is covered, and see that he’s still holding his shoulder with his uninjured hand, but has managed to wrap my cloak around his waist like a towel.
It’s almost exactly the same color as the blood oozing between his fingers.
“Better?” he asks.
“No, not really.” I suck in another deep breath, and then it’s as if the floodgates open and my voice comes out shrill, somewhere between a hiss and a shriek. “How did I not know about this?’’
To his credit, Fox doesn’t bother to pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. “No one knows.”
“No one?” I echo, still reeling from my shock. “No one knows that you’re a wolf.”
“Only sometimes,” he says, as if that matters. His brow furrows as if he’s thinking, and he adds. “Jett knows, but he’s the only one. No one else.”
My stomach lurches, and I bite back the urge to ask: “Why did you tell him and not me?”
That’s an insane question. Anyway, I know why. Why would he tell me a secret like that when what we had wasn’t serious?
“Why?” I demand instead.
“He figured it out. It doesn’t matter,” Fox grumbles.
“It absolutely matters!”
“Why should it?” Fox asks sharply. There’s a sudden wariness in his tone I’ve never heard before. It sounds almost defensive, as if he’s expecting a fight.
My brow furrows. “I don’t know, it just does. Wouldn’t it be odd if Odessa never told anyone she was a siren?”
His eyes shift. “I suppose.”
“See? It just seems like you would have told us that you’re a…werewolf? Is that the right word?”
“Shifter,” he corrects, still looking guarded. “A werewolf is a human or Fae who contacts an unrelated virus. There are all sorts of shifters, not just wolves, and we’re born this way. I’m half shifter. Fae mother, wolf father.”
“Right.” I flush. “Sorry, I should have known that, I’ve read about shifters before…
but I still don’t understand. Maybe you didn’t think you had to tell me, which is your prerogative, but you’ve been friends with Daemon and Kastian for decades.
I just don’t understand how something like this would never have come up. ”
Fox sighs and closes his eyes, shaking his head as if to clear it.
“I didn’t tell them because I didn’t think it fucking mattered.
” I open my mouth to argue again, but he cuts me off before I can get a word out.
“There is no magic in Dyaspora. It’s blocked, so Fae can’t use their powers against the guards and no one can use their wings to escape.
I couldn’t transform or use any of my other wolf senses. ”
“But even if you couldn’t shift, you’re still a shifter, right? I’m assuming you couldn’t use your wings either, but that doesn’t make you not Fae.”
“In Thermia, half-breeds aren’t treated very well,” he says, tonelessly. “Everyone assumed I was Fae, and I didn’t see a reason to correct them. Dyaspora is supposed to be a life sentence. I didn’t think it would matter.”
My eyes widen. How badly must a half-Fae be treated in Thermia that he’d never even tell his friends? I’m certain that Daemon, Kastian and Jett wouldn’t have cared. I’m not even sure why anyone would care to begin with.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone when you got out?” I ask, my voice lowering back to something closer to its usual volume.
“I just didn’t.” He shrugs dismissively, then winces when he jostles his injured shoulder.
My eyes snap to his wound. “That doesn’t look like it’s healing.”
“It will,” he says stubbornly. “I once held my stomach together like this until all my insides knit back together.”
My mouth falls open, and I shake my head. “I have so many questions.”
He makes a chuffing sound in the back of his throat. “May as well ask now; I’m not moving until this heals.”
I glance sideways at him. “Fine. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Can’t I go for a walk in the woods?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t know why you’d offer to answer my questions and then lie.”
“I thought you’d ask about being a shifter.”
I roll my eyes. “If you think I’m going to forget to come back to what you’re doing here you’re delirious from blood loss, but fine. What did you mean when you said you couldn’t use your wolf senses in Dyaspora?”
“Like I said, there was no magic.”
“No, I mean, what senses do you have that are better than normal Fae?”
“Oh.” His eyes widen with comprehension, then he looks pained, as if he’s searching for the right words and not finding them.
“Lots of small things. My hearing and vision are better, and I heal faster than most.” He nods toward his arm as if I could forget the gaping wound that I caused, but he won’t let me heal.
“What else?” I ask tightly.
“I don’t know. Most of the other changes were just because I was separated from other wolves and living with Fae for the first time since I was very young.”
“Like what?”
“Like…talking out loud. That was different. Wolf packs are telepathic.”
“That makes sense,” I comment blithely. He raises an eyebrow and I shrug.
“What? It does. Did you know that sirens are telepathic too? That’s how they communicate underwater.
Dragons are too, I think. Actually, now that I think about it, there are a lot of telepathic species, at least according to my books. You’re not special.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Noted.”
The back of my neck heats. “I meant you’re not unusual.”
“Right, well, since I lived with wolves my whole life, I wasn’t used to speaking out loud. It’s been years now, and I still don’t like it.”
I cock my head. “Interesting. I always assumed you were just grumpy.”
He laughs under his breath. “That too.”
“I must be a nightmare for you then,” I say, half-joking. “I know I talk way too much; I don’t know how you ever put up with listening to it.”
He blinks at me, but doesn’t say anything. We fall into silence, and I stare into the woods behind him, suddenly wishing more than anything that I were telepathic too.
“So you couldn’t transform while in prison, but what about when you got out?”
“I didn’t for a while. It was…I don’t know, it had just been a long time. I started again after we’d been living in Vernallis for a while.”
“When did Jett find out?”
“Last year sometime. He was more surprised than you seem, but I guess he and I have known each other a lot longer.”
“Does he mind?”
“No, ‘course he doesn’t,” he says, sounding almost offended on Jett’s behalf.
“I don’t understand why you would think anyone would.
What’s so bad about being a shifter in Thermia?
Or is it the half-Fae side that’s the problem?
I don’t know why either would be an issue, really.
From what I’ve read, there’s not much difference between shifters and Fae, except what we turn into. Fae have wings, shifters have animals.”
“Magic makes us different,” he says flatly. “Shifters don’t have powers like Fae do.”