Chapter 13
“Shhh,” I hiss under my breath, listening hard for the sound of anyone breathing nearby. I can still hear Finan’s footsteps, but they didn’t falter at Aurelia’s outburst. “It’s not safe to talk here,” I mutter under my breath.
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, I got that. No one will hear us, I put a muffling wall of air around the whole tent.”
I gape at her. When did she do that? I didn’t see her move her hands at all. “Did you not hear them saying you can’t use magic?”
“They’ll never know.”
I close my eyes for a moment, trying to calm myself. I’m not angry exactly, but…anxious. She’s putting herself in danger and doesn’t even care.
“Is this where you grew up?” Aurelia asks.
“Not here exactly, but somewhere like it,” I grit out. “The camps move around.”
“But these are the soldiers you lived with, right?”
“Some of them,” I say shortly. I don’t really feel like explaining that 2/3s of the people I knew are probably long dead.
She wrinkles her nose, her mouth twisting as if she’s tasted something sour. “Why did you tell them we’re ‘mates’?” Her fingers curl into air quotes around the word, her shoulders drawing up tight beneath her cloak.
“Because they would have killed you,” I say shortly.
She cocks her hip. “They would have tried.”
I shake my head. She still doesn’t understand.
Aurelia believes she’s invincible because she’s the most talented at magic in probably all of Vernallis and she’s spent months training to use a sword.
Against most enemies, she’s probably right, but not against an entire wolf pack.
She’s never seen wolves fight—not for real.
She doesn’t understand how much I’m holding back, constantly, so as not to lose control and hurt anyone—especially her.
I hope she never has to find out how wrong she is.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Why?” she asks bluntly, her eyes widening.
“Because mate bonds are uncommon for shifters. If you’re mine, they can’t touch you. It’s one of our most important laws.”
I’m downplaying the truth. Mate bonds are more than uncommon, they’re almost impossible for shifters. Like Kai said, there hasn’t been another bonded pair in decades. They think we’re a miracle.
Aurelia blinks, seeming slightly dazed. “Is a mate like a soul-bond?”
“It’s the same thing.” I run a hand through my hair. “Wolves believe bonds are fated, not forged like the Fae believe, but the mechanics are mostly the same.”
“So you want us to pretend to be soul-bonded—mated—whatever you call it here?”
“No, I want to get the fuck out of here and go back to Vernallis,” I growl.
“Then go,” she snaps. “I never asked you to be here.”
I run both hands through my hair now, growing more agitated by the second. I turn away from her, pacing back and forth across the small tent. I need to run or something. Fight. Anything but this.
“You don’t fucking understand. When it comes to wolves, you don’t know anything.
” I close my eyes. I have never wished so much that she could speak in her head as the wolves do.
It’s so much harder to explain anything like this.
It’s too slow, and I can never think of the right words out loud as I can in my head.
“Now, more than ever, I can’t leave you. They will kill you.”
“Why not tell Kai the truth, then? He seems reasonable, and you’re friends, right?”
I shake my head vigorously and the wolf inside me growls restlessly.
I can’t risk that. Maybe Kai would let us leave, but maybe not.
I could beat him easily in a one-to-one fight, but not if the entire camp backed him up.
Part of me thinks that Kai only wants us here because we’re supposedly mates, so he might take the news that I lied worse than he would otherwise.
My thoughts are racing so fast for a moment I forget that Aurelia can’t hear them. I can’t figure out how to put what I’m thinking into words, so I just say: “No. We can’t tell Kai the truth.”
“But…” she looks uncomfortable.
“Just say it,” I say flatly. Whatever she’s thinking can’t be any more awkward than any of the other conversations we’ve had recently.
“You want us to pretend to be bonded, but you must have seen how bonds act. Daemon and Alix and Kas and Dessa…they’re…” she trails off pointedly.
I wince. She’s right, bonded pairs are always together, usually touching, and aggressively possessive.
I really shouldn’t like the idea of being forced to be that way with Aurelia as much as I do.
It would be for the purpose of safety, of course, which might make it justifiable somehow…
maybe. There is another way I can think of, but it’s not much better.
“We wouldn’t have to do that,” I growl.
She looks relieved. “Are wolves not as affectionate with their bonds?”
“Mates,” I correct automatically. “And no, wolves are far more possessive than Fae.”
She barks a laugh. “I find that hard to believe. Fae males are notoriously insufferable.”
“Wolves are worse.” I run a hand roughly through my hair.
I was wrong, this is somehow more uncomfortable than our conversation the other night.
“We usually, er, mark our partners so everyone knows to stay away. If you were marked, no one would ask why we’re not…
more affectionate. They’ll assume I just don’t want anyone else to see you, um, like that. ”
She looks as uncomfortable as I feel, but makes a valiant effort to keep her tone neutral. “Where would the mark be? And how would you do it.”
“I’d bite your throat.”
Her eyes widen, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Meanwhile, my brain is suddenly moving faster than I can keep up with. My pulse speeds up, at just the thought of sinking my teeth into her skin.
“Is that the only way?”
“Yes,” I say flatly. I could bite her somewhere else, but the most common locations are neck, breast, and inside of the thigh…
and I’m not sure my self-control is good enough to suggest either of those options.
I suppose I could just let people assume that I bit her on the thigh and that’s why they’ve never seen it, but now that I’ve got this idea in my head…
fuck. What the fuck is wrong with me? This is absurdly dangerous, and it’s selfish of me to even have suggested it.
“Will it hurt?” Aurelia asks, interrupting my self-loathing.
“Probably,” I mutter.
I’ve never known that many mated wolves, we die so regularly and bonds are so rare, that hardly anyone has time to form them—or find them, if you believe in fate.
Still, I grew up hearing that a claiming bite doesn’t hurt if done correctly, whatever that means.
I don’t know, but I’m sure that if I bit Aurelia, it wouldn’t be correct by any stretch of the imagination, and probably won’t be pleasant for her.
“What if I tried to fake the mark with magic?” she asks. “Illusion isn’t my strongest suit, but I could probably do it.”
“You can’t use magic,” I say too quickly. “If you slipped and someone noticed there would be no point in any of this. If you used it in the camp, I don’t know if even the supposed bond would stop someone from attacking you.”
And then I would kill them, but I’d rather not have to.
Aurelia furrows her brow, clearly thinking hard. She’s going to say no. I know she is, and then this entire insane idea will be over. We’ll have to think of something else, or better, leave. Which is exactly what I want to do, so why am I holding my breath waiting for her answer.
“Fine,” Aurelia says tightly, tilting her head sideways and exposing her neck. “Fine, just do it.”
I blink in shock, and suddenly my mouth floods with saliva, and I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears. “You’re serious?”
Her eyes slant toward me, but she doesn’t move her head. “Weren’t you? You just said this is the best way to stay here.”
“We could go home.”
I’m not sure whether I want her to agree or not. Suddenly I’m at war with myself—half of me knows this is absurd. Idiotic. Dangerous. The rest of me is making up reasons why I have to bite her everywhere. I didn’t realize I wanted to, but clearly…fuck. Everything about this is a terrible idea.
“I’m not leaving,” she says harshly. “I came here to find my family, and I’m not leaving until I find them or get some indisputable evidence that they’re not in Thermia. I don’t care if I have to do that alone, but since it seemed like staying here was the safest way into the castle…”
“You’re not going alone,” I snap. “If you’re determined to go, the best way has to be with the wolves.”
“Right,” she says shortly, shaking her head back and forth as if to emphasize her exposed neck. “So get on with it.”
I feel like I’m drowning. My skin prickles with sweat, my jaw aches from clenching.
Only yesterday, I’d convinced myself that walking from Aurelia was the only way to keep her breathing.
Now, the only way to keep her safe is to claim her.
I have to pretend she’s mine, have to keep her pressed against me, have to breathe in her scent with every inhale while my wolf claws at my insides, desperate to claim what I’ve been denying us both.
I take a step forward, then realize I have no idea how to do this—not in such a clinical sort of way. A claiming bite would typically happen when we were already much closer.
To an extent I’ve stopped noticing how much smaller Aurelia is than me, if only because I’m used to her now and don’t think about it. Now, I suddenly feel absurd, trying to bend my head low enough to put my mouth against her pulse.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, in a brusque tone that doesn’t quite cover up her nervousness.
I clear my throat. “I’m going to have to pick you up, or you need to stand on something.”
“Oh. Right.” She glances around the tent, and spotting a trunk near the end of the single bed, walks over and steps up onto it. “Better?”
No, not really.
I’ve never thought about claiming anyone like this before, but if I had, I wouldn’t have wanted her standing on a trunk. I’d want her bouncing on my cock and—
I shake my head. I need to pull myself together.
I take a deep breath through my nose and cross the tent again in a single stride. Now, when I stand in front of Aurelia, she’s still shorter than me but in much closer range.
She tilts her head again, and I lean, keeping my eyes wide open as a reminder that this is a task, and nothing more. My hand comes up to grip her hair, if only to keep her head in place, and then I press my open mouth against her pulse point.
Aurelia gasps and stiffens, like she’s bracing herself for excruciating agony.
I want to pause—suck on her pulse first, make her come for me so that when I do finally sink my teeth into her, the pain is overwhelmed by other sensations.
But I can’t do that.
So, I don’t prolong it too much. I open my mouth and give her no additional warning before I let my teeth elongate, and sink my fangs into her throat.
Aurelia lets out a sound, somewhere between a scream and a moan. Her entire body goes stiff, muscles tensing for several long seconds as her blood floods my mouth. I retract my teeth from her skin and then I don’t mean to, but I drag my tongue over the spot once.
She slumps forward, completely boneless, and I instinctively throw my arms out to catch her against my chest. “Are you hurt?”
“Hurt?” She sounds dazed. She looks up at me, her entire face flushed, and it takes a second for her eyes to come back into focus. Then she immediately slaps a hand to her throat and straightens up, taking a step backward. “Oh. Um, not that much. It’s fine.”
I drag a thumb over my bottom lip, wiping away a streak of her blood. I have an insane urge to suck my finger into my mouth, tasting the last drops of her, but I force myself to ignore the impulse and wipe my hand on my trousers.
Aurelia isn’t even looking at me. She’s staring into space, with her hand clapped over the mark. She shifts her hand and my gaze falls on the bite.
Suddenly, I’m at war with myself again.
This was the worst fucking idea imaginable, but fuck if I don’t like the way that bite looks against her skin.