6. Altair
Altair
I knew pain.
I’d felt blades dig into my skin while my master sighed with pleasure at each artistic stroke. I’d had fangs tear at my flesh just to see how deep they could cut while I could still recover.
I’d chafed under metal cuffs, gnawed my own arm in an especially desperate moment of hunger, gone empty for months at a time.
And nothing prepared me for the searing heat of the sun charring my flesh. I’d swear I was burning from the inside, my heart aflame while the light above flaked my skin to gray ash. I screamed, hardly aware of the man tugging on the back of my shirt.
But there was one thing I feared more than the sun, and the sound of his voice sent a shudder through me even before the feeling of being cooked had left my muscles.
I stared at the man—I’d been certain he was a werewolf, but now, I second-guessed myself. He didn’t have the alluring scent of a vampire, a kind of perfume that drew prey in, but smelled more natural, like peat warmed by the sun and something herby.
And yes, a bit like a dog.
But that accent, it sounded so much like my master’s that a shudder ran through me.
I jerked away from his hold on my shirt, but he only released me once we were in shadow.
Good thing, too, as I was ready to tear the tattered thing to pieces and fling myself into the sun rather than let him catch me.
Instead, I scurried back on my hands, my heels digging into crumpling dry leaves. I wished I could hide what I was, but my skin was cold and paler than it would’ve been. I was naturally a deep golden brown, but no doubt starvation had left me sallow and dull.
Worse, I had come at him fangs first. He had to know he’d found his mark already.
Only, when I pressed my back against the rough tree trunk, sucking in panicked gasps of air that I didn’t need to survive but that fear drove me to nonetheless, he didn’t spring at me with chains and claws.
He stared at me like I was mad, like I’d lost my mind.
Maybe I had, but not enough to fail to recognize a threat when it stood before me.
He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “You ruined my basket.”
I didn’t dare take my eyes off of him to see what the hell he meant. Why were we talking about baskets?
“Doesn’t matter. If you don’t attack me again,” he said, inclining his head in a way that gave every impression of a dog begging for table scraps, “I won’t hurt you.”
I didn’t believe that for a second. “Did he send you?”
He furrowed his brow. “Who?”
I grimaced, the muscles in my cheeks pulling back tightly against even saying his name. I shook my head. “Did anyone send you?”
“After you?” He crouched down so we were closer to eye level, but I didn’t doubt he could use those powerful legs to spring at me and close the distance without a thought. The way his trousers pulled over his muscular thighs promised that I’d never outrace him.
My jaw clenched hard. I swallowed and nodded. “After me.”
He raised a dark eyebrow, tilted his head the other way, and something in his expression turned softly amused. “You’re the one who attacked me.”
That didn’t matter. It didn’t mean he hadn’t been out there searching for me in the first place. “Did you come here looking for me?”
He frowned, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at me. I couldn’t make sense of that sheen in his eyes or the full pout of his lip. Was he trying to draw me in? Tricking me?
“No. This is my pack’s territory, and I was . . . ” Only when he took his eyes off me did I follow his gaze to his flattened basket. His shoulders rose and fell hard when he sighed. “I was looking for something. A plant. Not a person. Certainly not a vampire.”
His smile returned, and I narrowed my eyes tightly. “Your pack?”
“The Wildwood pack, up on the bluffs.”
The wolves of Wildwood. The witches had mentioned them before. Ermengarde and her predecessors had hoped that a vampire could magnify their power, but I was—
Well, I was dead, and it turned out that vampires, while magical, were something of a blank spot compared to other supernatural creatures.
For months, Ermengarde had been hissing about a witchwolf, and the pack nearby, the Wildwood wolves, had come by the coven house often, offering services to the witches that I’d provided for over a century—to no avail, where witchwolves were concerned, as far as I knew.
If Ermengarde had suddenly achieved her goals, I suspected even I would’ve noticed the celebratory shift in the house.
The wolf balanced easily on the balls of his feet, his elbows on his knees. He extended a hand to me with a wide grin. “I’m Leo.”
He had a large, square hand, the same pale shade on the back as his palm. His fingers looked rough, with a light brown dust worked into the calluses as if he’d been hard at work earlier in the day.
I crossed my arms, tucking them behind my bent legs. Heavens only knew when he’d try and grab me and take me off to—
To—
“If you’re from here, why did you speak like that? In Russian.”
His smile faded. “My family came from there, but I’ve been in the Wildwood pack for over a decade now. It’s my home.”
The openness in his expression was disarming, and I’d attacked him, invalidated his place here, where I certainly didn’t belong, and refused his outstretched hand. I supposed I could throw him a bone.
A proverbial one.
“I’m Altair.”
His smile returned, and my stomach twisted. Why was he so unsettling?
Well, maybe just because he was the first person I’d talked to with any degree of freedom in years, and he sounded far too much like Ivan when he spoke in their common mother tongue.
“Here.” He shrugged off his red jacket and held it out my way. “You’re still kind of . . . flaking?”
Wonderful.
I snatched it out of his hand and tucked every inch of myself that I could fit beneath it.
I wasn’t short by any stretch of the imagination, but the werewolf was broad and tall.
It left his jacket to envelop me completely.
Yes, I even tucked my face beneath it. The sun was still out, but it was more than that.
The jacket was warm from his skin, and I’d honestly forgotten how it felt to be warm.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked.
“Clearly not, as I’d have made a better effort at avoiding wolf packs if I knew their locales.”
He snorted. “And miss any passing snacks? Surprising.”
Admittedly, when I’d sprung at him, I hadn’t cared what he was. I was starving, and if I could eat a rat, I could certainly come around to snacking on a werewolf. I doubted I could make much of a dent in one.
My plan, such as I’d had any, was to drink him unconscious and flee before he could heal himself. Werewolves were good trackers, but surely he wouldn’t bother chasing after me once I’d drained him to unconsciousness, and I’d be more than sated drinking that much.
It wasn’t that I’d never killed before, or even that I hesitated to. Only, it was very hard to kill a werewolf, and I wasn’t sure that I could drain him fast enough.
That, and killing one of their kind was, in fact, a surefire way to send a pack of werewolves on my trail.
“You’re hungry?”
I hissed in annoyance. “Yes.”
“So where are you from? How’d you get here?”
I was glad for the jacket over my head to hide the way my nose flared. He was being patient with me, and he hadn’t hurt me—or at least not intentionally. He could’ve left me to die, but he hadn’t even laughed at my circumstance yet.
Obviously, this was someone who might help me, someone I could use. And the last thing I ought to do was prove how annoyed I was and land myself without any aid at all.
“When the humans struck gold out in California, I followed them thinking they’d make easy prey while on the move.”
Leo let out a short, surprised breath. “Are you talking about the gold rush? That was more than a hundred and seventy years ago.”
I shrugged. “I was caught by witches.” When Leo grumbled, I folded the jacket so I could take in his darkened expression, and I felt a thrill. This was it—a mutual enemy. A point of connection. “I take it you know precisely who I’m talking about?”
Now I could see the difference between when he’d defended himself, and when he was actually angry. His face was sharper, more angular, when he clenched his jaw. His dark brow furrowed heavily.
I clutched his jacket tightly in both hands as I peered at him.
His anger, I could use. It wasn’t directed at me, but at the people who’d wanted to use me—who’d likely used his friends and family too.
Maybe, just maybe, this was my pathway to safety.