20. Bastian
CHAPTER TWENTY
BASTIAN
B astian watched as Isolde slipped from the bed, her pale hair a tousled mess from the way he’d had his hands tangled in it. She bent, giving Bastian an extremely tantalizing view of her ass, and untied her boots. She toed them off, followed by her socks, before turning back to face him.
“Do you need anything else?” she asked, her hands planted on her slender hips. “Water? Tea? Some… something to eat?” There was a funny little twist to her mouth as she said it, like she wasn’t quite sure what to offer him.
“How long have you been a Vampire?” Bastian asked her.
“Ten years,” she answered readily. “Why?”
“Is that how long it takes to forget what sort of nourishment mortal beings need?”
Her smile turned sheepish, and then a little sad. “I guess things like that sort of… slip away when you stop having to worry about them.”
Oh. Bastian hadn’t meant to be insensitive. She’d said that she missed eating human foods, but he hadn’t really considered what that might be like. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
“It’s okay,” she replied. “Now, really. Do you need something to drink? To eat?”
“No,” Bastian told her. “I’m alright for now. Thank you.”
She stood for a moment, staring at him. Her hands dropped to her sides and fluttered there, uncertain. Bastian watched her carefully, waiting for her to lash out as reality set in and she realized what they’d just done.
Hell, Bastian’s own instincts were screaming at him to remember what she was. Who she was. That the two of them could never be anything more than tentative allies.
At the same time, though, Bastian couldn’t stop thinking about the way she’d invaded his mind on the full moon. Her scent, her voice, the memory of the way his heart had clenched when Everett held that stake to her chest…
The whole time his bones were breaking, his very marrow reconstructing itself to take him from human form to Wolf, Isolde had been the only thing he could think of. Her presence in his head was so much stronger than the pain, to the point where the whole thing had seemed more bearable.
And now, this—the spine tingling arousal she’d ignited in him, the answer to the arousal his nose told him she felt, too. The way she’d torn down his walls, and he’d been glad to let her do it.
Bastian couldn’t decide if it was worth it to keep hating her, to keep trying to fight whatever it was that drew him so strongly to her.
But Isolde didn’t lash out at him at all. “Okay,” she said, and came back to the bed.
Bastian managed to scoot himself up to lean against the pillows, tugging the blanket back over his lap. Isolde crawled over to prop herself against the wall, her legs crossed beneath her.
“So,” Bastian said, when she didn’t speak. “What was so urgent that you had to come here at dawn?”
Isolde bit her lip, and Bastian couldn’t help but track the motion with his eyes. Her mouth was still pink and swollen from sucking his cock, and hell if that didn’t drive him to distraction.
“The beast attacked again last night,” she said. That snapped Bastian right out of his trance. “And I finally got a good look at it.”
“ What?” Bastian demanded. “Who did it kill?”
“No one, for once. It got into someone’s house and dragged a woman out of her bed, then attacked a couple more villagers, but no one died. But, Bastian…” She leaned forward, her eyes wide. “We were right. It’s a Wolf. ”
At those words, Bastian felt his heart plummet right into his stomach.
He hadn’t been lying when he told Isolde the killings looked like the work of a Wolf. That had been his very first thought when he’d seen the remains of those goats the night he’d tackled Isolde into the snow.
But he hadn’t believed it—not really, because it didn’t make any fucking sense.
That Wolves only turned on the full moon was a fact Bastian had clung to like a lifeline. So long as he survived that one night a month, he was safe the rest of the time. If that wasn’t true, though, if some other Wolf was turning when the moon wasn’t full…
Did that mean it could happen to him, too?
Dread pooled in Bastian’s gut, cold and heavy. “Are you certain?” He couldn’t help but ask. “It was a Werewolf, not a common one?”
“It was far too big to be a common wolf. And, besides, it was the full moon.”
Bastian sunk his teeth into the inside of his cheek, his mind churning. “Tell me exactly what happened last night.”
Isolde did. She started with the screams, the way that poor woman’s leg had been torn off. She told him how the men had cornered the beast with Selene’s help, how it had taken a chunk out of someone’s face and fled into Wolf territory.
“I know it was the same beast that killed the others,” Isolde said. “It was the same size as the creature I chased into the woods. The same color, too.”
“We don’t know for sure that it’s the same beast,” he argued, though he knew Isolde was right.
It was more of an attempt to convince himself than anything.
“Neither of us has ever seen the beast clearly before last night, and there’s still the fact that last night was the first time it attacked on a full moon. ”
“Be sensible, Bastian. Do you really think it’s at all likely that there are two?
Bloodhaven has seen less than half a dozen animal attacks in the last ten years, and not a single Wolf attack since the Pact was signed.
” She thrust a hand through her hair to push it away from her face, but the silken strands fell right back to where they’d been.
“It doesn’t make sense for it to be a coincidence. ”
She was right. Hell, he hated that she was right.
Bastian sighed, resigned. “What color was the Wolf?”
“It had white fur,” she answered.
Well, fuck. That certainly didn’t narrow it down.
Off the top of his head, he could think of about two dozen Wolves in his old pack whose animal forms had white fur, and he knew for a fact that there were more.
Anselm and Everett were the first two who came to mind, but Bastian didn’t believe it could be either of them.
As head of the pack, Anselm knew better than anyone that attacking a human within the bounds of Bloodhaven was a violation of the Pact.
It was as good as a declaration of war. And though Everett hated Vampires, though he’d lost his temper on Isolde the other day, Bastian knew he’d never actually violate the Pact, either.
He was too loyal to Anselm, and to protecting the pack, to do something that was sure to start a war between the two species.
So that left… probably fifty more Wolves who it could be, with no way for Bastian to identify the beast unless he laid eyes on it himself.
“I don’t know what Selene is going to do come nightfall,” Isolde said.
“She was angry that she failed to catch the Wolf last night. I’m hoping she’ll get ahold of her temper and try to solve things peacefully with your pack leader, but I’m afraid she’s going to go straight to her old Vampire coven and we’ll have another Bleeding War on our hands. ”
That was the last fucking thing anyone needed.
“Do you think you could convince her to go south?” Bastian asked. He ground his teeth, hesitating to say what came next. “I… I could go with her into Wolf territory and vouch for her there. She’d be safer if I escorted her.”
“Maybe,” Isolde hedged. “As far as she’s concerned, none of the villagers have been killed by the Wolf yet. She doesn’t think the other beast could possibly be a Wolf.”
“I can’t blame her.” He sighed, trying to rub the weariness out of his eyes with his knuckles. “This is not to say I don’t believe you, but I can hardly believe it’s a Wolf myself.”
Isolde sighed. “I suppose we’ll just have to go speak with your pack and find out how it’s possible.”
“ We?”
“Well, yes.” She frowned at him, one brow arched incredulously. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to stay behind and darn socks while you and Selene go into Wolf territory.”