21. Isolde
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ISOLDE
“ A re you completely positive she isn’t going to eviscerate me the second she lays eyes on me?”
Bastian and Isolde had spent the better part of the day debating the best method of convincing Selene to have a peaceful meeting with Anselm Thessarian, rather than starting an all-out war with the Wolves.
There was also a great deal of argument about whether Isolde could come with him and Selene to Wolf territory, which annoyed her to no end.
Bastian spent an hour pontificating about the practicalities of keeping both Selene and Isolde from being torn limb from limb, until he accidentally let slip that he was entitled, by Wolf law, to extend his protection over any number of beings he chose to bring home.
This was not to say that Isolde felt particularly good about the level of safety she’d be afforded, especially after the episode with Everett and his hawthorn stake. She figured it wouldn’t help her case much to mention that, though, and Bastian seemed equally disinclined to discuss it.
Annoyed as she might be about Bastian’s reluctance to bring her with, she couldn’t deny that she was… touched—she didn’t know how else to describe the feeling—by his concern for her safety. She didn’t understand it at all, but she did appreciate it.
“I’m not going to let her eviscerate you,” Isolde told Bastian, stepping around an icy patch on the cobbled street. “No more than you’re going to let your people eviscerate me when I show up on their doorstep.”
Bastian’s scowl deepened, the moonlight silvering the flat line of his brows.
“You do understand that it’s not a matter of me letting them do anything, yes?
We have laws, but that doesn’t mean the whole pack is going to follow them.
There’s only so much I can do to protect you against hundreds of Wolves who are out for your blood. ”
Isolde was aware. She was very aware after her encounter with Everett. But she refused to let her fear show, and she absolutely refused to let it keep her in Bloodhaven while Selene and Bastian ran off without her.
So she shot Bastian a look and said, “I understand.”
Now that night had fallen, they were going back to the cabin to talk with Selene about going to meet the Wolf clan. The air was frigid and still in the way it always was before a storm, and Isolde drew her cloak closer against a shiver.
Bastian, of course, didn’t seem to mind, though his cloak was hardly thick enough for the weather.
During the portions of the day where they weren’t arguing, or having a…
physical encounter born of Isolde’s poor impulse control, he’d slept and eaten enough food to feed a small army.
He still walked with a noticeably stiff gait, and winced if he moved too abruptly when he thought Isolde wasn’t looking.
As for Isolde’s little lapse in judgement that morning… well, she couldn’t bring herself to regret it. Not after hearing the way Bastian had moaned when she took his cock into her mouth, or the wild sounds he’d made when she gave him control.
Purely physical, she reminded herself. He’d been naked and so tantalizingly muscular, and when he’d turned over with heat in his eyes and his cock tenting the blanket draped over his hips, Isolde hadn’t been able to resist.
No matter who he was to her, whether they got along or not, the lust in his face was so much better than the agony when she’d said those words to him: I’m sorry they took away your choice.
It was like he hadn’t realized what his father had really done to him until she’d said it, and Isolde hated that she’d made him feel that pain. So when he looked at her, and the pain had been replaced by desire, she took that look and ran with it.
Purely physical. Just to chase away the hurt .
Now, with the feel of his hands in her hair still tingling against her scalp, Isolde had to force herself to think of something else.
Something like how taking Bastian to meet Selene without any warning did worry her a little—okay, more than a little.
Selene had been in a downright foul mood when she’d come home empty handed from the hunt, and Isolde suspected that even if her head was a little more level, matters hadn’t really improved much.
“Attacking humans in Bloodhaven is one thing,” Isolde pointed out, noting the clench of Bastian’s jaw, which had quickly become her warning that he was about to start lecturing on the dangers of Wolf territory again, “but a Vampire killing a Werewolf, or vice versa… that means war in every scenario.”
“That doesn’t mean either species is going to abide by that logic,” Bastian grumbled. “Anselm is reasonable enough not to do anything to hurt you, and Everett will fall in line, but the other Wolves are just as likely to kill you as Selene is to kill me.”
“Actually, I would imagine that Selene is a little more likely to kill you than the Wolves are to kill me,” Isolde said.
She kept her tone as light as she could as they passed from the main, cobbled streets of the village to the narrower dirt ones.
“The Wolves did technically break the Pact first, you know.”
“I’m aware,” Bastian said.
They walked in silence for a while, picking their way around piles of snow and muddy puddles in the road. Isolde chewed the inside of her cheek, more than a little nervous about how Selene would react when she walked into the cabin with a Wolf in tow.
As they passed through the row of trees that separated the village from the cabin, Bastian caught Isolde by the elbow and tugged her to a stop.
“Before we go in there, there’s something I should probably tell you.”
Isolde arched a brow. “Oh?”
Bastian sighed. He reached up and shoved his hood back, running a hand through his hair. “Everett came to see me a couple weeks ago, the morning after the beast killed those goats. He told me some… things.”
“What sort of things?”
“Apparently, there are a fair number of Wolves at Lake Hall who want to abolish the Pact. They want to start hunting Vampires again.”
Isolde’s other eyebrow rose up to join the first. “Why?” she asked. “Vampires aren’t hunting Wolves anymore. Except for the two of us, no Vampires have been in contact with Wolves for centuries. Why would they want to start hunting us again?”
“There’s this… primal, irresistible urge we sometimes get to hunt something down, to trap it and make it ours in some way or another, even if we aren’t going to eat it.” Bastian shifted on his feet, looking away from Isolde. “Every Wolf knows that Vampires are meant to be our most enticing prey.”
Part of Isolde whispered to back away from him, to flee, like a hare running from…
well, a Wolf. The other part—the stronger one—screamed that if Bastian was going to kill her, he’d have done it already.
Even if instinct drove the Wolf in him, he’d never struck her as the type of man to relinquish control so easily.
He’d proved that well enough that morning, when he’d been trembling with restraint, his cock in her mouth, holding himself back until she gave him permission to take what he needed from her.
“Have you felt this before?” Isolde asked him, holding her ground. “That urge?”
There was a long pause before Bastian answered. “Don’t know. I’ve only been a Wolf for eight moons, remember?”
Bastian drug his eyes back up to meet Isolde’s, and she found a heat there that she wasn’t sure she wanted to examine too closely.
“So, the Wolves are complaining about the Pact,” Isolde said. “What else?”
“Everett didn’t give me any other specifics, but apparently these Wolves want the Pact gone. I’d imagine they want to have free reign over Bloodhaven and the northern forests, and they think the first step is to eradicate the Vampires.”
Even if the Wolves were just hunting Vampires, human lives would surely be lost, too.
It would be the Bleeding War all over again, with Wolves killing humans to starve the Vampires out.
According to Selene, this tactic had worked so well because once they were starving, the Vampires couldn’t resit the temptation of Wolf’s blood.
Now that Isolde had tasted Bastian’s, she could see why.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this sooner?
” Isolde asked, narrowing her eyes. Irritation blossomed in her chest as she thought through all the conversations they’d had in the past week, all the time they’d spent debating what the beast might be.
“This seems like a fairly plausible motivation for a Wolf to attack Bloodhaven—why someone might help it murder humans, and you decided not to say anything?”
“I didn’t decide anything of the sort,” Bastian said defensively. “I hardly thought anything of it when Everett told me, because this kind of talk has been going on at Lake Hall for years. And anyway, I didn’t believe the beast of Bloodhaven was a Wolf at that point.”
Isolde kept her eyes narrowed. “You still should have told me.”
“Oh, because of course I would air all the dirty laundry of my pack to you. A Vampire .”
“A little bit of dirty laundry seems insignificant when you consider that a member of your pack is slaughtering humans.”
Bastian inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring. His eyes flashed, and Isolde waited for him to launch some incendiary reply.
Instead, he reached for her face.
Isolde jerked back, her instincts screaming that he meant to hurt her. He paused for a second, his face unreadable, hand still stretched out between them.
“What are you doing?” Isolde demanded.
Bastian didn’t reply. He tried again to reach for her, and when Isolde kept still this time, he pinched the edge of her hood between his fingers. Rubbed his thumb over the crimson lining.
“Silk,” he mused. “Not the warmest fabric you could choose for a winter cloak. What’s the deal with that?”
Isolde stared up at him, and for one insane second, the truth was on the tip of her tongue.
Then her good sense took over, and she batted his hand away. “It was the only fabric I could find that was the exact shade of blood,” she told him. “Hides the stains if I make a mess when I feed.”
“Black hides blood just as well as red, moonbeam.”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“Bothers you, does it?” When Isolde didn’t respond, he asked again, “What’s with the silk?”
Again, the truth crawled up Isolde’s throat, and she couldn’t let herself look at him for a second longer. She was growing far too comfortable telling him things he had no business knowing. She turned away, cleared her throat, and changed the subject.
“I have something to ask you,” she said.
“You’ve never hesitated to pester me with questions before.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bastian’s brow lift. “What is it?”
“You make a lot of weapons.”
“That’s not a question.”
“Alright, I was wondering if…” God, she hated asking for this. “The other night in the forest, when I got dosed with the nightsbane… I was defenseless. I rely on my speed to save me, but evidently that’s not always enough. So I was wondering…”
“Yes?”
“Would you happen to have some knives I could borrow? Just… a set of daggers.” Isolde swallowed, trying to keep the words from tripping over each other on the way out.
To her great embarrassment, they still did.
“I’ll give them back once I can get my hands on a set of my own, or pay you for them if you prefer.
I know how to use them. I just… want to be able to defend myself a little better. ”
For some reason, Isolde expected Bastian to laugh at her. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, letting the hood of her cloak hide her face as she waited for his judgment and ridicule.
But then he said, “Yes. I can do that.”
Isolde glanced up, surprised. His own hood was still pushed back, so she could see the seriousness in his eyes. No laughter. No ridicule.
“Thank you,” Isolde whispered.
Bastian only nodded.
Their boots crunched in the powdery snow as they came out of the trees and approached the cabin.
Isolde swallowed hard, already bracing herself for Selene’s reaction to Bastian’s presence.
It was a good thing she’d told Selene that she’d been working with Bastian the night before, because if they completely blindsided her with this…
Well, Isolde was already afraid things weren’t going to end well, and that was without the element of total surprise.
“Just… be as respectful as you can,” Isolde warned Bastian. “Selene hates Wolves more than anything. If she says something horrible to you, I’m sorry in advance, but try not to react.”
Bastian shot her a sidelong scowl. “Do you think I’m incapable of being civilized?”
“Well, you haven’t exactly demonstrated otherwise.”
“Come now, Isolde,” Bastian chided, nudging her from the side, just enough that she nearly stepped into the snowbank beside the path, “we just had a whole conversation without insulting each other or swearing. I think we’re doing fine.”
“Barely. Besides, you’re the one who does all the swearing,” Isolde fired back. “Like the savage you are.”
“I recall some swearing on your end. And I’m not the one who eats people.”
The quip should have stung, like it had when Bastian had accused her of viewing humans as nothing but food. But his tone was light, and Isolde found herself suppressing a smile as she said, “At least I don’t turn into a dog.”
She wasn’t sure she liked the way her stomach felt when he chuckled, or how the low resonance of it rumbled in her bones.