41. Isolde
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
ISOLDE
T wo weeks passed without another attack.
Every night, Isolde and Bastian watched over the village from the town hall roof.
And every night, Bloodhaven stayed still and silent.
It helped that the villagers were all terrified after the events of the Night of the Bleeding Moon, and not a single one of them would set foot outside after dark.
Even so, the Wolf didn’t come for the village livestock, either.
Isolde wasn’t fooled. She knew it was only a matter of time before the Wolf came back.
She’d given up on trying to make sense of Aggie’s ramblings.
Part of her had been convinced that blood moon did, in fact, refer to the Night of the Bleeding Moon, but it didn’t seem like that prophecy had turned out to be anything earth-shattering, beyond perhaps a warning.
If that was the case, neither Isolde nor Bastian could understand how Aggie had known the Wolf would attack then.
When Bastian and Isolde weren’t patrolling the village, they spent every waking minute crawling all over each other.
Bastian fucked her on every surface in his rooms, and every workbench in his forge.
Selene still wasn’t back from Vampire territory, so Isolde brought him back to the cabin and let him ravage her on the floor before the hearth, on the settee, against the bookshelves.
They did it on the roof of the town hall, and might have done it against the pines surrounding the village, too, if Bastian wasn’t concerned about the Wolf sneaking up on them while he was buried inside her.
However much Isolde dreaded the moment the Wolf came back, she dreaded the inevitable end to those blissful moments with Bastian even more.
One morning, as Isolde prepared to burrow beneath the covers of Bastian’s bed until nightfall, he said, “Tomorrow’s the full moon.”
Isolde paused, her comb caught halfway down the length of her hair, which was hopelessly tangled from having Bastian’s fingers in it. “I didn’t realize.”
Bastian didn’t look at her. He lay with his arms folded behind his head, staring up at the ceiling with unfocused eyes. “Usually I travel south. But…”
“But?”
“I don’t want to go too far from Bloodhaven. I want to stay close, in case the white Wolf comes back.”
“Is there some reason why you’d need to travel far away?”
Bastian hesitated. “No. I went away last time because the change is… brutal, if we make it alone, and I didn’t want the villagers to witness that. If I’d had someone to endure it with me, I don’t think I would have gone quite so far.”
“Let me come with you, then.”
Isolde braced herself for immediate rejection, just like when she’d asked Selene to go to Vampire territory.
It didn’t come. Bastian’s eyes shot to her, widening slightly in surprise. He didn’t say anything right away, and when he finally did, his tone carried far more hope than refusal.
“Wolves are predators, Isolde, and Vampires are the thing we want to hunt the most. I could hurt you.”
“You won’t,” Isolde said firmly. She believed it, too. “You’ve never had any irresistible urges to hunt me down and rip my head off, have you?”
“I have irresistible urges to hunt you down and sink my cock in you,” he said, and Isolde’s core tightened at the words. “But the only violent urges I’ve ever had when it comes to you have been directed at people who pose a threat to you.”
The moths in Isolde’s stomach fluttered, a smile curving her lips. She’d been so foolish to ever hate him—to believe all the things Selene had instilled in her about Wolves and the threat they posed.
“I trust you,” Isolde said.
“Are you sure?” Bastian searched her face like he was looking for the lie. “The change, it’s… not pretty. I would understand if you didn’t want to see me like that.”
Isolde went over to the bed and crawled on top of Bastian, straddling his hips with her thighs.
He reached for her automatically, his hands going straight to her waist. “I don’t care whether it’s pretty, Bastian.
I want to be there with you,” she said earnestly.
When Bastian didn’t respond, she added, “I’ll even relinquish my beautiful, scary Vampire privileges and let you be the big bad Wolf for the night. ”
That got a smile out of Bastian. He sat up, pulling Isolde close for a kiss. “Alright, then. You can come,” he said against her mouth. “But I’m sorry to tell you that I don’t think there’s any way for you to relinquish the beautiful part. I’ll be glad to take over being scary, though.”
Isolde faked a scoff, but she could do nothing to hide her grin.
When the sun set the following day, Isolde and Bastian left the village and hiked into the forest to the west. They went no more than a few miles before settling down against a rocky outcropping where they were sheltered from the wind, and from anyone—or any thing —that might sneak up on them.
“You said it hurts,” Isolde said, her shoulder pressed against Bastian’s where they leaned against a rock. “The change.”
Bastian swallowed, the sound of it loud in the quiet of the forest. “Our Wolf forms have much different bone structure than our human ones,” he said, his voice grim. “So when we shift, all our bones have to rearrange. And in order to do that…”
He trailed off. Swallowed again.
“They break,” Isolde guessed.
Bastian nodded. “Every last one of them. One by one.”
Oh, hell. Isolde’s own bones ached just at the thought of it. She couldn’t imagine having to endure that every month —to go through that agony just to become something he’d never even wanted to be.
“The first shift after you’ve been turned is the worst.” Bastian kept his eyes on the dark sky above them, where stars were just starting to wink to life.
“It gets a little faster each time, too, once our muscles and ligaments have started to get used to the change. Still hurts like a bitch for me, though.”
“That’s terrible,” Isolde whispered. “I’m so sorry, Bastian.”
He shrugged. “It’s not so bad when you have someone to help you through it.”
“But… you didn’t have anyone after you left Wolf territory, did you?”
Had he come out here by himself, gone somewhere deep in the forest, and felt that agony on his own? The last full moon, the day after she’d left him sitting sullenly on the town hall roof…
“No,” he admitted. “But you’re here now.”
“I’m here,” she assured him, and tucked herself down against his side as they waited for the moon to rise.
“Isolde.” Hours later, Bastian nudged her, drawing her attention away from the smooth pebble she was turning over and over between her fingers. “It’s almost time.”
Lifting her head, she saw that the moon had begun to peek over the tops of the trees, shining yellow against the velvety black of the sky. “Alright.”
Bastian withdrew his arm from around her shoulders and shrugged out of his coat. His shirt followed, then his pants and boots, until he sat naked beside her with nothing but the thin fabric of his cloak to shield him from the snow.
“No use ruining a good set of clothes,” he muttered at Isolde’s questioning look. “I don’t think either of us are good enough at sewing to fix it if I shred them when I shift.”
Isolde was too nervous to laugh. She’d never leave him out here by himself—would never let him make the shift without her again after what he’d said about doing it alone—but a tiny part of her regretted insisting she come along.
She wasn’t sure she’d be able to stomach it, watching Bastian writhe in pain as the shift took him.
When the first bone snapped, Isolde flinched. Bastian didn’t—only grimaced, like the breaking of his pinky finger was nothing more than a minor hurt.
The moon inched higher in the sky. The bones in Bastian’s wrist cracked next, his hand twisting backward at an unnatural angle. This time, a grunt of pain slipped through his teeth.
Isolde reached out a hand and laid it on his bare shoulder, hoping to comfort him.
But as soon as she touched him, a resounding crack echoed through the clearing. Bastian doubled over with a cry, clutching his arm to his chest as it snapped in two.
“Bastian,” Isolde murmured, fighting to keep the panic out of her voice. “What can I do?”
“Nothing,” he panted, his voice tight with pain. “Just be here.”
Another bone cracked, and this time Bastian screamed. Isolde surged forward, catching him in her lap as he toppled sideways, writhing in pain.
“I’ve got you,” she murmured, smoothing the hair away from his sweaty brow. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple, biting back a sob of her own. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”
Bastian’s screams mounted, and he thrashed against Isolde’s hold as bone after bone snapped.
Each time, the sound drove a spike of pain through Isolde’s heart.
Bastian had suffered so much, endured so much pain; she wished there was some way for her to take it all away, to bear even just a portion of it herself.
But all she could do was hold him, murmuring over and over again that she was there, that she had him, that she wasn’t going away. All the while, he writhed in pain, his screams turning hoarse as bone after bone after bone broke.
And then, in a moment of silence when Bastian paused to breathe, the howl of a Wolf echoed between the trees. Isolde’s head snapped up, one hand flying to the dagger strapped to her thigh. That howl—it sounded close. Too close.
Frantically, Isolde scanned the trees, relying on her darksight to peer into the shadows between trunks. The Wolf howled again, closer this time. Isolde glanced up at the moon, checking its progression into the sky?—
And froze.
The moon, which had appeared round and full before, now had a dark crescent carved out of one side.
Isolde had only seen the moon look that way once before, when she was a little girl. She and her father had sat on the lawn outside their estate and watched that shadow encroach, creeping across the bright surface of the moon until it disappeared entirely.
And then flickered back to life, glowing a deep, ominous shade of crimson.
A blood moon.
Blood moon. Bloodline. Done right. Isolde’s blood ran cold.
The Wolf howled again.
“Isolde,” Bastian groaned, his fingers curling around her forearm. “The Wolf—you have to run. Whoever it is, they’re older than me. They shifted faster. I won’t have made the change by the time it gets here.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Isolde insisted, her eyes still pinned to that shadow across the face of the moon. “Not now. Not like this.”
“You have to go, Isolde. I?—”
He broke off on a scream, his spine contorting as his vertebrae began to shatter. The Wolf howled in response, like it was calling back to Bastian.
Isolde shifted him carefully off her lap and got to her feet. Standing protectively over Bastian, she unsheathed the daggers at her thighs.
The forest around them fell silent. The only sound was Bastian’s labored breathing.
Isolde spied a flash of movement between the trees—a flash of white against the dark backdrop of the pine trees.
“We are not going to fucking die out here,” Isolde muttered to herself, shifting her grip on her knives. “Not tonight.”
Without warning, the Wolf leapt out of the trees. It sailed toward Isolde, jaws stretched wide.
She cocked her arm back and hurled one of her daggers—straight at the Wolf’s chest.
The beast lurched to the side, out of the knife’s path, but it was too slow. Blood sprayed, dark against the white of both fur and snow, and a pained yelp slipped out of the Wolf as it tumbled to the ground.
But as the Wolf slid to a stop against the trunk of a pine tree, Isolde saw that her knife had only grazed the beast’s shoulder. Not a fatal hit by any means, and it was already lumbering to its feet, lowering its head with pure menace in its green eyes.
The scent of the Wolf’s blood hit Isolde’s nose, then. She’d smelled that blood before, the morning they’d arrived in Wolf territory.
Crisp and bright, with the earthy undertones of moss and oak. Like Bastian’s, but not.
“Everett.”