Chapter 16
THE MORRíGAN
Wolves are known to be finicky creatures; particular about who they welcome as Pack. Half the time they don’t even like other wolves, so when the alpha takes Ciara’s proffered neck I almost lose my breakfast. I know only too well what it’s like to have a throbbing pulse, beckoning beneath my teeth—the pull is almost irresistible.
But he doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t look at her like prey. He huffs, acknowledging her submission to his role in the Pack and pads back to the forest.
The Pack melt into the trees, until it’s impossible to guess that they were even there at all.
“How do they do that?” Ciara asks, her words awed.
“Do what?”
“Just… know.”
I don’t realize what she means, at first. For millennia, I’ve been connected to wolves, known their wants and desires, and understood how they work together as Pack. But Ciara has no such experience or knowledge.
I try to remember, try to recollect how it was that I became connected to the wolves.
Me, whispers Badb in my ear. They are mine. They know me.
She’s not wrong. She’s the one most connected to wolves and crows and ravens, who lent me her ability to shift.
But shifting doesn’t bring with it comprehension. It’s like being as a child once more, learning new ways of being, new ways of seeing and experiencing the world. And Pack was a concept that I struggled to understand at first. They knew me, sensed me as one of their own, before I even knew it for myself.
Even here, in this century, they recognized me as if I’d never been away, never been tucked behind a Veil that had separated me from them.
That had separated me from a part of myself.
Because Pack is exactly that. It is a part of your soul that cannot be torn asunder. Once you are Pack, you are always Pack.
Ciara is Pack now.
She was always my pack, but now she is truly Pack and it makes me feel differently towards her because I know her the way only Pack can.
“I don’t know,” I say, realizing the limits of my knowledge. “I know that once someone is Pack, the knowledge of them just… comes into being. I can’t quite explain it.”
She comes back into the cottage and closes the door. “It seems all quite ridiculous that this all happens in daylight. Are you sure that we’re not only supposed to talk about this by the light of the moon?”
“I’m not a moon goddess,” I say to her, confused. “What has the moon got to do with it?”
Ciara smiles then, that sunshine-y transformation that makes my insides feel all soft. It is a weird sensation, especially now I’m in humanshape. “I mean more that it feels weird to talk about all of this in the middle of the day; stories always have magic happening secretly or at night.”
“That seems very impractical,” I say. “Unless you’re a shifter, how can you see where you’re going at night? You’d trip over many a tree root.”
That makes her laugh and I no longer care about the fact that I don’t really know why I’m amusing her so, as long as I can do it again.
“Tell me more about these impracticalities,” she says, and there’s something different about the way she’s speaking, about the way she’s moving towards me. “Do you mean to say that spells aren’t cast in your birthday suit?”
“Birthday suit?” What on earth does she mean?
“Naked.”
“Naked? Why would—” I stop talking because she is so very close to me, and for the life of me I can’t think of one good reason why one wouldn’t want to be naked when casting spells. Especially if Ciara was in the vicinity.
Her lips are parted softly, and she smells like Pack and I swear by Danu that if she takes one step closer I will have to fight not to grab her and kiss her.
But I don’t want to just grab her.
I want her to grab me.
I want Ciara to see me for who I am, her Red, and want all of me as much as I want all of her. And it would be unreasonable to expect this with the ghost of her prick husband hovering over the day.
“Because that’s what the stories say, Red.” I can scent Pack on her, and realize that she’s high. High on magic, the power, the connection. Fuck. “They say that you strip naked and frolic in the woods.”
I growl, low in my throat and she looks delighted, and I have to close my eyes and count to ten. Slowly. I open them and she’s so close to me I can count the individual eyelashes that frame those beautiful eyes of hers. I scrunch mine closed again and try counting to twenty.
“Would you like to frolic with me, Red?” and it is the use of her pet name for me that almost undoes me.
I cup her face, and look at her with all the tenderness in my being. My fingers tremble and I release her. “Come to me tomorrow, Ciara, and I will frolic with you in the woods. I will do almost anything you like, but I cannot take advantage of all that has happened. You need time to process.”
“Do I?” Her head lolls back, and I cradle it in my hands so she doesn’t hurt herself.
“You were angry with me, remember?”
Confusion clouds her gaze and I see something dawning upon her. Pushing herself up, she stumbles back from the couch. “What did you?—?”
I hold my hands up. “Nothing to do with me, or at least, not intentionally. Becoming Pack brings with it certain metaphysical… highs.”
“I’m high?!” Her voice is squeaky now.
“Only a little bit,” I explain. “Your body’s still adjusting to the rush of magic. It will have worn off by the morning, I promise you.”
Ciara looks at me suspiciously and I try not to squirm under the accusatory glare. “You promise?”
“I promise, but” —I can’t resist adding— “if you proposition me tomorrow, my dear girl, I will take you and fulfill each and every wish you make.”
Green eyes meet mine. “Promises, promises.”