Chapter 8
The next morning, I wake up to a new sound.
Not the grating voice of the robotic female on the loudspeakers or the heavy press of silence in the palace, but music.
When I peel my eyes open, it’s to find a few bluebirds hopping on the sills outside Lucan’s window, twittering at us through the glass. Sunlight streams onto the bed, where Lucan and I lie intertwined, my head on his chest and legs wrapped around his.
And his amber eyes already open, staring down at me.
“Good morning, little nightmare,” he says in a rumbling voice that feels like it travels all the way down every point where our skin makes contact.
“Good morning,” I breathe back, instantly flushing with heat when I remember last night. I give a little laughing cough and add, “So much for you sleeping on the floor.”
“You want me on the floor,” he growls, nipping at my shoulder again, stroking his tongue along the marks his canines left last night, “then I’ll get on the floor.
You want me between your legs, I’ll get between your legs.
You tell me where to go—either away from you or inside you—and I will obey.
Whatever you want to do, I will oblige.”
I marvel at the ripple of his muscles as he lifts himself onto an elbow to look at me, at the way his bed frame groans every time his weight shifts even slightly.
This behemoth of a male is saying he’ll obey me.
It inflates me with a sense of power I’ve never felt before, and I bite my bottom lip, thinking about all the things I could make him do.
“Hmmm. I think I want—”
A sharp rap against the door cuts me off.
“Hey, you two love kittens! We’re going to go hunt for some breakfast. Want to join?”
Lucan freezes, his entire countenance shifting from adoration to overflowing rage. I have a feeling the term “kitten” is even more offensive to him than all the other curse words combined.
“Why the fuck are you in my house right now, Soren?”
“Oh, it’s not just me,” Soren calls through the peeling wood of the door. “Vivian and Merrick are here with me.” After a stretch of silence, he hisses, “Say something, or it’ll seem like I’m lying, you fucking idiots. I swear they’re with me. They’re right here.”
Lucan bounds out of bed and nearly rips the door off its hinges, revealing the two males from last night and the female Vivian standing sheepishly between them.
Merrick runs a hand over his hair and grimaces. “Truthfully, we just wanted to make sure you’re both okay. We saw you chasing after her in your werewolf form last night and…”
“Weren’t sure in which way you destroyed her,” Soren finishes for him, smirking and landing his eyes on me. “Well, hello, beautiful. I’m glad to see you’re not—”
He doesn’t get to finish that sentence. Lucan slams him against the wall by the top of the stairs, and the force of it breaks open the plaster from behind. I jolt upright, my eyes wide, as Lucan snarls, “Call her beautiful again.”
“Can’t,” Soren gasps, his throat pinned by Lucan’s arm. “Not when—you’re choking—me.”
“Will you two cut it out,” Vivian cries, and moves to wrench them apart. I’m not sure if she has some kind of incredible superior strength or if Lucan finally snaps back to his senses, but he releases Soren, who hacks at the carpet, a huge grin lighting up his face.
“Oh, you are in love. This is an incredible development. Gives me even more motivation to save Xantera so that I can find my own woman…”
Merrick groans. “Soren, if you don’t want to be buried next to our ancestors, stop talking for once in your life.” He flips his gaze to me and asks softly, “Are you hungry, Saskia?”
I didn’t think I was, but my stomach growls in response. Lucan flicks guilty eyes onto me and massages his temples. “You don’t need to get out of bed, Saskia. I can bring you something.”
“No, I… I want to.” I jump to my feet, the covers falling off me, and my head swoons.
I must be weaker and hungrier than I realized, but the prospect of hunting for my own food sounds both terrifying and gratifying.
My whole life, someone has either delivered my meals to me through a slat in the door or, more recently, brought it to me on a tray while I lay in bed.
I want to see where food comes from. How to pick it or snare it or whatever else you do to obtain it.
Lucan doesn’t protest or try to get me to change my mind, like I halfway expect.
He simply scans my body with narrow eyes, as if reassuring himself that my physical state is fine, before nodding.
And even though he’s not in his other form, I swear I’m getting good at reading his thoughts through the microexpressions on his face.
In this case, he’s thinking the same words from earlier: Whatever you want to do, I will oblige.
But out loud, he says, “We’re usually in our other forms when we hunt. It’s faster that way. Easier to catch our prey.”
I frown, realizing it might be impossible for me to hunt with them. I’m neither fast nor strong. Just a human with no claws or fangs. I would only hold them back.
But a ghost of a smirk crosses Lucan’s face as he steps toward me, the other three forgotten behind him as he cups one of my cheeks with his enormous hand and dips his lips to my ear.
“How would you feel,” he whispers, “about riding a werewolf?”
I was wrong, before, when I said running felt like freedom.
This feels like freedom, my hands curled into the mottled brown and gold fur of Lucan’s neck, the world blurring past us as he leaps and bounds past trees like he’s cutting through butter.
My thighs burn from how tightly they clamp around his torso, and my eyes sting with tears from the wind rushing past, but I keep them peeled open so I don’t miss a single thing.
Aspen trees melt into pine trees the further northwest we travel, away from the Wall of Xantera and up a mountain ridge where creeks gurgle past us, streaking my periphery with winking silver.
The other three—Vivian, Merrick, and Soren—follow behind so that whenever I crane my neck to look back, I can see three pairs of amber eyes squinting up at us, wolflike monsters bounding after us.
In her werewolf form, Vivian is lean but strong, with long limbs that easily keep up with the two males beside her. Her fur is a glossy shade of brown, while Merrick’s is black, and Soren’s is a golden blonde that gleams in the stripes of sunlight flashing through the trees.
Not that I need to see them to know they’re there.
Now that they’re in their werewolf forms, too, my mind suddenly bursts with their thoughts as well as Lucan’s.
I’m not sure why they never seemed to be connected when I put the necklace on in Xantera, but now a telepathic connection flows between the five of us like intricate strings of a spider’s web dangling from the vial on my chest.
What are we feeling for breakfast this morning, kittens? Soren asks, even his internal voice more flippant and casual than Lucan’s deep grumble. Something cute and fluffy or large and vicious? Or something slimy, maybe?
For fuck’s sake, Lucan growls, and I feel a jolt of pleasure at how familiar the cadence of his tone sounds to my mind in the midst of all this newness. How do you make every possible food option sound completely inedible?
Are fish not slimy? Soren protests. Are bears not vicious? Are bunnies not cute?
Are you not a moron? Vivian spits back without breaking her stride behind us. Saskia, do you want to eat a moron for breakfast?
I laugh against the wind. I think I’ll pass for now.
‘For now’ being the key phrase, Soren, Lucan warns. All Saskia has to do is give me the word.
Maybe you should direct that murderous energy toward the herd of elk a few miles north of here, Merrick cuts in with a chuckle. It feels good to be back. I can smell them on the wind.
Apparently, the others can, too, because they all increase their speed, Lucan remaining in the forefront, and soon the chill of the air nips at my skin as we climb higher and higher.
Are you cold? Lucan asks me as we finally slow, the others slinking to crouches on either side of us, all of them trained on something I can’t see through the foliage.
No, I say confidently, even though it takes an effort to keep my teeth from chattering.
Lucan huffs beneath me, unconvinced. We’ll just watch for now. You stay on me and keep warm.
Nodding my understanding, I bury myself deeper into his fur and peer ahead, waiting for something to happen. Beside us, Vivian, Merrick, and Soren are utterly still, their coats camouflaging into the scenery around us. A twig snaps from somewhere ahead. Branches rustle.
And then it steps into view.
A creature unlike anything I’ve seen before, not quite the size of Lucan but still huge and majestic, with antlers curling into the air like the branches of a tree and four strong legs that end in hooves.
Elk. For some reason, my throat squeezes at the realization that this here is like all the animals I’ve eaten my whole life, always consuming without ever knowing.
Now, I know, though. And when the three other werewolves streak past us to pounce on it, I don’t stop my tears from falling at the reverberating thud it makes as it falls, too.
The way the sound follows the elk’s barking wail of alarm that cuts off abruptly when Soren closes long canines around the animal’s throat.
Instantly, jets of the elk’s blood soak the pine needles baked into the ground. Lucan shifts beneath me as sharp hunger clamps my stomach, but the thought of eating its actual flesh roils in my stomach and makes my head spin again.
Are you okay? he asks me.
Fine. I gulp. I just think… maybe I need a minute before I eat this kind of breakfast.