Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
VALERIAN
I set a punishing pace, anger fueling my strides. Why am I so fucking furious? I don’t even know. The picture I painted for her just... infuriated me. Enraged me. Take her to another man, let him have her? Fuck, no.
She’s mine. Why would I give her to another? She’s mine.
I haul her along, her small hand clutched in mine, trying to outrun the persistent thought. More of a feeling, really, a gut feeling that radiates throughout my body and permeates my mind.
Mine, mine, mine.
Since I first saw her, heard her, smelled her, she felt like she belonged with me—and from that first time, I knew she was promised to another.
Of course, it’s not only that. She’s in another league and belongs to another world. She’s human. Fragile. Protected. Innocent.
It’s not that she’s no match for me. She’s worthy of a prince or king.
No, the problem is me. I can’t give her what she needs. What she deserves. What she hopes for.
I’ve never felt as awkward and lumbersome as I do now.
As if I could crush her bones in my grip, tear her clothes with a flick of my fingers, crush her optimism with a word.
And I want to. I want to crush her delusional dreams, to tell her reality isn’t like that, to show her my kills and paint her in blood.
Shred her clothes. Fist my hand in her hair.
Bruise her mouth, her breasts. Leave bites everywhere.
Split her open with my cock and make her lose her composure, scream... scream my name.
Fuck.
“Valen.” Her hand tugs, almost slipping from mine. “Wait... just wait.”
“What?” I growl, casting her a glance over my shoulder. “Dammit.”
“I can’t keep up.” She’s pale, sweat running down her small face. She looks exhausted. “Can you slow down? We won’t reach Lord Eorl’s home today.”
“Or tomorrow. It’s quite a distance on foot. But we need to hurry before the dogs catch our scent again.”
“Can’t we rest a little? And you said something about food?”
I look at her, really look, instead of obsessing about her scent and curves and mouth. She weaves on her feet. A real princess she may not be, but she has spent her life moving between her bedroom and the great hall of her home. She’s unused to walking, running, and fasting, unlike me.
If I don’t take care of her, she will likely pass out, and then I’ll have to carry her.
Not that the thought of carrying her displeases me. Even as we ran from the hunting party, I enjoyed having her on my back, and I’d enjoy even more having her in my arms.
“Valen?” She’s frowning at me. “What do you say?”
“Yes. Right. Let’s camp for the night, and I will hunt us some dinner. As long as you promise not to run away again. I hate tracking down prey I’m not allowed to bite.”
A small sound escapes her. “I’m not your prey.”
“Aren’t you?”
Because she feels like it. Not prey to kill, but prey to play with, chase around, and fuck. Do it the wolf way.
Does she even know what she does to me? I doubt it, the way she brushes off my every insinuation, sexual hint, and frustrated innuendo. I’m so fucking hard for her, and she thinks nothing of touching me, lying against me. I look at her and burn, while she’s as cool as water.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Another stone circle would have been nice, but that would be too much to ask of the Sleeping Gods. Without elemental magic to protect us, I have to find us a defensible, sheltered place to camp, so that she can rest and I can hunt for meat and look for flintstones.
My stamina is pretty damn good, but even I am flagging right now.
So when I spot a rocky outcrop at the foot of a hill, I lead us that way.
We navigate over black rock, stepping over deep cracks, climbing down others.
Once or twice, I pick her up and lift her so she can climb onto the next rock, and the desire curling in my gut is distracting.
Why does she have to smell so delicious, feel so good? I’ve never felt such a pull before. Why does this connection have to be to a girl I’m supposed to let go? Something deep in me wrenches painfully at the thought of her with another man. Familiar anger swells until it’s choking me.
Swallowing it down, I help her over yet another gap and into a depression I’d spotted from afar. “Here.”
“Here?” She looks around, eyes wide. “Won’t animals find us? Why is this a good spot?”
I press my hand to the ground and close my eyes. The earth’s energy thrums through me, heritage of my fae line. Through it, I feel faint echoes of life—where trees are concentrated, where animals burrow.
“It’s resonant,” I tell her. “Listen...”
“What is it?” she asks, a tremor in her voice. She can’t feel this magic. Can’t understand nature the way I do. She never had to even think about it before now. “What do you mean?”
“It’s resonant,” I say again. “The rocks are awake. That’s a good sign.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry about it. It will dissuade animals from approaching us.”
“I didn’t know the fae could talk to the earth,” she whispers, her blue eyes a little too wide.
“Not all fae can. Not all are so sensitive to the thrum of magic. But I’m dark fae. It’s my curse and my blessing.”
Fae magic got twisted out of shape during the Human Uprising, turning large parts of our population into trees, animals, and other, grotesque shapes.
It gave rise to the dark fae. That’s us.
Shifters and half-beasts. Some clans are violent and perverse, stealing people, humans, or fae.
Making incursions and destroying villages, pillaging towns, burning down fields, and slaughtering cattle.
And some clans... we do our best to battle our very nature, this magic that is a part of us, fighting to control the factors that cause us to shift, organizing ourselves into alliances and struggling to remain...
fae. Remain human, the humans would say.
Keep the traits that used to define us. Ethics. Compassion. Altruism. Kindness. Peace.
“You will be safe here while I hunt,” I tell her. “Stay put. Don’t wander away. Please...” I sigh, shake my head. “I don’t want to see you hurt. Trust me. I’m doing all I can to see you safely home. Do you believe me?”
She gazes back at me with those all-too-serious, all-too-old eyes of hers as if weighing my words, my trustworthiness, all my actions and reactions up to now.
Judging me.
But then unexpectedly, she nods. “I believe you.”
The verdict is passed. I grin down at her and kiss her smooth forehead. “Thank you, Sweetheart.”
Then I leap up onto the surrounding rocks and lope away, easing into a half-shift that allows me a firm control over my thoughts as well as lends me superior strength and enhanced senses.
If only it also helped get her out of my mind...
Sniffing the air, I catch a whiff of potential prey. Boar. Snarling, I crouch down and lean into the earth’s music to locate the animal.
There.
Loping off, I hunt by smell, darting around rocks and between shrubs and scraggly trees until I reach a small stream, and I see it.
A young wild pig. Not a baby anymore, and wandering alone.
Being a wolf means to be ruthless. When you’re fully shifted, it’s easy to grab, kill, and devour without any thought about ethics or sympathy.
When in half-shift, though... not so much.
I don’t go about killing animals and people, no matter what the world thinks.
I’m not above punching stupid bastards in the face if they deserve it, or ripping the throats out of anyone going after my loved ones, but I consider that another matter.
The pig stops drinking and lifts its snout, sniffing. It has caught a whiff of me. It’s time to move before it bolts. My energy is low, and I need this done now.
Closing my mind to empathy and regret, I go in for the kill. I make it swift. As painless as possible. It’s dead before it knows what hit it, and I gut it there, at the stream, clean it out, and head back.
I stop on the way to gather dry grass and twigs, and two flintstones for the fire. Then I have a moment of panic because, when I climb onto the outcrop, I don’t see her... until she stands up, long dark hair dancing around her, and I can’t help the way my stupid heart pounds at the sight of her.
Damn.
Then her gaze lands on the pig I’m holding, and she scrunches up her nose, a jolt of revulsion going through her. “Is that...?”
“Dinner.” I grin because she’s cute. I’m aware I should be fucking annoyed at her aversion to blood and raw meat, to dead animals... and to me.
It just goes to show how fucked I am when it comes to her.
I will get over her. Soon. I’ll drop her off, leave her in her future husband’s hands, and scrub my mind clean of her.
I won’t spend my nights jerking off to images of her, fantasies involving her. I’m not an idiot. I’ll grab the first female I see and fuck this need out of my system.
Right.
But first things first. Crouching down, I set the carcass aside and gesture at her. “Your knife, please, Princess. Time to start a fire and prepare the banquet. I hope you brought your best gown for the fucking ball.”