10. Daire
Daire
A laugh bubbled out of me, loud and harried and half insane.
Yes, why didn’t I just cast some spells to get us out of this mess?
I laughed so hard that tears collected at the corners of my eyes.
I wiped them away with one hand, gasping for breath.
My other hand was, of course, cupped over my dick, because I was standing in a cave in the middle of the woods, buckass naked with a raccoon I’d called “buddy” and a werewolf whose other half I had stolen.
Running had been hard enough, but laughing was what was going to finally do me in. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. My head started to throb from the lack of oxygen and I gasped. The sound rattled in my chest.
I leaned back against the rocky cave wall. I might’ve bruised my shoulders, but who cared? I was a werewolf, apparently, so I’d just heal. Which was just freaking fantastic.
No, running barefoot in the woods wasn’t comfortable, but if I’d stepped on any sharp rocks, my skin had already stitched back together. If I got hurt, I’d be just fine. No big.
When I lifted my head, my chest heaving with the effort to breathe, Viktor was looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
I was pretty sure he was right.
“I can’t,” I admitted, grinning. What else was there to do? If we were counting on me for anything, we were fucked.
I didn’t even know how I’d shifted before. That’d been a stroke of luck, or the full moon, or—or something. But it didn’t feel as easy as changing shoes, and it’d hurt.
At least . . . my shoulders dislocating had hurt. Was that just part of the process, or because of how I’d been tied up?
Viktor was still staring at me, his jaw flexing like I was the most frustrating creature he’d ever met.
Welcome to the party, boyo. He certainly wasn’t the first person to think so.
“I don’t have magic,” I said. “I’ve never cast a single spell.”
And I watched his eyes harden with the same disappointment I’d grown so used to. Harried, exhausted, overwhelmed, all I could do was smile back at him.
For all my life, there’d been a spark of potential in my chest, the promise of something more. Now, it had gone out.
I hoped that it was somewhere, hidden under new wolfish instinct or tied up in the ritual. It’d be just what I deserved, for even the potential of my magic to disappear. Maybe that was the price I had to pay.
For being a coward.
Was that the wolf or me? I didn’t know anymore.
It didn’t fucking matter, either. Wherever that voice came from, it was right.
“Altair thought they could track him with his blood. They can track you?” he asked.
I snorted. “They don’t even need my blood.”
I was my mother’s son, after all. Her blood ran through my veins.
Viktor huffed through his nose. He stepped toward the cave’s mouth to peer out of it with narrowed eyes. “Then we need to keep moving.”
I snorted, sliding down the wall inch by inch until my bare ass hit the dirt. Shit, was that an ant under my thigh? I jerked away from the tickling feeling, hugging my knees close to my chest. “I’m not going.”
Viktor scowled at me. He crossed his arms over his chest, which would’ve been downright intimidating if it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t do much worse to me than had already happened.
My mother was going to kill me, with a blade in my chest or funneled through this werewolf, it didn’t matter.
But Viktor didn’t say anything. He just kept glaring like he expected me to break first, and I couldn’t let the silence hang. If that counted as breaking, I guess I was the first to do it.
“It’s dark out. We’re lost in the woods. I don’t have shoes. I’m naked—”
“Then shift back. You took my wolf. Might as well use him.”
“Right, yeah. I totally have control over your wolf.”
“You should.”
“I don’t!” I spread my arms out. “What about me screams that I have control over anything? I don’t know how to shift. I don’t know how I shifted, and frankly, I don’t really want to do it again, because that shit hurt.”
Viktor’s frown shifted from pure frustration to something else. “It hurt?”
“Yes, it hurt! My arms were going the wrong fucking way.”
I crossed my arms again, blinking fast because—because this sucked. I was naked in a cave, I was pretty sure ants were about to crawl up my actual asshole, and the only person in the world who might help me was someone I’d stolen from. Sort of.
“I didn’t take your wolf,” I grumbled.
“Well, you have him, and rather than use him so we can get out of here, you want to wait for your people to find us and kill us.”
My people.
As if people who wanted me dead could be mine.
The worst thing was, they were. Who else did I have? Mariah Harey? Buddy the raccoon?
Pathetic. I was so fucking pathetic.
I glared at the wall, my nose flaring as I tried to suck in a breath deep enough to ease the queasy feeling in my stomach.
“If you want to go, then go. I’m not stopping you.”
Viktor huffed. He took a step, then two. Then he swung back around to look at me.
“I can’t,” he admitted.
And that? That sounded like very much not my problem.