“No. No, no, no, no, no, no—”
“No, no, no, no, no NO!”
Sorin bolted upright in bed, cold sweat lying like frost over his flesh. A thud from beside him echoed in his ears and he nearly snapped his neck jerking his head around to see what had made the noise. The sight of his bloody sheets screamed accusations and he leaned over the side of the bed just in time to vomit over the edge.
“What the fuck is going on? Sorin? Are you okay?”
Gia’s voice danced around the haze that surrounded him, his tormented mind struggling to sift through the images and salvage reality from the nightmare. His head swam as he bobbed on a wave of nausea. A sensory memory of wet flesh sliding down his throat overwhelmed him and he lurched over to vomit again.
The bed creaked and swayed as another body settled onto it. A hand tentatively brushed his back. The gesture of gentle affection and empathy touched a part of him that was frightened by the gory images of his dream and he sobbed. The nightmare was no dream. It was a premonition. He was a monster and he would destroy anything good that came into his life. He didn’t deserve her empathy.
“Sorin?” Gia whispered.
“What have I done? God save me, what have I done?”
“Sorin, what are you talking about? You haven’t done anything.”
Macabre images sliced through his mind, leaving bloody trails in their wake. Faces and bodies hovered before his eyes, all covered in blood and in some stage of being disemboweled. His eyes darted around the room, but he couldn’t tell what he was looking at and what was imposed on his surroundings by his memory.
“There is blood everywhere,” he choked. He closed his eyes, begging his mind to release the images of his past and let him forget. “Please, tell me what I have done. Tell me what is real.” He choked and closed his eyes. “Tell me what evidence is lying in this room.”
Gia’s hands closed on his shoulders and he didn’t resist when she pulled him back onto the bed. He opened his eyes, gazing at her face as she climbed into his lap. Even with the feel of her silky skin sliding against him, her soft curves teasing his fingertips, he had to fight not to look at the floor. The smell of blood was everywhere and as much as he didn’t want to know what he’d done, a part of him needed to see.
She settled into his lap, wrapping her legs around his waist and then leaning in to fold her arms around his shoulders. The feel of her lower body nestled so snugly against his own sent hot electricity through his groin, but even that wasn’t enough to tear his mind away from the horror the scent of dried blood inspired inside him.
Gia tucked herself against him, bringing his face to rest on her throat. The steady beat of her pulse so close to his lips made him whimper, awakening his hunger even as he struggled against self-loathing. The weak sound coming from his mouth grated on his nerves, but he didn’t have the strength to pull himself together just yet.
“Last night you honored the bargain you made with me. You defended my body against another man and spilled his blood in a fair fight. No one died, and no one will be any worse for the wear in a few nights time. The blood on our bodies, and on your sheets, is his.”
Her words didn’t convince him, but they gave him the courage he needed to look around. With those words ringing in his brain he could look around his room and see it for the empty space it was. No bodies were strewn about the floor, no lakes of blood held islands of raw flesh, and no trace of foul smelling liquids betrayed the desecration of intestines. They were alone.
Relief crashed over him with the strength of a tidal wave. Sorin banded his arms around her waist, hanging on for dear life. With the truth plain to see before him, the feel of her flesh against his soothed him. He held her tighter, trying to lose himself in the sweet scent of her skin. Underneath the slight fragrance of her soap, he could smell the musk of wolf. She smelled like home.
“It’s normal to have strange dreams after letting your beast out,” Gia said gently. “You made a lot of progress last night.”
“You speak to me as if I’m a new wolf,” Sorin murmured, closing his eyes and resting his forehead on her shoulder. “I was a wolf before you were so much as a sparkle in your father’s eye.”
“You are a new wolf,” Gia corrected him firmly. “You’ve repressed your beast for so long, you have the control of someone who’s never shifted before. And thanks to your twisted sire, you have the same hang-ups as a new wolf too. You think that humanity and your beast are mutually exclusive, but it is possible to find a balance.”
As much as he wanted to accept the comfort her words offered him, his doubt would not let it be so. Pretty words would not give back all the lives that had been lost under the sharpness of his claws. They would not erase the ghosts from his past.
“Letting go felt good,” he admitted, the words almost painful to release. He looked into her eyes. “But it cannot compare to the security of being in control.”
“Control is addictive,” Gia agreed. Her eyes seemed to look right through him, as if her mind meandered down a path he couldn’t see. Almost absentmindedly, her fingers began to play with his hair, curling it around her fingers. “Sharing it with anyone, really sharing it, means giving up some of that control and taking the risk that you’ll get hurt. It . . . isn’t easy. But sometimes trying to control everything only sets you up for a greater fall.”
She wasn’t just talking about him and his beast anymore—he could tell that much from her tone.
“What happened to you to give you this wisdom?” he whispered.
For a second he was certain she would answer him. The tension in her body, the slight intake of breath—all suggested a revelation. Then she snapped her mouth shut and shook her head. Before he could pursue the matter further, she fixed him with a brilliant smile.
“Come hunt with me.”
Sorin raised his eyebrows. “Pardon?”
She rose to her knees and grabbed his hand, pulling him with her as she backed off the bed. “I’m hungry.”
He couldn’t help it that his gaze darted to her neck and his fangs slid from their sheaths in an almost painful burst of anticipation. A sudden burst of doubt furrowed his eyebrows. He shook his head.
“Why do you insist on tempting fate? I’ve told you over and over again, I cannot give my beast the control you want it to have. You say I haven’t killed anyone yet, and I would like to keep it that way.”
“And I told you, if you insist on making the control issue all or nothing, than your beast will continue to fight. And when it wins, it’ll go wild. Trust me, you’ll wish you’d made a different choice then.”
Again, he could hear more in her tone than her words revealed. The pain in her eyes told a story that she’d only hinted at. His mind pulled away from his own troubles, just for a moment, wondering what could have put that pain in her eyes.
Before he could open his mouth to probe her once again for the rest of the story, she seemed to shake off whatever haunted her. A wicked gleam in her eyes was the only warning he got before she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his.
Sensory memories swirled around him, tearing him out of reality and plunging him into a dream world full of breathy moans and kisses tinged with blood. She deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue over one of his fangs. The taste of copper pulled a groan from his throat. Instead of macabre images full of death and horror, the flavor of her blood reminded him of sex and ecstasy. Something primal stirred inside him and when she finally broke the kiss to pull back, that primal urge growled inside him.
Mine
.
His thoughts must have shown on his face because Gia smirked and wagged a finger at him.
“If you’re going to be a wolf, you have to learn one very important lesson,” she told him, gesturing at his fangs. “First you hunt—then you eat.”
His stare locked on her naked curves, running over the swell of her breasts and hips before burning a hole in the patch of auburn curls between her legs. “A hunt hardly seems necessary when the prey wanders so close so willingly.”
Arousal laced the air and he closed his eyes as he sucked it into his lungs. The aroma danced on his taste buds and swirled through his senses until the world spun around him. Blood rushed to fill his cock and he groaned at the intense waves of anticipated pleasure crackling down his spine. He wanted her. He wanted to grab her warm luscious body in his arms and drag her onto his bed so he could plunder her pleasurable flesh until every one of his hungers lay satisfied.
The scent of wolf spiked. Sorin’s eyes flew open just in time to see Gia complete her transformation and bound out the door. A growl trickled from his lips as he his beast followed her lead. With hunger and arousal riding him to the ground, Sorin only had a fraction of a second to fear the change. After years of viewing it as a sign of weakness—a lapse in his crucial self-control—it was strange to let it happen so willingly.
Bones cracked and reformed, muscles swirled and tightened. Pain and pleasure mixed together in a heady cocktail that left him shaking. When his fur finally rolled over the last inches of pale flesh, a surge of adrenaline burned like fire through his blood. It felt . . . amazing.
The world exploded into sensations. The blood that had frightened him like a child in darkness only a short time ago pricked his nose and sent shivers of hunger through his body. His legs trembled with the need to run and he gave in, bolting out the door after Gia.
Her scent pulled him through the mansion, driving him to run faster and faster. The front door was already wide open and he caught Grigore giving him a little smile as he leapt over the threshold into the night. A howl in the distance floated to him like music on the wind and he bounded into the trees to find the delicate throat making the beautiful sound.
A flash of grey and white fur through the leaves caught his eye and he dove around the trunk of a giant oak to catch it. Gia yipped as his paw caught her hindquarter, just enough to startle her. She pivoted around as he landed beside her, her tail swaying side to side as she welcomed him.
For a few minutes, the world became a dream. They danced around the trees, leaping into the air and playfully wrestling in the leaves. The world seemed smaller, more familiar. He didn’t think about the people that may be out there, the souls who lived in the town not far from his home. None of that mattered, not now. All that mattered was this: him, Gia, and the full moon shining above them.
He moved with her as if they’d known each other all their lives. Her scent, her sounds, it all touched a part of him he’d forgotten. A part that remembered what it was like to be part of a pack, to belong to a whole instead of living as a severed limb, cut off from the rest. Joy blossomed inside him and just for a moment, he let the warm emotion into his heart.
Gia’s ears pricked up and she froze in the middle of throwing a paw around his neck. Sorin held still, his senses on high alert for what had captured her attention, his body tensing in preparation to fight or flee. His nose twitched and his head shot up.
Deer
.
The musky scent made his teeth ache with a hunger he hadn’t felt in decades. Thoughts of thick blood flowing just under soft brown fur filled his mind and tickled his stomach. Instinct took over. He didn’t have to look at Gia to know she was of the same mind. Trying to stay upwind, he and Gia moved as one, creeping closer toward the scent. After a few minutes, he spotted their prey.
A buck stood drinking at a small stream. Its deadly antlers looked sharp and threatening in the moonlight shining through the trees. Instinct flashed a warning in Sorin’s head. This was not easy prey. Those antlers could gut a wolf, given a clear shot. Disappointment began to cloud his joy when a familiar scent caught his attention. He sniffed the air to confirm it. Dried blood. His joy made a full comeback. The deer was injured.
He turned his head to see if Gia had smelled it too. Before he could see her reaction, the deer moved. His attention jerked back to his intended prey just in time to see its backside jerk down as it stumbled and the scent of blood exploded in the air. Sorin’s mouth watered as his gaze locked on the injury marring the deer’s left hind leg. It had ripped open the wound when it moved and a tiny trickled of blood oozed out of the cut.
Gia shifted beside him. They both tensed in preparation for their attack and then sprang forward in an explosion of activity.
The deer snorted in pain as Sorin’s jaws closed on the wound near its rump, worrying it with his teeth to get a better grip. It reared up to pivot around, its antlers gleaming sharp and dangerous as they turned to Sorin. He kept his mouth shut tight, seeing out of the corner of his eye as Gia leapt into the air, her jaws snapping closed on its throat. Blood filled the air with its decadent perfume as they both held on for dear life, not wanting to give their prey the chance to aim its antlers at their bodies.