“My point exactly.” She pulled back, settling on the branch, her legs hugging the trunk, and rested her head against the bark.
“So we wait?”
“We wait.”
A giant black wolf sprinted to the barn from under the trees.
Embelys hissed.
The wolf leaped. His body twisted, his bone and muscle wrung like a length of dark fabric. Fur shed, melting into the air as it fell. Arms stretched, legs elongated, rocked by convulsions, and a nude man rose from the dirt. He shook himself, and for a moment Vur saw his face and his eyes, hazel, still glowing.
William the Wolf.
The man slipped into the barn.
Vur sat petrified, afraid to move.
William the Wolf. William the murderer. The changeling beast who hunted the Hand’s agents. The only man who stood against Spider and lived.
Slowly the fear melted. The Wolf was only one man. Just a man.
“We have to warn Spider,” Embelys whispered. “He must know.”
“You go. I’ll stay.”
“Are you mad?”
“I can glide. He can’t. I’ll watch over him. Go.”
“Suit yourself.”
She twisted, disengaging from the trunk, and slithered down, speeding along the forest floor.
Vur gathered himself, calculating. William was just a man, a man who was meeting a girl, for sex. He would be satiated and sloppy afterward, and the poison on Vur’s claws was very potent. If he timed it just right . . . The head of William the Wolf would assure he was set for life.
WILLIAM glanced through a small window. The storehouse was freshly swept. Bundles of herbs hung drying from the rafters, spicing the air with bitter fragrance. He caught a glimpse of Cerise’s dark hair as she headed up the ladder to the second story.
He backed up, took a running start, and leapt, scrambling up the wall to the roof. The small attic window was open. Inside Cerise unfolded a quilt over a pile of hay. He dove through the window and rolled to his feet.
Cerise froze with a quilt in her hands. Her pale shirt hugged her breasts. Her long dark hair spilled over it in a glossy wave. Her dark eyes, framed by a fringe of long eyelashes, widened. “You’re naked!”
So pretty. Must have the woman.
He pulled the wild back. No. Not yet. He had one shot at this.
William circled her, stalking, tasting her scent, watching her watching him. “Do you like what you see?”
She tilted her head, spilling her long hair over one breast. Her gaze traveled slowly from his face down to his toes. She took a deep breath. “Yes.”
William stopped and crossed his arms on his chest. “We need to talk.”
Cerise hesitated for a second and sat on the hay. “Okay.”
He leaned against the wall. “I was born in Adrianglia. I was born as a pup. It’s a sign of a strong changeling.”
She winced.
He had to keep going. “My mother gave me up to the Adrianglian government the next day. I was sent to the special orphanage for children like me. For the first two weeks of my life, I was blind and helpless, and they didn’t think I would survive. I did, and when I turned three years old, I was transferred to Hawk’s Academy.”
She sat there, quilt draped over her knees, big eyes looking at him. He half expected her to run away screaming.
“From the time I was three until I turned sixteen, I lived in the same room. It was a bare cell with a metal bunk bed welded to the floor and bars on the windows. I shared it with another kid. I was allowed three changes of clothes, a comb, a toothbrush, and a towel. We had no toys, and reading aside from schoolwork was forbidden. My life consisted of exercise, martial training, and study. That was it.”
He stopped and looked at her to make sure she understood, afraid he would see pity. He saw none. He couldn’t read her, couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She just sat very still and looked at him.
“You don’t have to stand over there,” Cerise said, her voice soothing. “You can come sit here by me.”
William shook his head. If he sat by her, it would be all over. “I used to dream that my parents would show up and break me out of that place. When I twelve, I broke into the office, found my file, and realized where I stood. Nobody wanted me. Nobody was coming to save me. I was on my own. So I did the best I could. When I failed, I was whipped and punished by isolation. When I succeeded, they let me outside for a few minutes of freedom.
“When I was thirteen, I killed my first opponent. When I turned sixteen, I graduated from Hawk’s and the signature on my graduation papers served as enrollment into the Red Legion. I was not given a choice about joining, but if I had been, I would have chosen the military anyway. I am a killer.”
He was tired of talking, but he had to get all of it out. The memories pressed on him like a crushing weight he couldn’t drop.
“I told you I was court-martialed. I have nothing, Cerise. No land, no money, no status, no honor. I’m not normal. Being a changeling is not a disease. I will never get better. I will always be fucked-up and my children will likely be puppies. You need to tell me if you really want this. You and me. I must know. No games, no hints, no flirting. Because if you are doing this so I will fight for your family tomorrow, don’t worry. I will anyway. If you don’t really want me, I’ll fight and then I’ll leave, and you won’t hear from me again.”
William stopped. He’d fought in hundreds of skirmishes, he had done things that no sane man would, but he never remembered feeling that hollow at the end of it.
Cerise opened her mouth.
If she told him to leave, he would have to leave. He said he would and he had to do it.
“I love you,” she told him.
The words hung in the air between them.
She said yes. She loved him.
The chain he put on himself shattered. He lunged and caught her in a hug, brushing her hair off her neck, and kissed her, sweeping her off the floor. Her hands caressed his face.
“You should’ve said no,” he snarled. “Now it’s too late.”
“I don’t care, you stupid man,” she breathed. “I love you and I want you to love me back.”
She was his. His woman, his mate. He kissed her, eager for her taste, and she kissed him back, quickly, feverishly, like she couldn’t get enough.
Mine.
He buried his face in her neck, smelling her silky hair, licking her smooth skin. She tasted like honeyed wine, sweet and intoxicating under his tongue, and she made him drunk.
“I want you to stay with me,” she told him. “I want you to stay with me forever.”
Some part of him refused to believe it. He would never be this lucky. Fate didn’t reward him; it kicked him and knocked him down, grinding him under its heel. A terrible fear gripped him that somehow she would vanish, dissolve into thin air or die in his arms, and then he would be back in his house, awake, alone, and broken, because she was only a wishful dream.
“Will you, William? Will you stay with me?”
He gripped her to him, to keep her from disappearing. “Yes.”
She stroked his back, her slender fingers tracing the contours of his muscles, soothing, inviting him. She kissed his mouth, her soft lips pressing against his. Her pink tongue darted out, and she licked him, stroking him, again and again. He kissed her hard, trying to shut down the annoying warnings in his head, and dropped them down onto the hay. She squirmed under him, warm, flexible, and pliant.
Excitement flooded him. He pulled her shirt off and kissed her breast, sucking on her pink nipple, stroking her soft stomach and down, lower, to the sweet spot between her legs. She purred. He would kill to hear her make that sound again.
She was his mate. It finally sank in. She said yes, she was his, she wanted him to stay, and if she vanished, he would spent the rest of his life looking for her and he would find her again.
She wrapped her hand around his shaft and slid it up and down, spiking the need in him into an overwhelming hunger. She was wet for him, he could smell it, and the scent was driving him out of his skin.
“I love you,” he told her.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, her velvet eyes bottomless and black.
He thrust into her and she screamed.
“ON the hay,” Cerise murmured. “We did it on the itchy, smelly hay. I can’t believe it. Why did I even bring a quilt?”
He leaned over, grabbed the quilt, and pulled it over them, clenching her to him. “There.”
She pulled a blade of dried grass out of her hair. “This time in the hay. The last time we almost did it on a dirty floor. You’ve made me into some sort of hillbilly slut. “
Yeah, that’s right.
“Next time, we have to do it in bed,” she said.
“With wine and roses?” he asked.
“Maybe. I’ll settle for clean sheets.” She snuggled closer to him. William closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember ever being this happy.
“You will stay with me, right?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Even though it would mean Kaldar would be your in-law?”
“I could just kill him ...”
“No, you can’t. He’s my favorite cousin.”
He read a real concern in her eyes and couldn’t resist. “He’s unmarried. No kids. Nobody to miss him.”
Her eyes widened. “William, you can’t kill my cousin.”
He laughed under his breath and she smacked him.
William gathered her closer. “I’m a wolf. You can’t chain me. But now you’re mine, my mate, my woman. Your family are my people now. Nothing they could do would drive me away. There are things I have to do, back in the Weird. I may have to leave for a time, but I will always be back.”
She caressed his face. “Things that have to do with Spider?”
He told her about the dead children and the blood on the dandelions and the note.
Cerise looked back at him, horrified. “Why? Why would he do that? They were just children. They weren’t a threat to him.”
At the time he hadn’t known why either, but now he had the benefit of the Mirror’s intelligence. “Spider’s real name and title is Sebastian Olivier Lafayette, Chevalier, Comte de Belidor. Very old Gaulish blueblood family. The bloodline started going weak around his great-grandmother’s time. They’re bleeders. Their blood doesn’t clot as it should, and with each generation it was getting worse. Spider’s father was bedridden for most of his life, and the family was desperate for a cure.
“Spider’s father found a woman from a blueblood family with a dirty secret—they had a changeling a couple of generations back. We’re a very healthy lot. Spider’s grandfather, Alain de Belidor, violently objected. Didn’t want his precious blood polluted. But Spider’s father married his bride anyway. The changeling blood fixed all their problems right up—Spider was born healthy as a horse.
“About that time Alain developed dementia. Since his son had one foot in the grave most of the time, Alain ruled the family. He terrorized Spider’s mother and the boy. Somehow he became convinced that Spider was a changeling.”
“How does that work?” Cerise asked.
“If the changeling is strong, like me, he has a ninety percent chance to pass the magic to the next generation.” He kissed her. “If our kid is born human, the chances of his kids going furry drop off. Twenty percent in the first generation and basically nothing in the second. Spider has the changeling blood, but he isn’t a changeling. His grandfather couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He stalked him, convinced that Spider was hiding an animal inside. Once when Spider was seven, Alain dumped boiling water on him to ‘draw the beast out.’ When Spider turned eighteen, he got his grandfather declared incompetent and took control over the estate. Nobody knows what exactly happened to Alain, but nobody has seen him for years.”
She grimaced. “That’s just horrible all around.”
William shrugged. “It’s a hard world out there. Spider hates my kind, because we’re the cause of his misery. I have to kill him. It’s more than revenge at this point—he’s a threat to any changeling. Hell, he’s a threat to the entire damn country. He understands it. He doesn’t take it personally.”
Cerise frowned next to him. “How do you know?”
“We talked about it before we got into it the last time. It’s just the reality of life for him,” William explained. “He’s a cold bastard. He understands my reasons, and in my place he would do the same thing. He doesn’t see himself as evil. In his own eyes he’s doing exactly what I used to do—serving his country the best he can. He isn’t crazy, Cerise. He’s very rational. That makes him more dangerous. What the hell is in that journal? Why does he want it so much?”
Cerise grimaced and rubbed her face. “I’ve been trying to puzzle it out and I have no idea. The journal is the key to the whole thing. I wish Sene had burned in a fire. I wish my parents would’ve razed it down to the ground—”