With Everything I Am (69 page)

“It’s the only thing that works,” Callum clipped.

“
It’s
poison, your grace,” Orphenon whispered, Sonia gasped then bucked then arched and shrieked so loud, so long and so horrifying, it was a wonder everyone’s ears didn’t immediately start bleeding.

Callum held her close but leaned into Orphenon. “It’s worked for decades.”

“I’m not sure it’s wise,” Orphenon replied but Sonia jerked mightily and shrieked yet again.

“If you don’t think it’s wise then what do we fucking
do?
” Callum snarled, setting the injection aside and again fighting her struggles in order to pull his mate close.

“We need to get her temperature down immediately,” Orphenon answered.

“Do you think?” Callum’s tone was snide.

“I can see you’re upset and I understand that, I do, but I know what’s in that injection, Callum, and two doses
is
absolutely not advisable.”

“She’s burning alive.”

“That’s why we need to get her temperature down.”

“Then how about we cease discussing it and
do that?
” Callum gritted.

“Cal, Cal, Cal, my wolf,” Sonia called suddenly, her voice strange, hideously weak at the same time desperate and Callum jerked his gaze to his wife, his blood now ice in his veins at the sound. “Cal, Cal, Cal,” she chanted feebly.

“Baby doll, I’m right here.”

“Cal, it’s happening,” she whispered, her hand moving to clutch his lapel again.

“We’re going to get your temperature down, honey,” he assured her.

“It’s happening,” she repeated, her hand in his lapel tightening, drawing him to her, pulling him close but she didn’t have to. He bent into her as frantic activity bustled in the room.

“We’re getting a tub of ice. It’s going to be all right,” he promised.

“You know I love you?” she whispered and Callum felt his heart squeeze because her tone was frail but it was also final.

“Yes, I do and I love you too, baby doll. Now, hang on.”

“With everything I am,” she stated, so softly, her voice fading with each word and Callum felt her body burn into his as her fingers started to loosen on his lapel.

No, this was not happening.

He pulled her closer, tighter. “Stay with me, Sonia. Stay with me, little one.”

Her eyes filled with tears and held his as she whispered, “With everything I was meant to be.”

This was not happening. It wasn’t happening. It
couldn’t
happen. She had to survive, at least until it began.

This was
not
fucking happening.

Then it happened.

His mate, his bride, his wife, his
queen
went limp in his arms. Her green eyes open and still on him, there was nothing behind them. No focus. No light.

They were vacant.

Dead.

Dead.

Just.

Like.

That.

He stared into her pretty face and whispered, “This is not happening.”

Sonia didn’t move, her hand had fallen away from his jacket, he felt no breath from her lips touch his face, the room around him was still, a dread feeling creeping through the space, slithering, cold, ugly,
heinous
.

“This is not fucking happening,” he whispered, cradling Sonia close, smelling her smell, feeling the burn of her body cooling.

He didn’t twitch as Orphenon moved in, placing his fingers to Sonia’s neck as Callum stared into her face.

Vacant.

Dead.

“Please, God,” he begged, “make this not be happening.”

Orphenon’s fingers moved away and he said quietly, his voice grave, “Your grace, I’m so sorry.”

It was happening.

Rage tearing through him, Callum surged up, holding his mate’s lifeless body tight to his massive chest, he threw his head back and thundered useless words, “
This is not fucking happening!
”

He felt a hand light on his arm and his mother’s soothing voice, “She’s gone, Callum, sweetheart. We knew this day would come. Please –”

Callum twisted, leaned in and barked in his mother’s face. “This can’t happen.”

She didn’t flinch.

She lifted a hand to the side of his face, hers was tortured, understanding of his pain etched in her features and she whispered, “I’m so sorry, my beloved boy.”

It was then, he felt it.
His skin prickling.
The change was coming and he knew he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t.

He didn’t even fucking want to.

He turned, bent and placed his bride’s body on the couch like she was a piece of priceless crystal, which she goddamned was, and he stared into her eyes one last time.

Then he lifted a hand and closed them, his throat tightening, his skin beginning to burn. He bent deeper, taking in her scent, his eyes moving over her still flushed skin, registering she looked peaceful and hating it. Wanting her to sit up and argue with him. Tease him. Smile at him. Fuck, he’d take her writhing and shrieks if it meant she was still breathing.

But she wasn’t breathing.

He closed his eyes, pulled in her scent one last time then bent close and touched his mouth to hers.

“My bride,” he whispered against her motionless lips. He opened his eyes and they met hers that were closed and would be for eternity. “With everything I am, everything I’m meant to be, baby doll.
Always.”

He heard quiet, muffled female whimpers but he ignored them. He took off his wedding ring, lifted her hand and placed the band in her palm. Closing her inert fingers around it, he pressed it to her belly.

His pup.

He closed his eyes.

He lost his wife and his pup.

On his fucking wedding day.

Yes, he could take no more.

He turned, crouched and gave in, leaping to wolf in mid-
air,
he landed on his paws and bolted through the bodies. Out of the room, past the guards, through the onlookers held back at the mouth of the hall
who
stared and gasped as they saw their king race through them, stepping back to give him room, one opened the door to the building and he shot through.

And he ran.

He ran for miles, for hours through the wood, his heart pumping, his paws moving,
the
needles on the trees brushing his fur.

He felt nothing.

Nothing.

In a way he knew he’d never feel anything again.

Except the pain.

* * * * *

Callum sat as wolf, howling his agony through the trees to the full moon.

It didn’t help.

It couldn’t help.

Nothing would help.

This was his eternity.

An eternity of agony.

He thought he was prepared for it.

He fucking wasn’t.

Suddenly, he smelled it. He stopped howling, his head jerked down and around as he came up off his haunches.

There was a she-wolf out there.

He stared through the dark trees, his body tensed as the scent came closer. It was familiar but it was not his mother, who he would imagine would come looking for him. It was also not any she-wolf he knew.

But, fuck, it was familiar.

Then she appeared, stumbling through the trees, clumsy, as if she’d transformed while inebriated but as he watched he noted she moved not drunken but disoriented.

She crashed toward him, seeming, strangely, not at one with her wolf. In fact, her movements actually appeared frightened. Then her body suddenly jerked sideways and she stopped.

Her muzzle turned his way and the she-wolf went completely still.

Christ, even through his grief he registered she was a beautiful wolf. He’d never seen a she-wolf as beautiful.

Just as suddenly as she stopped, she charged straight at him, so fast, he barely had time to shift to the side to miss her. As she drove past, he bared his teeth and nipped her warningly but gently on a flank.

She whirled, moving toward him, whining.

He barked at her.

She came closer as he shifted away but she kept coming, trying to butt him with her head, her movements awkward, unpracticed, her wolf whine constant.

Fuck, she was a young wolf. So young, maybe it was one of her first transformations outside of pup. Young pups transformed constantly and with no control. Parents worked with them when they grew older to teach them how to manage the transformations to do it at will. It was likely she’d gotten away from her parents but what was clear was that she was terrified.

He barked at her again and reached out with his teeth to nip her flank. She pulled her hind end away after she received his careful bite, so
awkward,
she fell to her haunch in the needles.

Callum barked again but she seemed unable to understand the wolf communication. She righted herself and kept trying to nuzzle him with her snout, constantly whining.

The noise, seemingly desperate and trying to communicate something she hadn’t yet learned to convey as wolf, tore at his shredded heart.

He wanted peace to attempt what he knew would be futile, soothing his ravaged mind.

As a wolf, and king of the wolves, he had to get this terrified she-pup to safety.

He rounded her and began herding her, something she clearly didn’t understand and fought, keeping on her course of attempting to butt him with her nose, her head, as if she was trying to mark him with her temple.

Definitely a pup.
Instinctively, pups marked sires, mothers, siblings and, sometimes, elders. She-wolves, as wolves and in human form, marked their mates and offspring. He sensed this pup attempting to mark him was an attempt to mark an elder.

He moved around her, continuing to steer her toward Canis and, it took some time but she finally seemed to understand what he was trying to do and began to run with him, falling to his flank and staying there as he led her to Canis.

Once they arrived, he’d turn her over to Regan to find her parents then he would lock himself in his study with a bottle of whisky (or five).

Or he’d transform again and spend the next year in the woods as wolf.

He was coming to the decision of doing the latter when he led them to the backdoor of the castle. Instead of transforming to man and in doing so maybe making himself incapable of controlling her, he pushed in through the tall, wide lower door set into it that was there to allow entry as wolf.

She followed.

He then crouched to make the transformation in order to latch the lower door so she couldn’t escape but her deep, brown eyes held his and suddenly she jerked around and started running through the castle.

Fuck,
Callum thought before he darted after her.

Like she knew exactly where she was going, she raced to the steps and up them.

Fuck,
Callum thought again as he raced after her.

Up she went, up, up and she dashed straight into his and Sonia’s goddamned room.

He skidded to a halt outside the door.

He didn’t want to be there. He could smell her scent from outside and that scent, her scent, all that was left of his Sonia, he couldn’t bear it.

He didn’t want to be there. He never wanted to enter that room again.

He heard the she-wolf howl.

Fuck,
he thought yet again as he snarled and shot into the room then he skidded to another halt and stared.

She was jumping around, leaping, her body twisting this way and that. She abruptly stopped, whined, got down on her forepaws then leaped again, twisting her body in mid-air.

She was trying to transform.

Callum used his haunch to slam the door closed in order to contain her, crouched and leaped to man.

Quickly, he prowled to a wardrobe, yanked it open and pulled out a pair of jeans.

Tugging them on, he ordered, “Calm, wolf, focus and crouch. Do nothing more. Hold there and then
listen
to me.”

She didn’t listen. She got down to her forepaws again, jerking her mahogany-furred head this way and that then her wolf body stilled. Unexpectedly, she started digging under the couch, whining desperately, so frantic, she pushed the couch back with her body, her entire head shoved under the couch.

Then she backed out, lifted up and twirled to him, Sonia’s stuffed wolf in her jaw.

Callum’s heart lurched and it was pure, unadulterated agony.

That stuffed wolf, the symbol of him her parents gave her that she held close before she met him and continued to hold close even after she had him had disappeared around the time he found her rings in the fire. He had not questioned Sonia about it. Knowing she’d acted in anger with his rings, he suspected she’d done the same with her wolf.

Apparently, like the rings, her wolf had survived.

Now, with her scent that lingered in the room and his wedding band held in her lifeless hand, it was the only thing he had of her that held any importance.

“Drop that!” he snarled but she didn’t.

She rushed him, racing around him, circling, butting his thighs with her head, all the while whining.

“Drop the goddamned wolf!” he barked, leaning into her only for her to jump up to her hind paws and claw his chest with her front ones.

He pushed her off, made for Sonia’s wolf but she jerked her head away and pranced out of reach.

“
Goddamn
you,
drop my wife’s fucking wolf!
” he roared.

She dropped the wolf, backed up until her tail hit the wall then she burst forward. Suddenly stopping on a skid and crouching through it, she leaped, transformed in mid-air and dropped to the floor on her belly as human, her body naked and flushed, a mass of shining, extraordinary mahogany hair falling down her back and over her shoulders.

She was facing the floor, her hands to her sides, palms flat to the rug and she was panting.

But Callum was frozen.

Completely.

He knew her scent because he knew her.

He’d dreamed her.

She was the she-wolf in his dreams.

“This isn’t happening,” he whispered.

“It seems,” she spoke and it was so quiet, even with heightened hearing he could barely hear her, “that I
am
like your people.” She lifted her head, arching her neck way back and Callum stared in shock, his body still frozen, as beloved, familiar green eyes caught his and she finished, “Wolf.”