THE ROGUE WOLF

by Klaire London

  I smile at him, but it only lasts for a second. "There were guards," I answer curtly.

  Damien nods. "I see." His hand reaches out, touching my forearm lightly, but his soft speculation doesn't falter. "Are you sure you're ok?" This time his question is much more enforced, as if he's expecting an honest answer.

  I taste metal in my mouth. "I told you I was fine, Damien," I exhale with frustration. Why did he even care. Or rather: why was he pretending to care? "Why did you come back for me? You put our whole kingdom at risk."

  A foreign look misrepresents his face, as if fear has swallowed his courage. "I-" He stutters, his arm tightening its hold on my forearm, pastel rings forming around his fingers. "I couldn't bear the thought of you getting hurt."

  "Then don't."

  Damien smirks whilst quirking his eyebrow. His smirk was much more welcoming and genuine that Hunter's. "Don't what?"

  "Don't bear it for me. I can bear it myself," I speak defiantly as the others walk past us, Azra and Josh trailing at the back, Josh with tears in his glassy eyes.

  Damien nods. "If you say so," he responds, his gaze dropping down to my lips for a millisecond before he glances back to my face, as if nothing had happened. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe it was my imagination. Or maybe he did care.

  Something sparks in my heart. Something that makes me feel sickly nervous, yet buzz with adrenaline. Something that only Damien makes me feel.

  14 | Desire

  ❝I loved you recklessly from the moment I knew you. I never cared about the consequences. I told myself you wanted me too, and so I tried but you never did. I wanted you more than I wanted to be good. I wanted you more than I wanted anything, ever.❞

  Fighting without my sword feels strange. I miss the lightness of the blade, the complete precision I'm able to gain by using it. But, just like many other things - including my hope - I have been forced to leave it behind at the Rogue camp.

  Instead, I am using a heftier weapon with less grace which I am finding harder to manoeuvre. Every time I slash with the weapon, my limbs feel heavy, as if I'm submerged under a tonne of water. Even my sight seems blurry in the cobalt hue, making it hard to distinguish between reality and deception.

  Frustrated, I lash out one more time at Josh, only for him to effortlessly back away.

  "This is pointless," I state. "We all know how to use a bloody sword."

  Josh laughs in amusement. "Tell that to Damien."

  I quickly tuck the loose strands of my hair behind my ears, gazing around the crowded courtyard in an attempt to glimpse the King. "Perhaps I will," I murmur as a response. "And it's not like all these people are going to have to fight," I bow my head towards Harper who is training with Alex ten meters away. Her black hair is wind-swept and her eyes are glazed over with depression. It's not how a nine-year-old should ever look. It pains me to see her that way.

  Josh beams at me, illuminating his cheeks with a healthy glow. The downcast features and looming eye bags I have grown used to back in the rogue territory have since disappeared, leaving his skin a healthy pastel pigment.

  "They won't, but it's a precaution. Rogues are notorious for attacking when we least expect it," Josh explains, and I bow my head in understanding.

  "I would know," I reply, my teeth clenching together furiously. Images of the King falling to the cobblestone with empty eyes shivers into my mind, and I flinch. Blood stains my view as I throw down my sword, and trudge away from Josh.

  I need a better sword if I'm going to be on the front line of this war.

  "Hey, Aura!" Josh calls frantically from behind me, his tone slathered with concern. I don't look back. "Where're you going?"

  My fingers pinch with an unknown energy as I walk through the swarm of people, stepping to the left to dodge the path of a blade, and ducking to avoid a clumsy punch. The place is alive with anger and the stench of sweat, but it's a good atmosphere. It's the atmosphere created by a group of people who will never give up.

  "Damien," I address the King, who hurtles around with his sword, swinging it towards the base of my neck and resting it there. I feel a sharp nip as the metal threatens to break the skin, but the smile on Damien's face is the only reassurance that he's not going to kill me.

  "Really mature," I murmur with a roll of my eyes.

  Damien takes away his sword without hesitation, a fleeting look locked into his cobalt eyes. "What can I say?" He smirks, washing out the grin until it vanishes completely. He's panting from a hard day of training, hairline slick with a covering of sweat. "Anyway, what do you want, Aura?"

  "A new sword," I state bluntly. His expression remains the constant canvas of his handsome smirk, the corners of his lips not even twitching for a second to speak.

  "And to talk," I add, to which he reacts. To talk about why the hell every time I look at you I get butterflies, despite hating you.

  A shaky hand wavers up to his head, running through the fine dirty-gold tresses burdened on his scalp. His face is scattered with a heavy gathering of stubble, underlying the amount of time he has been distracted by his duties. "As a matter of fact, I need to talk to you as well," he replies with a steely silence. He drops the sword blatantly in the mud, thick liquid splashing up onto his human-made joggers: not the best clothes to train in.

  I raise an eyebrow. "Does this involve Hunter, because I'd rather not think about that arsehole right now."

  The male before me shakes his head in a quick motion, his short hair barely moving. "No. It's about... Something else. About... The war."

  His hesitation startles me, but I think nothing of it and bow my head slightly to continue to conversation. "Good. And they have to train using weapons other than swords. If we want to win, everyone needs to be able to use whatever weapon they can get their hands on." The words flood from my mouth like a torrent. "Not everyone's going to fight. I get the preparation, but surely the guards are more important to train. They're the ones protecting us."

  "I know," Damien sighs through his nostrils, elongating his nose for a second. Sunlight catches the rims of his eyelashes, sparking them up into an immense illuminated blonde shade. "But you must understand that these people have been training their whole lives."

  Damien paces impatiently ahead of me, his sword bouncing with every reverberating and laboured footfall. I catch up to him, matching my many small strides to his long ones.

  "Then why are they even training in the first place?" I ask, a mortified expression smothering my face. "We should be preparing for war – hell, we should protect the city, sending out patrols."

  Damien grits his teeth as he shoves his palms against the doors of the castle. The dark wood gives way immediately, swinging into the stone wall harshly, shards of rock cascading onto the floor. "We are. But these people have never fought rogues before. They haven't trained enough. They're not ready, mentally, and that's what I'm trying to prepare them for."

  My mouth is still pursed in confusion, but I allow the words to slowly sink into my skull, infiltrating my mind until I can separate them out and make sense of his speech.

  "You're preparing them mentally, for all the loss, destruction, and death we will face?" I enquire. In the blink of an eye, my body moves in front of him, halting his tracks. "Damien, you don't understand: no one - and I mean no one - can ever be prepared for that kind of loss." I of all people know that, I leave hanging in the air by an invisible thread.

  Damien barges past my shoulder, knocking the breath from my lungs. It's only now I realise how strong he truly is. Yes, he's almost killed me - twice, might I add - but even then I had been too enraged and caught up within my hatred to admire the power coursing through his nerves and receptors. He is the definition of power.

  "I know," he murmurs as he saunters ahead, clumsily marching up the stairs to the throne room. I'm unsure why we're in the castle in the first place, but I continue to follow, determined to have a proper conversation with him about the war. He chose me as his second in command for a reason. And I'm
sure as hell not going to let him down now.

  Only when we reach the throne room, the circular table an unrecognisable mess of map and pen markings, does he stop. I take into account his tousled, windswept strands of gold lining his scalp, and the dramatic flare of stress in his eyes. His face is toned scarlet, but whether that's from our excursion or something completely different, I do not know. He stinks of fresh snowfall and sweat, but it makes my heart skip a beat rather than shrivel my nose in disgust.

  Damien pauses for a second, intently studying the map with a concentrated, penetrating focus. His eyes scour over the feeble piece of paper, his hands beginning to twitch - no, tremble - uncontrollably. I want to reach an out take his hands to stop them from quivering. To tell him that everything will be ok.

  But I don't. My hands stay firmly plastered by my side, as if stuck there by an invisible force. Even when Damien surges forwards with a howling battle cry towards the table, they do not move.

  Damien slashes with his dagger at the paper, tearing a ginormous slit through the material. With another swipe, the paper is torn horizontally, separating mountains from forest and forest from battlefield. It's as if he's sketching the scars on his soul: each tear representing a broken and irreparable heart string.

  My eyes glower in horror as he continues wrecking the one vital source of information we have. Why is Damien behaving so strangely? Why is he acting like an arrogant toddler having a tantrum? Maybe he isn't as strong as I once thought.

  "Damien," I state quietly, but as the thud of the table being upturned reverberates through my eardrums, I have no choice but to raise my voice. "Damien!" I shout at the top of my lungs, finally grabbing his attention.

  His eyes glow yellow, a rabid colour as he shifts his head to glance at me. His chest rises and falls rapidly like waves, heaving as he attempts to calm his temper. His hands are now clenched fists by his side, no longer quivering with the static electricity of rage, the dagger having fallen from his tight grasp onto the floor.

  He steps forward, his eyes waning a pale gold, reflecting in the sun as it streams through one of the arched windows. But then I suddenly realise it's not his eyes that are refracting the light: it's tears.

  Holy shit.

  "Damien?" I mutter quietly, still and unmoving like a statue. "Are you ok?"

  Blood streaks from the King's palms as he extracts his claws, digging into the flesh to try and make him forget the pain I cannot see. "We're-" He begins, but his voice is too weak to continue the sentence. I don't know how to feel. Shocked? Vulnerable? "We're never going to win. We can't. I can't lead these people. I'm a crap King, and everyone will suffer for it."

  I take another wary step closer, close enough for me to reach out and take his hands. I uncurl his bloody fingertips, clasping them in my own filthy limbs as I stare at the light stubble freckling his jawline – he's taller than I had anticipated. I clench hard on his swollen palms, trying to reassure him that everything will be fine, even when we all know that the kingdom will fall, and us with it.

  "Don't you dare say that, Damien," I reply as strongly as I can, but his crumbling heart is causing mine to shatter with it. "You know you're a good King, and we are going to win this war. I promise you. This is what they want to happen. You're strong, don't let them get to you."

  Damien shakes his head, a frown forming across his handsome features. "Don't make promises you can't keep," he murmurs, the yellow in his orbs having completely disappeared. Something flickers behind the metallic flecks of his irises, sparking something deep within my soul. The sensation grows as he pulls closer to me, shifting his hands so that he's gripping my own, rather than the other way around. My skin ignites where he touches it.

  "I'm not, Damien," I say, but his precise and powerful presence causes my voice to come out as a hushed whisper. "I'm no-"

  I'm interrupted as his lips crash onto mine.

  His actions take me by surprise, and for a moment, I'm too shocked to move. Too stunned to shift even an inch.

  I don't know how to feel: my mind is endlessly spinning in a torrent of emotions, drowning out my thoughts as my eyesight begins to fade. I can see him and only him. Nothing else exists. We are the world, and everything else is a non-existent, empty vacuum.

  Do I like Damien? Why is he kissing me? Are two out of the thousands of thoughts hurtling through my brain.

  It's not until I realise that I'm kissing him back, that I can answer my questions.

  His hands reach around the small of my back, hungrily pulling me closer as I reach up my bloody fingertips to run a hand through his tresses: they're softer than I expect.

  Damien's hand abruptly reaches up to my face, cupping the scarred flesh delicately. Lightning ignites and sparks fly where his skin meets mine, the infinite boundary a surging wildfire of flame and inferno. My body is tingling and alive, as if a thousand live wires have been strapped onto every single nerve ending in my figure.

  Damien is the spark. And now I feel like I'm burning alive with lust and impulse.

  And the way I'm feeling can only mean one thing: I like Damien. I'm attracted to him too much for my own good. This feeling – the feeling that causes butterflies to flutter in my stomach – is something that's been welling up for weeks. It's something I can't ignore.

  The truth hits me like a truck, knocking the air from my lungs until I feel like I'm suffocating on my own breath. There's a reason I haven't been able to figure out my feelings. It's because I had already figured them out, without even realising it. I have never liked Josh like that, because I liked Damien (of all people) instead.

  But the truth confuses me. Damien had held a knife at my neck and threatened to kill me. He had almost killed me - twice. He hates my guts, my attitude; everything about me. So why do I have these feelings? After all we have been through, Damien is the one person I would never expect to end up liking. Never.

  Despite the war raging within my brain, I feel my hands pull him closer, gripping his face with both of my palms. I can't help but feel...

  Alive. And let's face it, I haven't felt that way in a long time.

  His rough lips move against mine with a burning passion, and although the whole scene seems to take up a decade, the action lasts three seconds before we're forced to pull away by a voice.

  "Aura?" The distinct tone calls up the stairs, and the person enters the room before Damien and I have the time to fully pull away. "I just wanted to ask if yo-" Josh begins, but his sentence automatically fades as he notices the close proximity of mine and Damien's bodies.

  Josh's face flares up with a hidden pain. He tries his best to conceal the effects of his shattering heart, but it's no use. Tears already stain his wet eyes, giving him the appearance of someone who knows much more than their years.

  For the first time in my life, I feel the faint twinge as a chord inside me snaps. I have broken him, possibly beyond repair.

  How could I do this to him? How could I do this to my best friend?

  "Josh," I say, my voice inaudible and poison to my own ears. My legs rapidly move towards him, but he turns the corner with haste.

  I sprint to the doorway, but it's no use: he's already disappeared into oblivion.

  15 | Azra

  ❝In the end, all she was was cracked glass waiting to be shattered.❞

  When someone irrationally knocks at the door, thumping with a hurtling inner energy, I almost jump out of my skin. Despite the battles I have been through and the wars I have witnessed, I still can't help myself as my heart skips a beat, reminding me that I'm human. Well, half human.

  "Who is it?" I call from the empty room, my voice effortlessly rebounding off the cobblestone walls of my room.

  Damien had made sure that I got my own room when the Alpha Trials concluded, and although I had argued against it - mostly because I wanted to be closer to Josh, not Damien - it now felt like my home. Home. Something I have not had in a long, long time.

  No one replies, the eerie silence stirring m
y thoughts like a deadly concoction. The hollow sense in my skull does nothing to numb my thoughts, but someone is definitely at the door. Someone who doesn't want me to know who they are.