Lord of the Wolfyn rhos-3

by Jessica Andersen

  It wasn’t the first time she had thought achingly that Dayn could be the love of her life. But it was the first time that she had thought that maybe, possibly, they could make it work. Always before, even if she could believe they would make it through the retaking of Elden, she hadn’t been able to picture herself as the consort of a prince. Now, though… Her thoughts soared as he drew his lips from hers, then kissed her cheek, her forehead.

  Then he took a step away from her, toward the trail leading up, and held out his hand in invitation. “Come with me, my sweet Reda. Have faith. Be brave.”

  She flashed on the image of the woodsman asking Red to leave everything and everyone she knew and come away with him, without making any real changes in his own life. Before, she had thought it unfair. Now, she saw that sometimes it was the only answer. “I—Look out!” she screamed, catching sudden sight of a gray-buff blur flying down the lowest section of the trail toward him, then leaping.

  He spun instantly to meet the attack, but he had only just started to pull his sword when the huge wolfyn hit him and took him down with a terrible snarl.

  She grabbed for her bow, but it wrenched in her grip, looped across her neck, and she found herself yanked back by the strings, which cut into her. “No!” Panic hammered through her as rough hands grabbed her and dragged her away from where the huge wolfyn—she thought it was Kenar—was ripping at Dayn, tearing at him. She saw blood, heard him shout…and then, worse, go limp and silent. She surged toward him, screaming, “Dayn!”

  There wasn’t any answer.

  HE HEARD HER AS IF FROM afar, as if in a dream that he didn’t want to waken from, because his conscious self was in agony. Dying. Maybe already dead.

  Fight, damn it. You can’t leave her to the pack. The inner voice was his own, the sentiment a noble one, but it seemed too late. He was drifting, his consciousness split from his physical self. He was looking down on himself, watching as Kenar stood atop his deathly still body, lifted his bloodstained muzzle to the sky and howled the victory while the vortex started to pick up speed in the background, going from air to white vapors.

  The rest of the pack stood ringing him in a mix of wolf and human forms, with Reda pushed off to the edge and watched by four guards, two of each form. She was white-faced and shaking, tears running down her face as she stared at the carnage. He looked for their sole ally, but Keely wasn’t there. Where was she? Had Kenar figured out that she had aided in their escape?

  Gods, Dayn thought. Please. Not yet. Give me just a little more time to put things right. He strained toward his body, trying to put himself back in the ragged flesh that had once been a man.

  Sensing a glimmer of pain, he pushed all his energy in that direction, all the magic he could find within his incorporeal self. Agony lashed through him and the scene below dimmed as he was pulled back into the shell of his dying body.

  He tried to call more magic, to complete the connection, but he needed something more. He strained and struggled as Kenar barked a command and the pack shifted, eddying as Reda’s guards brought her forward. Panic lashed through Dayn, and for a second he thought he felt a flutter of his too-still heart. Please, gods. Put me back in my body so I can save her and fulfill my oath.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then an inner voice boomed, Will you sacrifice your future to do it? The voice wasn’t his own, wasn’t his father’s, wasn’t anything he had ever heard before. It was deep, powerful and terrifying, and he thought it came from the realm of the gods, or perhaps the Abyss. It was that all-encompassing.

  “Yes,” Dayn whispered, somehow forcing the word from between his corpse’s cold lips. “Absolutely yes.” This was his lesson, his warning—he had started to be the selfish man again in trying to take Reda with him. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. “I swear it.”

  Power flared suddenly, wrapping around him, yanking him from his distant perch and thrusting him into his dying body. Only it wasn’t dying anymore. Magic washed through him, bathing his body and kick-starting his heart, which flopped for a few moments within his chest, but then took on its native, life-giving rhythm.

  Pain! It hit him like a new vortex, sucking him down and threatening to send him flying once more above the agony of it all. But he dug in and gutted it out, sending all the magic he could muster toward his birthright powers. His gums burned; his secondary canines sharpened and extended, piercing the tender flesh and descending to touch the inside of his lower lip. Warmth flowed through him, knitting bones, healing flesh and organs and beating back the pain. Faster, faster, he chanted inwardly. Hurry!

  Lacking his bird’s-eye view, he was forced to crack his eyelids and peer through blurry eyes to see Kenar, now in human form, standing over Reda, who was on her knees, forced there by her human-form guards while the two wolf forms stood back, bristling. Dayn knew all four, knew they would follow their alpha’s orders without question. And he dreaded the empty, soulless look in Kenar’s eyes as he stared down at her.

  “I claim the rights of a guest,” she said, lifting her chin to glare at Kenar, face white and drawn. “You have to grant me shelter and safety. It’s tradition.”

  The alpha’s eyes didn’t even flicker. “That would have worked on my sire, or even my softhearted whore of a sister, but not on me. I’m pack law now, not a bunch of moldy old traditions that lured a witch and her creatures to come into our realm and attack us. And my law says there are no guests anymore. There are only the wolfyn and their enemies.” He turned away, tossing over his shoulder, “Kill her.”

  Reda screamed as the guards dragged her to her feet.

  “Hold!” Dayn bellowed, lunging to his feet and yanking his short sword with one hand, his crossbow with the other. He swept the crowd and snarled, showing his blood drinker’s fangs.

  Reda’s face lit and she gave a low, glad cry. “Dayn!”

  The wolfyn flinched back, ears flat and lips pulling back in snarls of their own. All but Kenar, who rounded on him, eyes lighting with cruel joy. “Bloodsucker,” he hissed. “Back for more?”

  The bastard had left him partly alive on purpose, testing to see if he would heal.

  Not letting his hand shake at what he was about to do, Dayn pointed his sword at the alpha’s throat. “I claim the Right of Challenge.”

  Reda’s eyes widened and her lips shaped the words Right of Challenge, though no sound emerged.

  Kenar barked a laugh. “Bullshit. A bloodsucker can’t challenge to lead the pack. Only a wolfyn has wolfyn rights.”

  “I know.” Dayn looked at Reda, and said, “Remember this if you remember nothing else good about me—I’m sorry for everything.” Because what happened next would destroy the slim chance they’d had at a future. Just like the voice had said.

  Exhaling against the sudden stab of pain brought by the knowledge, he did the something he had avoided since his first blood moon, when he had realized what his parents’ spell had really done to him when it sent him to the wolfyn realm.

  He called on his other magic. And changed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  REDA’S SCREAM WAS BURIED beneath the tumult that arose from the wolfyn as Dayn’s form blurred, widened, shifted, shortened…and then crystallized into a huge wolfyn.

  Dayn was a wolfyn. Oh, God. No. This isn’t possible. It’s not happening. But shaking her head didn’t clear the sight, and she was beyond thinking any of this was a dream. Or, in this case, a nightmare. Its—his—fur was dark, nearly black, which made the reddish shoulder patch and golden dorsal stripe stand out like a visual shout. And when he drew back his lips to snarl at Kenar, his canines were longer than those of any of the others, and wickedly pointed. A vampire trapped, temporarily at least, in a wolf’s body.

  “Noooo.” The word escaped from Reda on a low, anguished moan as the structure of her unreal reality crashed to pieces around her and she saw the past few days for what they had been.

  Dayn’s brilliant eyes—emerald green, not the amber of the others’—flicked to
her at the noise, but she couldn’t find any human emotion in them. His words rang inside her: I’m sorry for everything.

  He wasn’t just talking about her being caught up in his family’s magic, or even about him having kept yet another huge secret from her. He was apologizing for what he had done to her over the past two days.

  The bastard had enthralled her.

  Shame. Rage. Heartbreak. She didn’t know what to feel, what to focus on within the huge wave of emotion that slammed through her as the pack struggled to deal with this new shift in the balance of power.

  Kenar recovered quickly from the surprise. He might have paled, but his sneer didn’t lose any of its oily, predatory nature. It made her think of the wolfyn in the book, the villain… And that made her see how Dayn wasn’t the woodsman, after all.

  He was the wolf.

  He was the seducer, the tempter. And she had fallen hard for the temptation.

  “A challenge?” Kenar waved the others back, and the pack members cleared out. Within seconds, he and Dayn were facing each other in the middle of a cleared circle. “You think the pack will accept you as their leader now? I don’t think so. And don’t look to Keely for any help this time. She was outcast for helping you. Last I saw, she was hauling ass away from a big silver loner.” Kenar’s sneer turned even nastier. “He’s probably caught up to her by now. Wonder if she’s having fun? Those loners don’t get a chance at many bitches.”

  Dayn growled low in his throat and began circling toward Kenar, trying to flank him.

  The alpha, still in human form, moved to stay opposite him, openly taunting now. “Were you planning on handing things over to my weak slut of a sister? You think that’s going to be any—” He morphed abruptly, dropped to a crouch and leaped with a feral roar as Dayn did the same.

  The two huge creatures thudded together midair and went down snarling in a flurry of fur, raking claws and snapping jaws. Blood sprayed and one of the combatants yowled, and then they were surging to their feet, up onto their hind legs to come together again, smashing into each other like fighting rams going for a head butt, only with gaping jaws and wickedly sharp teeth.

  Growls and excited yips came from the crowd, and more than one of the human forms went wolf, as if the experience was better in fur.

  Reda’s stomach roiled; she had to breathe through her mouth to stem the surging nausea that came from the potent mix of fear, disgust and upset rocketing through her.

  Enthralled. God.

  That explained why she had fallen so hard so fast, didn’t it? And even now that she knew the truth, she wasn’t free of his spell. She couldn’t be, because her eyes were fixed on the fight and her heart was lodged in her throat.

  She hated the sight of blood wetting his thick, dark coat when he and Kenar next parted. She hated the thought of his lean, beautiful body taking on new scars. And she hated how the other wolfyn were watching him with cold, hard eyes that suggested that even if he won his fight, he wouldn’t live to claim his prize. She wanted to put herself between Dayn and the others, warding them off with her body while snarling, Mine.

  Even more, some part of her drank in the sight of him in his wolf form: how his thick black coat shimmered over his muscles and caught the light as he reared up and lunged for his enemy; and how his eyes flashed like emerald-green flame when the combatants came together chest to chest, snapping and snarling. The sight of curving, elongated and wickedly pointed canines stirred her deep inside, and the way he moved so elegantly, like a fighter, like the largest of predators, brought the same whisper of, Mine.

  And she had to get out of here. Because if she stayed any longer, she might never escape his spell.

  But how could she leave? She was surrounded, disarmed, her bow and arrows tossed aside. Mind racing, she scanned the scene. She caught a blur of motion from the trees near the waterfall, another from a stand of middle growth nearby, but then nothing, making her think it had been a bird.

  Her captors were all in their wolfish forms now, glued to the fight as Dayn rose over Kenar and slammed down atop him, driving the alpha to the ground. Teeth flashed, blood sprayed and Kenar screeched in pain. When he next stood, he was panting and dragging a foreleg. Dayn, too, was injured; he was bleeding from a deep gash on his shoulder, and the blood spattering the ground beneath him said that there were other wounds hidden by his dark fur. But he lunged first, drove Kenar back and followed him down with a flash of bloodstained teeth.

  The brutal, meaty crunch that followed was the most sickening thing Reda had ever heard, and she gagged as Kenar spasmed and went gruesomely limp.

  And then that slurp-crunch instantly dropped to the second most sickening thing she had ever heard as Dayn topped it by planting his front paws on Kenar’s body, lifting his blood-streaked black muzzle to the sky and loosing a terrifying and self-satisfied howl of victory.

  Awwwoooooo. The noise reached inside her, making her want to scream and claw at her own skin. Or maybe that was the knowledge that she had lain with a creature, a killer. Her heart tore as she stared at him, his wolf form gorgeous, terrifying…and entirely enthralling.

  He howled again and nausea flared suddenly, and she clapped a hand over her mouth and turned away. Two of her huge wolfyn guards flanked her as she ran blindly from the circle with no real destination in mind except away. She needed to get away from the sight of his gorgeous emerald eyes, away from the wild, feral glory in his howl, away from the burning desire to turn back.

  The guards herded her toward the trailhead, near where her bow and arrows had been tossed. One nudged her toward the weapons. The other turned back to the pack, silver-white fur bristling as if he were protecting her rather than holding her captive.

  Wait. Silver?

  Reda looked down at the wolfyn nearest her, thought she saw something familiar in its eyes. “Keely?”

  The creature nodded, then nudged her forcibly toward the weapons, the pathway. She whuffed an almost-word that sounded like, “Go.”

  And then there was a sudden howl of alarm, a scramble of feet, and Reda looked up to see the pack reorienting on her, Keely and the silver-backed male.

  Reda exploded into motion. She grabbed her bow and arrows and bolted for the trail. Behind her, a feral snarl sounded the attack as the Scratch-Eye pack came after her, and Keely and her loner friend tried to fend them off, and only partially succeeded. They stalled some of the wolfyn, but others came on.

  Reda ran for her life. Her legs and lungs hurt; the wolfsbene helped, but would it be enough? Please, God. Gods. Whoever you are, she thought brokenly as she hit the trail and started up with a half dozen beasts behind her and gaining.

  “Hold!” The word cracked commandingly, halting the wolfyn in their tracks.

  She couldn’t help herself. Recognizing Dayn’s voice, she stopped halfway up and looked back. Her heart shuddered at the sight of him standing over Kenar’s body, both of them now morphed back to their human forms, one alive, one dead.

  Dayn was wearing the same clothing he had been in when he morphed—how did that work?—and for a nanosecond he looked like the panel in her book that showed the woodsman standing over the slain wolf, triumphant at having saved the girl.

  It was the truth, yet not.

  Their eyes met, and even across the distance the contact struck sparks inside her. “Oh, Dayn,” she whispered, heart hurting.

  “For gods’ sake go, Reda. Get out of here.” He didn’t shout the words, but she heard them clearly in her head, in her heart. And she just as clearly saw the pack orienting on him, bristling as the excitement of the fight cleared and they remembered that he was both their sworn enemy and now their leader.

  This was about to get ugly, Reda thought. But even as her body—traitor as it was—sent her two steps back down the trail, a full-throated roar of sound and energy geared up above her, drowning out even her own sobbing breaths.

  She didn’t need to look to know what that meant: the vortex was fully formed. If she was going t
o leave, she had to do it now.

  And, oh, dear God, she needed to leave.

  Tears blurring her eyes, she spun and bolted up the remainder of the path.

  She heard Dayn shout her name, but she didn’t look back. Couldn’t. She could only look ahead of herself.

  The narrow stone bridge that formed the archway was higher than it had looked from the ground, the drop scarier, the pathway itself narrower—little more than a two-foot-wide span in places and crumbling at its sides. But where only a few days earlier she had balked at the rope bridge, now she strode across the crumbling stone archway without fear.

  She wasn’t sure if she was too scared to be scared anymore, having been vaccinated by repeated terror, but as she looked down into the dark center of the vortex, her only real thought was, Well, here goes nothing. There was no anticipation as she called the spell to mind and visualized her apartment kitchen, which seemed suddenly small and stale rather than safe. But she couldn’t stay in the wolfyn realm and she didn’t want to go with Dayn anymore. Not now.

  She glanced over, saw the pack gathered around Dayn as if awaiting orders and felt her heart break.

  And she jumped into the whirlwind that would take her away.

  REDA! DAYN WATCHED her fall, felt the vortex surge deep in his bones and knew she was gone. He felt it in the emptiness inside him, the hollow spaces he hadn’t even recognized until the past few days.

  Agony hammered through him—not the pain that had come with the change, but from the way she had looked at him when he transformed, and again when he killed Kenar. The world was better with the bastard dead, but he wished there had been another way. There hadn’t been, though, which left him with a pissed-off, leaderless pack and no time to waste.

  Tearing his eyes from the archway, he refocused on the pack, not liking the way Kenar’s main lieutenants were closing on him, though there seemed to be some sort of commotion going on at the back, over where Reda had broken through. Maybe he had an ally or two, after all. Too bad one or two allies weren’t going to do a damn thing when the other forty-something went for his throat.