When she finally chanced a glance at his face, he was studying her, his blue eyes taking her in with cold ferocity. “We value strength, our kind.”
“Then you may as well kill me now, or leave me here to die,” she said, her throat tightening. If her new home was to be worse than this, worse than the traitors sent to protect her, she did not wish to go there.
“You underestimate yourself.” He strapped his sword to his side, though he hadn’t unsheathed it the entire time they’d been pursued by his fellow wolves. “You don’t believe that you would rather die. And you do have strength.”
“We’ve only just met. I hardly think you can be a reliable judge of my character,” she said with a dismissive wave. She marched a few paces away, then stopped, realizing she knew not where to go. He followed her, and his hands, large and warm, fell heavy on her shoulders.
His breath stirred the hair at her temple as he leaned close to her ear. “If you truly felt death was the better option, you wouldn’t have fought Jeoffrey.”
As suddenly as he’d grabbed her, he released her, walking ahead through the forest. She hurried to catch up with him.
Though he hadn’t told her of his plans, she recognized the place where the river bent when they came upon it a good while later. “This is the damn near the village,” she exclaimed. “Are we going to the village?”
“We are,” he replied tightly. “Through it, more like.”
“But we could hire horses there! And food!” She hurried to catch up to him, wondering why he did not look as enthusiastic as she at the prospect of riding instead of wandering lost through the forest.
“Have you money, my lady? I have none. What little I had is in a bag, tied to my horse’s saddle. Except for this.” He reached into his doublet and pulled out a pouch with a few coins. “We have a long journey ahead of us, so we must use our resources as wisely as we can.”
“Exactly how long a journey?” she stepped delicately over a thorny vine, her skirts held up, but they still caught on the barbs. “I thought Blackens Gate was a day’s ride.”
“A day’s ride, my lady. Not a day’s walk. And only then on the roads that are not safe for us to travel. We will keep to the forest, scavenge what we can, and reach home in three more nights.”
“Three more…” Aurelia shook her head. She could not bear more days of endless walking, when this one was not even finished. She could not sleep on the cold ground in the same muddy, mildewed dress. Her body ached and she longed for the bumpy cart ride she’d set out upon.
“Aurelia,” he said gently, in a kinder tone than he’d shown her all day. “It is the safest way.”
She stumbled on, her legs aching. They reached the village when the sun was high in the sky. Though she longed to stop and rest, he only halted long enough to purchase a small amount of food and a jug of ale. The entire time, he bade her keep the cloak over her head to obscure her face.
“There are too many who might recognize you this close to your home, and your father may have already inquired here about you. Let them think you a leper, if any come close.”
A leper indeed! Her face sweated beneath the heavy fur and she kept her eyes on her feet, for she had nothing to look at besides. Raf dragged her by the wrist from stop to stop, down the road until she could no longer hear the sounds of the village, and then he uncovered her. They left the road and followed a disused hunting trail for a bit, then finally stopped at an abandoned campsite. A ring of mossy stones marked a circle for a leaf-filled hearth, and the skeleton of a crude shelter stood with its back to the forest. Raf pulled two apples from the sack he’d acquired in the village, and passed one to her. He pulled the stopper from the jug and set the ale before her.
“Is this where we’ll stay for the night?” she asked, though she knew her hope was in vain. It was not close to sundown. But while the cape had made her overly warm in the village, she now longed for a fire to warm her stiff fingers. A deep chill still gripped her from her plunge in the river, though her eyes felt alarmingly feverish.
He did not answer. She looked to him, her brow drawn down in puzzlement, and was immediately contrite. He sat on the hard ground, his false leg lying in the leaves beside him, his braies rolled back to reveal the stump of his missing leg. An angry blister had formed on one knobbed prominence, and the angry seam of a scar bisected a mottle purple bruise.
As if he could feel her stare, he looked up and quickly covered his deformity with his woolen bandage, sounding a bit embarrassed as he explained, “I should have left it on. It’s always worse once you take it off, if you can’t rest it.”
“We could rest,” she suggested, feeling foolish for worrying about her cold hands when he struggled on such a painful injury. “You needn’t tax yourself.”
“I think tarrying would be unwise.” He reached for the iron leg and positioned it over his stump, deftly folding the straps over each other. “I am sorry you have only a cripple to guide you.”
His rueful laugh, she knew, was meant to put her at ease at his expense. She would not accept such charity from him, no matter how it might soothe his wounded pride. “Don’t be absurd. You’ve proven yourself more than capable.”
They ate in silence, Aurelia grimacing at the bite of the coarse ale, and resumed their travels.
It was near nightfall when a new and ferocious wind brought them the baying of wolves and dogs alike.
Raf stiffened at the sound and lifted his face to the sky.
“Is it them?” she whispered, clutching at his sleeve.
He made a motion to silence her, still turned intently into the growing winds. Finally, he answered her, in a hushed tone she could barely make out over the slap of the angry air all around them. “It is, my lady. But they are upwind, and will not catch our scent. We must move quickly. If you’ll permit me…”
She did not have a chance to deny him. He lifted her in his arms and tucked her over his shoulder, beside the sack of food, and broke into a run.
He did not run as men did, all jarring and clumsy on the treacherous ground. Aurelia did not have much experience being carried in such a way, but she was certain no man could be as graceful when hurdling logs and picking over bracken, and Raf with a missing leg. The speed was dizzying, like nothing Aurelia had ever seen before. The baying of the hounds died, lost to distance, she prayed, and to the cruel wind that drove through her tangled hair. She squeezed her eyes shut, afraid of the pace at which he ran, faster than any horse had ever galloped, she was certain. Yet never afraid that he would drop her. The thought was so unbelievable as to be ridiculous.
When he stopped, he breathed heavily. “I am sorry, my lady. I can go no farther. It is not only my leg that pains me. The forest is too dark to continue safely, and the wind has shifted. A storm is coming.”
The chill Aurelia already felt deepened at those words. “What kind of a storm?”
He sniffed the air, the way a hound would. That, of all the amazing feats she had witnessed, reminded her that he was not human, not solely. He shook his head. “Snow, for certain. Forgive me, but I do not believe we will reach shelter.”
“What will we do?” Talons of panic gripped her scalp, sending tremors of fear to match the shivers of cold already wracking her body.
“We will take cover here,” he said grimly, limping about the small area between the trees that surrounded them. “Find what you can, branches, boughs, anything, and quickly.”
“For making a fire?” she asked, though she knew she dared not hope. They may have lost their pursuers for now, but a fire would serve as a beacon to her father’s hounds.
Then again, what harm might it be for her father’s men to find her? Perhaps they would take her home…
To be sent back with the terrible Jeoffrey and Clement and Margaret Lackey, and without Raf to protect her. Her father would see him hanged from the battlements for abducting her, wolf-Lord’s son or no. He would do it regardless of Aurelia’s testimony to the contrary, to spite Lord Cani
s and his people. And she would still be sent to them, a lamb into a den of wolves.
Raf paused in his work to reply, “No fire.”
The forest was black and the snow had begun to fall, invisible flakes brushing her cheeks. “I cannot see,” she whispered to Raf in the darkness.
A warm hand closed over hers firmly, pulling her through the blackness. “Here, kneel down,” Raf instructed her, and she did. “Crawl forward.”
From the branches that snagged at her hair and brushed her sides, she recognized that he’d built them some shelter, at least, from the coming storm. Pine boughs pricked her palms as she crawled.
“It isn’t as comfortable as an inn, I’m afraid, but it will do.” Raf’s voice came from close behind her, and he settled beside her in the space.
She turned and sat, her knees drawn up to her chest. The wind blasted through the boughs beside her cheek, but she knew it would be twice as ferocious outside. The knowledge that they were in far more danger than he’d yet to admit was not lost to her. Maiden she might be, but with eyes and ears that had seen men come to her father’s table with blackened fingers from the cold and tales of horses dropping dead, frozen beneath them.
In the darkness, she found his hand and took it in hers, squeezing his fingers with her own cold, aching ones. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until you’ve met my brother,” he said with a grim laugh. He pulled his hand away. “Try to sleep.”
Rolling to her side, she settled against her hard bed.
It was sometime in the night that he woke her from the slow, sonorous thud of her own blood in her ears and the pleasant heavy warmth in her limbs.
“Wake up. Aurelia, wake.” He shook her a bit, then pulled her, and she moved as if weightless across the ground. Above her, he cursed, “Damn me for a fool.”
It was only when she met with actual warmth that she realized how very cold she was. The cloak she’d been sleeping under chilled her now, as he set it against her bare back. When had she disrobed? The hazy memory returned to her, of tossing in her sleep, growing far too warm. The slippery thought clouded her mind again, that the shelter was too warm, he’d built it too well, and how thankful she was he hadn’t allowed a fire.
He pressed against her, a strong arm around her back. “Please,” he whispered against her hair, and her heart ached that she could not help him with whatever he begged of her. “Please.”
Chapter Four
As the snows battered his hastily built shelter, he held her. He kept his attention turned to the pine bough walls that met in a peak, balanced on a long sapling he’d uprooted and set in the crotch of the tree behind him. Foolishly, he’d thought they would be safe from the cold. He had been. Aurelia, with her slight frame and no understanding of survival out of doors, had not.
He should have stayed awake, to watch over her. But the walk had been so long, and he had not slept easy the night before. Though his mind was just as troubled and his body twice as painful, he had somehow drowsed, lulled by the softness of her so near to him. When he’d awoken to find her uncovered, the fur cloak thrown aside, her kirtle and chemise balled at her feet, he’d thought her already dead. In that moment, he’d known true fear for the first time since they’d taken his leg.
He’d feared for her, on this journey, he could not pretend otherwise. He’d feared for her before he’d met her, a maiden thrown to the wolves. But every action he’d taken had been from worry for himself, what would become of him. Seeing her lying there, blue with cold, he’d taken on his worry for her as his own crusade, and the thought of his failure meaning her death had been unthinkable.
So, he’d done the only thing he knew. He’d covered them both with the cloak and held her close to him, his undertunic and doublet thrown aside, warming her with his own skin.
She stirred, mumbling against his neck, and he breathed a sigh of relief even as tension of another kind disturbed him. It had been three long years since they’d taken his leg, three long years in which no woman in the castle would have him, even for a night. He gritted his teeth as her knee wriggled between his thighs and she huddled closer, seeking more warmth. It was a fair enough sign that she felt the cold, torment though it might be to him to have her, all soft and light tucked beside him. His cock strained at his braies, and it took all of his effort not to press it against her hip.
She was his brother’s wife! Though he’d surprised himself at his efforts in fleeing Margaret and Clement, he was no match for the physical strength of his brother, not in combat. He wondered at that, had at least a hundred times since he’d plunged into the river. If Jeoffrey had defiled her, and had challenged Roderick for the right to mate her, he might have won. Would it have come out better for her? Jeoffrey would have guarded such a prize jealously. Roderick could not be counted upon to keep her safe from the others in the pack. Not the males, who would seek to bed her and humiliate her for the crime of being human. Not the females, who would shun her and revile her for marrying one of theirs.
The memory of Aurelia’s screams came back to him, and the desperate way her slippers had scrabmbled in the dirt beneath Jeoffrey’s wide back as he’d held her down. No, it would not have been better.
If Roderick did not value her, after all of this…
Aurelia’s eyes opened to feverish slits. “I am too warm. Please, let me up.”
“You are not,” he reminded her, remembering the soothing tone of his childhood nurse. “The feeling of warmth will pass, and you will be cold again, a hundred times over.”
“I need a cup. Where is that girl?” she lifted a hand weakly, then placed it against his chest as she slipped back into sleep.
He pressed his cheek to her forehead. She sweated, but her skin still chilled his. A sound of pain came from her lips and for a moment she panted against him.
To try and ease her, if she could hear him, he began to speak. “I was once in a similar condition,” he began. “I was…oh, seven years old. Now that I think on it, that’s terrifying. What was I doing, seven years old, alone in the woods? But somehow I was. I remember it was a hunting party, we were going to hunt down a Christmas boar. My mother didn’t want my father to take me with him. She was heavy with Roderick then, so I think he took me to keep me from making a nuisance of myself while he was gone. I got separated from my horse, and I didn’t know my way. It got dark, and I remember it was…so hot. I felt like I was boiling alive in my clothes. I took them all off and laid down right in the snow. Father found me not long later, God be praised, and they took me home. I remember thinking, ‘I’ll never be warm.’ But I don’t remember much else, except that in six days it was Christmas and we had a fat roast boar on the table.”
When his words ended, silence fell in the little shelter. He listened to her breathing, felt her body beside his, her soft breasts pressed against his ribs and decided he could bear no more. He summoned the change from deep within, viewing it as a separate thing from the primal fire that came with it. He caged that, as surely as a huntsman caged a distempered hound, and let the change come over himself without violence. In his wolf form, almost too large for the shelter, he curled carefully around her and slept.
While he slept, he did not dream, but his exhaustion was not so total that he did not wake to the restlessness of her body. He changed forms once more, a man again at her side, and tucked the fur cape around them. She arched a little in his arms, and wriggled as she fought her way up from sleep. His cock filled, recalling the ache that his reprieve from human form had not completely erased. He was a man again, and he wanted her.
She gasped softly at her realization of the waking world. Pushing at his chest, she sat up, knocking loose snow and a branch that sheltered them.
“Calm yourself,” he told her patiently, reaching up to tuck the branch back. She stared in wonder or horror at the snow that had fallen in to dust the fur cape. He brushed it away. “You became far too cold in the night. I woke to find you naked, nearly frozen on top of the cloak t
hat should have kept you warm.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I thought I would freeze when I went to sleep. I never would have…”
“It is a strange impulse, my lady, not uncommon from those who do freeze.” He would not worry over what she might suspect. It meant nothing to him, as he knew the truth.
Bringing her knees to her chest beneath the cloak, she gathered the fur to her shoulders. “Would you tell your brother this? When you tell him of the journey, will you tell him that you saw me thus?”
“I would perhaps paint it in fairer terms,” he said with a small smile that he could not help. “I would say instead that his bride took a severe chill and needed to be warmed.”
“Would it be that easy?” she asked, biting her thumbnail.
“Nothing that concerns my brother is ever easy.” He reached for his doublet and pulled it on, then realized too late that he could not flee their shared shelter, not yet. “Damn!”
He was acutely aware of her stare as he reached down to the mouth of the shelter, to retrieve the cold iron he’d foolishly allowed to freeze. He could not put it on now, the metal would burn his skin with the cold, even through the wool bandage. He laid it atop the cloak, between them. “It has to warm, before I can put it on.”
Aurelia reached for her kirtle, holding the cloak modestly to her chest. Her silvery hair brushed her back as she bent, and Raf thought, before he could catch himself, of lifting that mass in his hands as he kissed up the ladder of her spine.
“The cold has changed our course,” he told her, his throat gone dry at the sight of the long column of her neck as she stretched it. He pictured it bruised from his brother’s hands, as it no doubt would be soon. “We will carry on until the nearest sign of a village or town. If our heading was correct, and I suspect that it is, we will be able to reach it by nightfall. There, I will bribe someone with the promise of my father’s gold, into giving us either horses or sending word ahead to my father. We should be able to wait there, in at least some comfort until my father sends someone for us.”
Brlde of the Wolf Page 3
