by S. A. Swann
Her hand was tiny against his skull, and she realized that she had allowed this beast to mate with her. She had torn the leg off an elk and had eaten it. She rubbed her face and found that there were still traces of dried elk blood on her. The whole day was some horrible nightmare—more horrible because of how attracted she was to it. To what she was.
At least she hadn’t fallen into the trap Lucina had, trying for a human husband when she wasn’t human. Darien might be a killer, but he had reason. If she could get the Order to go away, to hunt other lands for their wolves, they could have Lucina’s woods for their own. There would be an endless supply of game to feed them and their children.
I just have to give up everything …
She needed to do what she could about that, while she had time. She also needed to say good-bye to her family, tell her mother that she had found one of her own to be with. She glanced up at the darkening sky and sighed. She slipped out from under his head and stood up. Darien opened one groggy eye at her and half-growled, “You’re mine now.”
She crouched before him and said, “I know.”
Shouldn’t I be happier?
He made a contented grumble and closed his eye again.
“You sleep,” she said. “I’ll be back.”
I have nowhere else to go.
She walked over to where they had left their clothes. She stared at hers for a long time. This morning she had been consumed with embarrassment just watching Darien disrobe. Now her own clothes seemed alien to her, so divorced from her experience that for a moment she couldn’t clearly envision their purpose.
She bit her lip and shook, hugging herself.
It would be so easy to let it all slip away—everything she was, the person she had been. But even if it had been a lie, it was who she was. She didn’t want to lose that.
But what choice did she have when such an animal lived inside her?
She dressed hurriedly, afraid that she would lose the will to go back and do right by her human family. They deserved better than to be abandoned without a word of explanation. But all the while, she had to wipe tears and blood off her face.
When she glanced back at Darien, his golden fur had become red-tinged in the evening light.
What else did she have?
She came within sight of her cottage just as the sky faded from red to purple. She had spent the walk back rehearsing what she would say to her family, how she would explain shedding her human identity to be with someone who was the same as her.
She just wished she could stop crying.
She didn’t understand what she felt. It made no sense. Darien had to be right that it was fate, some special providence by God that had brought her to him. How else would she ever have found another like her? How else could she avoid her mother’s fate?
But why did it weigh on her heart as if something tragic had happened? She was mourning the loss of things she had never had in the first place. Crying over the loss of her old life made no more sense than crying over not being raised in one of the families of the szlachta, or not being born a man, or being too tall.
She was what she was. What was done was done. Pray as she might, neither would ever change.
She thanked God that she hadn’t broken down like this in front of Darien. Wolf he might be, but she had known men like him. Men who demanded submission, but who also despised weakness. Her doubt, her tears would enrage him, and he was volatile enough without any encouragement.
And why did that make her think of Lukasz?
“What did you do to him, Darien?” she whispered to herself as she reached the open front gate. Her thoughts were prepared to descend a very dark path when her brother’s voice called to her.
“Maria!” She looked up to the doorway and saw Władysław running toward her. He scooped her up and hugged her. “We were so frightened for you, with this beast roaming the woods.”
“I’m fine.” She patted her brother’s back and looked up at the doorway to the cottage. Her stepmother stood there, and next to her—
“No,” she whispered. “Why is he here?”
Josef took a few steps forward, still slowed by his injury. Władysław let her go and said, “He came to me while I waited to escort you home. He told me that you had left when the victims were brought in. We’ve been searching for you.”
She turned to Josef and spoke in German: “The Order is confined to Gród Narew.”
“Not anymore,” Josef replied. “The Wojewoda’s death and his nephew’s pleas were enough to convince the Duke to allow Brother Heinrich’s Wolfjägers to search the countryside fully armed, as long as they are accompanied by Telek’s men or the Duke’s own officers.”
Maria backed up a step and glanced nervously from her mother to Josef. Her family had kept her safe for so long. They wouldn’t now turn her over to the Germans, would they? Could Władysław have told Josef what she had said? He hadn’t believed her, so would he keep such a ridiculous secret? Her stepmother had raised Maria as her own, but did that mean she would defend her if her own blood’s children were at stake?
And what had she said to Josef this morning? What inane things had she told him a century ago, before what she was had become so real—more real than what she pretended to be now?
“Why did you come here?” she asked him, her body tensing for flight.
“We were concerned for your safety. This beast is abroad in the woods here—and I wished to talk with you.”
“Talk with me?”
He turned back toward the cottage and spoke in tortured Polish: “Your daughter, may I speak with her?” Maria was suddenly touched by the gesture, the idea that Josef had tried to learn her language. She wondered if he knew that her stepmother spoke the German tongue as well as he.
Her stepmother waved at her brother and said, “Come, Władysław.”
Władysław hugged her again and whispered in her ear, “I saw him kiss you.”
She and Josef were left alone in front of the cottage.
He stepped up to her.
“What did you want to talk to me about?”
“You have mud on your face.” He reached up and wiped her cheek gently with his thumb. “And you’ve been crying.”
It’s not mud, she thought, turning away from his touch. “I’m fine.” She sucked in a breath and told herself that it was a good thing he was here. He was the one member of the Order she could talk to, and her best chance to convince them to leave, to take their hunt elsewhere.
But she didn’t know how to do that. Not when they had dead men to account for.
They were out to kill him, she thought. Darien just defended himself.
“What did you want to talk about?” she snapped, more harshly than she’d intended.
He placed his hands on her shoulders. “I am going to leave the Order.”
“What?” She spun around. “You can’t!”
“Maria?”
“T-this … it’s your vocation. You chose to serve God. How can you—”
“The whole purpose of probationary membership is to determine the initiate’s devotion to this service. I have found myself wanting.”
Maria stared at him, unable to form a fully coherent thought. This man had given up a title and an estate to serve the Order, and now he wanted to give that up as well? All she managed to say was “Why?”
“Service in the Order means that I am asked to ignore my own conscience, my own heart, in obedience to my master and the pope. There was a time when I thought I could.”
Maria caught her breath when she realized how he was looking at her. “Your heart?”
“I have already disobeyed my master directly, beyond what you know. But I wanted to protect you.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be leading such a man away from God. She couldn’t bear that on her conscience after everything else. “Please, reconsider what you’re doing. Don’t throw it away.”
He smiled at her. “You have a generous hea
rt.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You have no idea how selfish I am.”
“You’ve occupied my thoughts ever since I first saw you—and nothing you’ve done or said has led me to think less of you.”
“Don’t say this—”
“I care for you, Maria. More than is proper for a monk.”
“Please—”
“If God wished me to serve Him in the Order, He would not have placed you in my path.”
She backed away, clenching her fists. “No! Stop it!”
“I love you, Maria.”
The words were a slap in her face. Her thoughts screamed for him not to say such a thing, not to think it. “Stop talking!” she yelled at him. She shook her head again, and could feel the anger, the frustration—every confused emotion trying to let loose the beast inside her. In the back of her skull she heard her bones creak, and she felt the first knives of pain stabbing her joints. She clutched at her heart …
She wasn’t wearing her cross!
“No! No! No!” she screamed. Not now, not in front of Josef. She couldn’t—
“Maria?” He reached out for her, and she knocked his hand away.
Doubled over, she held back the change her traitorous body was trying to force upon her, fueled by fear, anger, and confusion.
“You know nothing of me, Josef. What I am.” She looked up at him through the hair that had fallen in front of her face. Something of the wolf had found its way into her voice, turning it rough and growling. “If you care for me, go back to the Order. Lead them away from these woods.”
“Maria? What has happened to you?”
She shook her head. Nothing had happened to her. She was what she was. She had simply found out the truth. “If you care for yourself, leave and never think of me again.”
She drew in shuddering breaths to calm herself. This was not how things should be going. She couldn’t be repeating Lucina’s mistake. She was not so lonely. She had her own mate waiting in the woods for her.
So why did it feel like her heart was breaking?
She felt his hand on her cheek, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I’m leaving the Order because I cannot abide another telling me my own heart.”
“Please—”
He lifted her chin so she could look at him. His face was less perfect than Darien’s—leaner and more marked by time. But she saw the same determination, and she saw a warmth that Darien lacked.
“You shouldn’t,” she whispered.
She could strike him, like she had Lukasz. Push him away. She could turn around and run, forgetting any plans to try to cleanly close off the human chapter of her life. She could do any one of those things, but she didn’t.
Instead she looked into his eyes and felt her heart race, and she didn’t move a muscle as he bent to kiss her.
She wanted him. More than anything else, she wanted Josef. Even after what Darien had shown her—the strength, and the freedom, and the joyful savagery—what she had always wanted was someone who loved her. And for all Darien was, she doubted he could ever give her that. All Darien knew, all he truly cared about was the beast that lived inside her. Josef knew the person she was—or at least the person she wanted to be …
Yet as she kissed him, and as his touch warmed depths of her body she was unaware had gone cold, she wept. Because, whatever he had said, if Josef knew the truth, he wouldn’t be able to give her that, either.
Still, as wrong and as deceitful as it was, she let him embrace her. She needed him right now. Not the animal that sated its lusts in the woods. Maria, the woman—the human being—she needed him. That part of her needed someone to hold her, to comfort her, and not to ask why.
XXIV
Darien woke and stretched, feeling a sense of contentment he hadn’t felt since he was a child. The universe had reorganized itself again, and he had a proper place within it. After years of being a single creature on the outside of man’s castle, tearing at the monuments of their hubris—after so long defining himself solely in opposition to his enemy—he had something of his own: a life, a family, a mate, all outside the world defined by the desires of men or their God.
The earth where he had slept was still strong with her scent, and he breathed it in, growling in pleasure. He felt honestly happy for the first time since the Order had slaughtered his family.
He let out a small yip to let Maria know he was awake, to come back to him. There were still so many things to show her, so many stories to tell. The evening was crisp and cool, and the night promised to be excellent.
Where was she?
As he came fully awake, he remembered her stroking him. He remembered her naked human form cradling his head. She had told him to go back to sleep.
He padded over to where they had cast off their human clothes. She had taken hers …
Where had she gone that she needed to dress like them?
Darien felt his mood go cold, still, and dark. Like the sky before a great storm, his mind was suddenly very quiet. She wouldn’t go back to them, not after what he had shown her.
He had mated with her. No one else. Her. He had waited for twenty years to find his own kind. She couldn’t give that to him and then leave. She couldn’t.
He nosed the leaves where her clothes had rested, trying to think of some other explanation, some excuse. A flash of silver glinted from the leaves, and he saw her cross.
Yes, he thought. She’s not returning to bondage.
Then he licked his muzzle as a host of new possibilities filled his mind. She had gone back to punish them. They had been the ones to trap her, chain her in silver without any knowledge of the strength within her. What they had done to her, in some sense, was worse than what the Order had done to him. The Order had destroyed his family, but these wretched humans had spent years destroying her. Forcing her to deny what she was until she didn’t even know what she was denying.
He ran, drinking in her scent. He would catch up with her, and he would help her wreak vengeance on these fools who would have her chained. They would both taste of their traitorous flesh, and he would take her again on a bed made of their bones.
Darien knew that something was very wrong when he heard her crying. He stopped in the woods, just out of sight of the house where they had imprisoned her. He heard the sobs and tried to convince himself that they were the sounds of remorse or pain from the ones who had wronged her.
But he knew her voice.
He crept forward, keeping to the shadows between the trees, stopping only when the cottage came into sight. When she came into sight.
This is not possible …
A murderous growl formed in his chest, and his lips curled back in a demonic snarl that threatened to split his muzzle in two. His mate, his bitch—after she had given herself to him—stood in front of the cabin of her captors, sobbing in the arms of some man. And not any man, but a monk of the Order.
One he recognized.
His forepaws creaked as his body began twisting itself for combat, and he dug his growing fingers into the soil. He would tear the monk apart, rip the flesh from his bones while he still lived. The man would watch as Darien fed on his liver. The Order had taken one family from him. They would not take this.
Maria broke from the embrace and looked toward the forest, as if she heard him.
Darien froze, staring at them. At him.
Do you feel it, man? Do you feel the eye you nearly stole looking back at you?
As he watched, he saw Maria’s nostrils dilate, and her face turned right to him. She knew he was here. As he watched, frozen, she placed a hand on the man’s chest, gently pushing him behind her.
You foolish bitch! His anger screamed at him to attack, but he had not lived two decades alone against the Order by allowing his rage to lead him. He could take this man now—he could slaughter him whatever Maria might do to protect him—but that wasn’t what he wanted. Not this man’s suffering, not his death. That was coming soon enough, regardless of what
Darien did now. He wanted her. He needed her to see what these creatures called men truly were.
She had run back to this house, to this man, only because Darien had told her, but he hadn’t shown her. Darien slowly backed deeper into the shadows. However much he wanted to taste this man’s flesh now, there were more productive outlets for his rage.
Maria cried against Josef’s shoulder, letting loose all the pain, frustration, and confusion. He didn’t ask her any more questions, and for a time she was able to forget that she was not the same Maria he knew. She sucked in sobbing breaths, smelling Josef’s scent, so unlike Darien’s. She wanted to lose herself in him, to be the woman he thought she was—to have a life, a family, a husband: all the doomed dreams of the mother who had birthed her.
Such thoughts only made her weep more. She cried until her breath burned against the rawness of her throat.
Then she smelled Darien. Her muscles seized as she thought she heard a low growl.
No, not here.
She broke from Josef’s arms and spun around to face the woods. She smelled him strongly now, and she thought she saw movement beyond the trees: a flash of yellow fur, a glint of a pale blue eye.
“Maria?”
She pushed Josef behind herself and stared out at the woods, heart pounding, waiting for her wolf lover to charge out of the woods to challenge her.
Just as Lucina had challenged her father.
Please God, not that.
“Maria? What is it? Is there something out there?”
There were no more sounds, and after a few moments, his scent was carried away by the evening breeze. “Nothing,” she said finally. “I must have imagined it.” But she knew she hadn’t.
“You know what is out there, don’t you?”
She turned around and faced him, prepared to lie. But seeing his eyes, she couldn’t. “Y-yes.”
“You knew it before I told you anything, before I gave you that dagger. That’s why your brother carries it now. He needs it more than you do.”
