by H. D. Gordon
The churning waters were home to a sea serpent with a maw large enough to devour. The she-Wolf with the white coat disappeared there. The sight of her eyes… the fear in them.
No, the terror.
I climbed a cliff with hands that were bloody, leaving a scarlet trail up the cliff face. At the top, there was a pack of angry Hounds waiting for me, whips coiled at their hips and grins as wicked as curses on their faces.
Then there was Oren, with his big, open smile and kind heart. He climbed over the cliff and joined us. Kalene followed next, with her dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, her devil-may-care grin and easy demeanor.
Ares appeared next, but he was not smiling. His face was pale despite the smooth chocolate of his skin. He crawled over the cliff and I saw that blood covered him as well. It ran down his handsome face and splattered his carved chest.
He pointed at me, and I looked down to see my bloodied hands, now dripping with scarlet. I could taste it on my tongue. I knew the flavor so well… It filled my mouth, choking me, depriving me of air as if in some display of poetic justice…
I couldn’t breathe. I was going to suffocate on the blood of my victims. I was going to choke on the very vileness of all my deeds. The Gods of the Underworlds would surely claim me, because there was no easy afterlife for Wolves like me, no rest or peace.
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound would come out. I tried desperately to draw some air, but none would come.
I tried again, my panic rising in a wave.
And, still, nothing.
As if the very air refused to have anything to do with me.
This was it. This was how I would die, drowning in my sins, in the blood of my casualties.
Strong hands fell on my shoulders, shocking me enough that I jerked and tried to pull away. But the hands held fast, the nails digging into the skin of my back for purchase. My eyes burst open, and I gulped down air, gasping as I clutched at my chest.
“Shh,” said a gentle, lovely voice in my head. “Shh, my love. It was only a dream. Everything is fine... It was only a dream.”
I blinked into the darkness while my eyes adjusted. There was just enough moonlight shining through the bedroom window for me to see Goldie’s beautiful face looking down at me. Her hands were still gripping my shoulders, her red-gold hair tousled from sleep. Even in the near dark, I could see the worry in her blue eyes, the desire to somehow ease my pain.
For a few moments, I could only breathe, and Goldie sat silently on the bed beside me as I did so. She brushed some of my hair off my forehead with her cool fingers, and hummed a familiar tune under her breath.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered.
I swallowed hard, as if trying to clear the phantom taste of blood in my mouth. I shook my head. “No,” I said, “but thank you. I’m fine now. You can go back to sleep.”
Goldie stared down at me for a moment, her blue eyes lovely in the moonlight. Then, she pulled the blankets back and gave me a nudge. “Scoot over,” she said, and when I opened my mouth to protest, she repeated the command.
With a sigh, I did as I was told, and Goldie slid into bed beside me, pulling the covers up over both of us. She wrapped her arm around me and held me close as I turned to the side and sank into the warmth of her.
Sleep claimed me soon after, and with her very presence, Goldie managed to keep the big bad Wolf and the big bad dreams away.
4
When I woke up, it took me a few moments to remember where I was and what had happened. My body was sore, and my mouth felt like a desert. A glass of water appeared in front of me, and I pulled myself to a sitting position so that I could take it.
“Good morning,” Goldie said, as I took the glass from her hand and downed the blessed liquid in a long gulp. “Feeling better?”
No, I thought, as Ryker’s face flashed through my mind, but I nodded.
Goldie gave me a look that said I wasn’t fooling her, but she let it drop. “I brought you some breakfast, and some new clothes.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“About last night…”
“I had a bad dream. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, no, I know… It’s just…”
When she didn’t finish, I looked at her. “What?”
Goldie stared at me, her throat bobbing a touch, but no words coming out.
I placed my hand over hers. “Say what you want to say, friend.”
“You said something that bothered me. When you were dreaming.”
“What did I say?”
“You said, ‘Get out of my dream.’”
Silence held a tick. I raised my eyebrows and spread a hand. “And? I was dreaming. It’s nothing.”
“You said it more than once, and in my experience with a lifetime of sleeping, people don’t usually know they’re in a dream.” Goldie paused. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
Placing the empty water glass on the nightstand, I swung my legs off the bed and stood, moving over to a small round table on the other side of the room, where the food she’d brought me waited. I began shoving it in my mouth, my back to my friend.
“No,” I said around a bite.
Without turning, I could tell those sharp blue eyes were watching me, waiting for me to elaborate on the topic. Instead, I continued filling my belly, marveling at the delicious food on the platter. There was warm, buttered bread and fresh fruits as sweet as butterfly kisses. Meat that had been cut into strips and cooked to a crisp was piled high, and I licked the grease it left on my fingers.
A sigh from behind me drew me out of my thoughts. “Fine,” Goldie said. “I’ll let you be, but I refuse to let you sulk in this room all day, so finish up and get dressed. We have things to do.”
I loved my friend, but I was in no mood to do anything. My body still hurt. Or maybe it was my heart that was aching. Perhaps it was both. It certainly was not that I was secretly hoping for another visit from a blue-eyed bastard.
Not at all.
“I’m sorry, Golds,” I said, crawling back into bed and pulling the covers up over me. “Maybe another time.”
Goldie stood, looking down at me where I lay curled up on the bed. I felt small under that gaze, and suddenly, I wanted her to leave me alone, which was a rarity in our friendship.
“You can’t just lie here all day,” Goldie said, and I could tell her hand was perched on her hip without having to look at her.
“Why the hell not?” I mumbled, and squeezed my eyes shut.
After a while, Goldie grumbled something about coming by again later, and finally left me be. In the quiet of the room, I listened to the whispers of the dead, silently listing every single one of my sins.
Days passed in this manner.
I awoke only to eat, bathe, and evacuate.
Ryker visited me again on the fourth or fifth day. We had a similar exchange. He professed his sorrow for what had happened and his love for me. He looked wearier and more anxious than the last time I’d seen him.
I’d let him get close enough to steal a kiss before I’d summoned the strength to push him away, convinced that our interactions only ever led to heartache.
After this, Ryker got frustrated and cursed “that bastard Mixbreed” for stealing me and brainwashing me. I’d slapped him for this. Not in defense of Adriel’s honor, but in defense of my own. Ryker’s eyes had grown Wolf-gold, and the dream had ended. I’d awoken in a cold sweat, unhappier than I could ever remember feeling. I went back to my cycle of sleeping, eating, evacuating, and sleeping some more.
I would not admit it, and it was stupid, but part of me was hoping Ryker would visit again.
Eventually, Goldie grew frustrated with my behavior and said some harsh words, to which I responded with words that were even harsher. I hated myself for it. For all of it. But I could not seem to bring myself to get out of bed. The longer I laid there, the more absurd the idea of rising seemed. And the questions surrounding why Ryker hadn’t paid anoth
er visit, of what was going on in his part of the world, plagued me. I felt stupid and pathetic, but could not seem to help myself.
I’d begun to lose track of the days by the time the Mixbreed came to my room. It could’ve been a week or a month since I’d arrived in Mina. All the hours had been the same, the ghosts of my past my only companions.
Bright light splashed over my face, stinging my eyes even through my closed lids, and I jerked the blanket over my head, grumbling at someone to turn it off already.
The blanket was jerked out of my grasp and off my body entirely, the cool air in the room rushing over me where warmth had been just a moment before.
“Get up,” he said, and there was nothing but harsh command in his tone.
I peeled my eyes open and had to shield them with my arm. “What the hell?” I snapped. “Go away and turn off that damn light.”
My eyes were beginning to adjust after so many hours of darkness, and my vision cleared to reveal Adriel.
He wore his usual black slacks and black shirt, his dark hair coifed up to perfection and his handsome face lined with annoyance. A swirling ball of white light hovered over his pale hand—the source of the light that had awakened me.
“This light?” he asked, raising his hand. The swirling ball glowed even brighter. A growl rumbled in my chest.
“Yes,” I snapped. “That light.”
“Get out of bed. Then I’ll put it out.”
“No,” I said, flipping over to my other side and draping my arm over my head. “Go away.”
There was a sigh… and then the mattress on which I’d been lying shuddered beneath me… In the next moment, the damn bed flipped up and dumped me onto the floor with a hard thud.
I watched with narrowed eyes from my position on the floor as Adriel flicked his wrist, and the mattress settled back into its original position. The awful ball of light still hovered over his other hand, and he quirked an unconcerned brow at my death glare.
“Your reprieve is up,” he said in that same cold tone. “There’s work to do. You have to pull your weight.”
Cursing, I hauled myself to my feet, trying to decide if I should just tackle the cocky bastard to the ground and punch the unyielding expression off his stupid, perfect face. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
Adriel gestured around him, as if to encompass everything. “There are no slaves in Mina, and no Masters, but there is still work that has to be done. Everyone does their share. That’s how it works. So get up. Unless you want to continue on being a free loader.”
In a move that was bolder than I felt, I stalked over to him and jabbed a finger in his face. “I should punch you in the throat right now.”
Adriel’s red eyes stared down at me from his taller stature, unimpressed. “Fine,” he said, and his nose wrinkled in an expression that might have been adorable if the male weren’t so damn infuriating. “But how about a bath first?”
I felt my cheeks flare red and let out a string of curses that the Mixbreed just wrinkled his nose at once more. When he only stood in that unsettlingly still manner, waiting, I glanced toward the bed and felt the urge to climb back into it strike me hard in the gut. I knew it made me weak, but I finally admitted to myself that wanted to see Ryker again. I’d had nothing but time to calculate a response to him, and I wanted to let him have it.
What I didn’t want was to face the world.
I wasn’t ready.
A thought occurred to me then, and it was this, along with the Mixbreed’s next words, that had me turning away from the beaconing mattress.
Maybe I would never be ready.
“We don’t punish free loaders in Mina,” Adriel said, uncaring of my internal battle, “but people will judge you for it, because, well, they’re people. It’s up to you whether or not you want to be a Wolf who eats and sleeps for free, or one who pulls their own weight.” He removed a timepiece from the pocket of his pressed slacks and checked it. Then he slid it back in and sighed, keeping his hands in his pockets in the adoption of his usual pose. “I have things to do, so make your choice already.”
“I hate you,” I spat as I grabbed a shirt off the back of a chair and pulled it over my head. They were the same three words I’d spat at Ryker when he’d visited me through dream riding, or whatever he’d called it.
But the Mixbreed’s response was not the same.
Adriel rolled his red eyes. “Wrong,” he said coldly. “You hate yourself.”
5
“I thought you said there was work to do,” I grumbled, my muscles feeling weaker and more fatigued than I could ever remember them feeling in my life.
Adriel, the bastard, had made me walk half way across the damn town of Mina after so unceremoniously tossing me out of bed. Due to the fact that I had done almost zero physical activity in the past however many days, keeping up with his swift pace was harder than I would admit. But the way my breath was pushing harshly in and out of my lungs likely gave me away, anyhow.
The arrogant Mixbreed seemed to delight in my weariness, because he only smirked back at me and marched onward, insisting that I needed to hurry up and follow. It pissed me off even more to know that he could easily just magic us to whatever the hell location he was leading me to, for whatever task he wanted me to complete in order to “pull my own weight.”
By the time we stopped in front of a squat building near the edge of the canal, I was all but panting. I could have very easily punched him in the face. Instead, I waved a hand at the stone structure before us. “What is this place?”
“There’s a lady inside,” Adriel said, “a friend of mine. She specializes in body art.”
I blinked at him a couple times before my lips twisted in disgust as I recalled the “body art” Reagan Ramsey had forced me to wear to The Games. Now I really did consider punching the Mixbreed.
“I’m not letting your ‘friend’ paint my body, or whatever sick ass plan you’ve thought of,” I snapped. “What happened to being free? Was that all bullshit? To ‘pull my own weight’ I have to parade around naked and painted like someone’s possession?”
Adriel listened to all of this with an inscrutable expression on his handsome face, and slid his hands into his pockets as he took a couple steps back from me. “No one is forcing you to do anything,” he said. Then, as if he’d read my mind and knew what I’d been thinking, he added, “What Ramsey did to you was meant to shame, degrade, and humiliate. He forced you to bare yourself to the world and called it art. What the lady inside is offering is a type of permanent body paint, yes, but it’s meant to free you.”
“And how is that?” I asked.
To his credit, the Mixbreed responded with what seemed infinite patience. “The Masters and Hounds use nudity as a way of controlling the slaves. They told you when to sleep, when to eat, when to shit and fight. They even held your own shifting ability over your heads by forcing you to make the transformation in front of crowds. This way, the audience could see all of you, and in this way, nothing was ever yours, not even your body.” His head tilted, and a lock of his ebony hair fell across his smooth forehead. “Perhaps especially your body.”
My eyes were narrowed, but I remained silent, waiting for him to elaborate, to relate it back to the body art that he said would free me.
Adriel sighed, as if he were growing weary of explaining things to me. “If you so choose, Griselle will use a needle to infuse your skin with a special ink, a magic ink. This ink will allow you to summon clothing instantly upon shifting back into your mortal form.”
It took me a moment to absorb this. Then, I said, “I… I didn’t even know such a thing was possible… that such magic existed.” I muttered this, more to myself than to him.
“Of course you didn’t,” Adriel replied. “Why would you? It’s not exactly information the Masters want advertised.”
I wanted to be offended by this, but wasn’t sure it was warranted. It was just another example of the ignorance lifelong slavery had bestowed
upon me.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
One side of Adriel’s mouth pulled up in his characteristic smirk. “Yes, a little. But nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re more resilient than you give yourself credit for, Rukiya dearest,” he replied. “But, nonetheless, the choice is yours, and you don’t have to make it now. The offer stands eternally.”
“Eternally? Griselle must be a very generous female.”
“In Mina, we all give what we can. We each have unique gifts, and we share them for the benefit of everyone.”
“So if I get this magical ink needled into me, every time I shift from Wolf to mortal I won’t be naked? I’ll just be fully clothed?”
Adriel nodded. “Unless you want to be naked,” he said. “The magic will bend to your will.”
I considered this, trying to find a downside and not seeing one. “I don’t have anything to pay Griselle with,” I said.
The Mixbreed’s dark brows rose. “I’m not sure you understand the concept of giving, Rukiya, my dear,” he said.
I almost snapped something rude at this, because the words were condescending, but the way he said it was not. So, instead, I stalked past him and rapped on the wooden door to the building.
A moment later, the door swung open and an older female with kind eyes and a round body appeared. Her hair was easily her most striking feature; it was short and curly and golden, and it almost shimmered around her face, as though each strand were alive. She smiled so sincerely when she saw me that it was nearly off-putting.
I tried to remember a time in my life when an absolute stranger had smiled at me like that, and could not recall one.
“You must be Rukiya,” said the lady, and she opened the door wider, stepping to the side. “I’m Griselle. Come in. I’m glad you’re here.”
After offering Griselle what felt like an awkward smile, I glanced back over my shoulder at Adriel. He stood in his preternaturally motionless manner, his hands tucked casually into his pockets. He inclined his head, encouraging me to go ahead.
