by Parker Foye
Vow firm in his mind, Griffith shook his head. “In everything, there’s darkness. I found out too late how far Morgan had gone down that path. That’s when I started travelling.”
Llywelyn jostled their shoulders together. “I’ll find out, you know. What you’re not telling me.”
You won’t.
“Sooner than you think,” Griffith said, choosing to sidestep the truth. “He’s Emery’s warden. I know he is. Morgan’s here.”
“Here? But how do you know?” Before Griffith could answer, Llywelyn’s expression cleared. “Your nightmare. A true dream.”
Griffith frowned. “How do you know of those? I didn’t have any until recently.”
“Warden Jones told me.” Llywelyn flushed and glanced at his hands. “I used to visit her.”
Something in Griffith’s heart twisted and flipped over. He didn’t know whether from joy or sorrow, the emotions too tangled together. The idea of his grandmother and Llywelyn spending time together in the cottage, sharing in each other’s lives, made him hollow with longing.
“I’m glad. That you had each other,” Griffith said, finding he meant it.
Llywelyn cast his gaze down. “I’m sad you didn’t.”
Like a punch to the heart. Griffith wanted to fold around himself and cradle his wound, but instead he took a deep breath and held it. One. Two. Three. Four. Expelled it steadily, like a cleansing. Wounds needed care until they could heal and fade.
One day this will be another scar.
But to live that long, Griffith needed to remove Morgan and the Keeley pack. He needed to understand what had gone wrong with the ceremony. Tapping Llywelyn’s knee for attention, he gestured to Llywelyn’s torso.
“Shirt off. Please.” Heat rushed to his face at giving the command, and he hoped desperately Llywelyn chose to ignore it.
Eyebrows raising, Llywelyn rocked to his knees and positioned himself with his back to Griffith. He skinned off his shirt, draping it over his left shoulder and leaving most of his back and right shoulder exposed. For a moment, Griffith forgot entirely what they were doing. His world shrank to the muscles in Llywelyn’s back, the strong lines of his shoulders, the tempting vulnerability of his nape. Griffith shifted in place as his prick stirred to attention. He pressed at it with the heel of his hand.
Extremely inopportune timing.
Griffith had lived with his desire for Llywelyn for years. He didn’t intend to pursue it. There were more pressing matters to address than how he wanted to bite his way across Llywelyn’s body and learn the taste of the sweat making Llywelyn’s skin glisten. Wolves ran hotter than other humans, Griffith knew. He didn’t know what it would be like to sleep beside one.
Griffith didn’t know how it felt to sleep beside anyone, wolf or human or otherwise. He’d never been interested in pursuing such things with anyone other than Llywelyn. And now Llywelyn knelt before him, exposed and willing, and Griffith’s prick didn’t know what to do with itself. He pressed the heel of his hand more firmly against it.
Llywelyn glanced over his shoulder, mouth open to speak. He closed it again, gaze darting between Griffith’s face and his hand.
“I just—” Griffith started.
“Did you—” Llywelyn said at the same time.
They both stopped. Llywelyn’s eyes were bright with mirth. Griffith tried to remember if a warding existed to command the earth to open and swallow him. When none came to mind, he swung his legs beneath him and got to his knees, arranging his jacket to fall over his embarrassment.
“Let me look at the mark.” He hoped Llywelyn would have the manners not to note what Griffith was supposed to be doing in the first place.
Though he smirked, Llywelyn said nothing. He turned his head and settled on his heels, crossing his bare feet over one another. The trust implicit in the gesture, in his comfort with it, made Griffith’s mouth go dry.
Well. The trust and all that skin. Mother of God.
When he focused on the mark, Griffith’s mouth went dry for another reason. The purpose of the ceremony had been to wake the ancient stone wardings with a boost of resonant magic. By creating a smaller protection warding and directing his intent outward, borrowing the strength of the pack, Griffith had hoped to achieve a temporary boost. But Llywelyn’s interruption at the critical point had redirected the protection.
Griffith had hoped the protection might have dissipated outward, but suspected the magic found a target. The sight before him confirmed his suspicions: Llywelyn wore a warding rune on his back, red as a brand. The skin wasn’t inflamed and didn’t appear sore, nor did it look like the tattoos Griffith had seen in his travels. Rather it appeared to be part of Llywelyn’s skin. A birthmark he hadn’t been born with.
“Well?” Llywelyn asked, shifting in an aborted movement, as if he’d meant to scratch.
“Does it itch still?”
“Like the very devil.”
“Interesting.”
Llywelyn’s shoulders stiffened and his voice dripped with sarcasm. “Interesting?”
Griffith gestured, though Llywelyn couldn’t see. “It’s a warding mark, one of the glyphs we use as a—a kind of declaration of intent. This one is usually used in conjunction with others, to direct it. But there’s a piece at the bottom I don’t quite recognise.”
“What does it mean?”
“I have no idea.”
Llywelyn twisted around. His eyes were wide. “You have no idea? Where did you get the ceremony from? Ifanwy said you knew all of it. Did you make it up?”
“Not—not as such, no.” Griffith winced at Llywelyn’s glare. “It was a mixture of things. The old protection wards with the joining ceremony—”
“With the—!”
Griffith raised his hands, speaking fast. “Only the parts about the pack’s strength. I was trying to connect it to the same magic wardens use. That I use. So you wouldn’t need me.”
Llywelyn’s expression cooled from the anger that had heated it. His eyes went thoughtful and he glanced at his shoulder, as if he could read the mark.
“And that isn’t what happened?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Griffith confessed.
Llywelyn grinned. “Do you want to find out? Use a warding.”
This is a terrible idea. Griffith didn’t say as such aloud, not wanting Llywelyn’s eyes to lose the spark of mischief as familiar and bright as the spark of magic in Griffith’s chest. He’d done ridiculous things with that spark as his guide. He missed doing them. The ghost of Llywelyn in his memories hadn’t the spark to light him.
“It won’t do anything. Wardings don’t work like that,” Griffith tried, a sop to the rational part of his mind.
“Come along, Griff. Do I need to dare you?”
Like a cosh to the back of the head, memories of forgotten summer days sent Griffith dizzy. That had been Daffyd’s taunt. Older by three years, he’d sometimes viewed them as children to protect, sometimes as playmates to goad.
Come along, boyo. Do I need to dare you?
Griffith, outside of the pack and having something to prove, had fallen for the taunt every time.
Years didn’t change anybody on the inside. Knowing he was foolish even as he did so, Griffith fished one of his new light wardings from his jacket pocket. Swiping his thumb against his ring, Griffith smeared the warding and held it out. Without a jar to catch it, the light would burn out and dissipate into the air. Showy but harmless.
At least, that had been the plan.
As soon as he touched blood to the card, light shrieked from the warding, searing across Griffith’s eyes. Llywelyn loosed a guttural howl of pain but Griffith couldn’t see to help. He couldn’t see anything but afterimages and sunspots dancing in his vision. Desperately, he tried to tear the warding in half but warding
s couldn’t be destroyed once committed into being. Eyes streaming, heart beating hard in his ears, Griffith stumbled to his feet and ran from Llywelyn, using the low rumble of pain as his guide.
When Llywelyn’s voice faded, so too did the warding, becoming the warm glow he’d conjured so many times. A friendly thing. Griffith could barely look at it with his watering eyes. As tightness unwound from Griffith’s chest and jaw, he cupped the little flame and set it gently down, where it would burn itself out like he’d initially planned.
When will I learn not to make plans?
Unsteady, Griffith retraced his path to Llywelyn. In his panic, he’d ran farther than he thought, crossing the boundary lines. Shaking his head at his foolishness, Griffith upped his pace, eager to return to Llywelyn and check on him. He’d never had a warding react that way.
Approaching the lines, Griffith slowed his pace. He knew the boundary lines like he knew himself and had crossed them countless times in his life. But even after the incident with Emery, they’d never made Griffith’s hair stand on end before. Never made his teeth thrum with power. Yet he’d ran over the lines without incident enough moments ago. What could have changed, between that time and this? Only his awareness.
Wincing preemptively, and hoping whatever struck Emery wouldn’t treat him in the same manner, Griffith stepped gingerly over the line. One foot. Another. Half-expecting the lines to flare as the warding had, and half-convinced he’d deserve it, he shivered with relief when the strange shocky feeling didn’t turn into anything more.
Griffith hurried to the lightning tree, putting the strange sensation behind him, and his breath expelled in a rush when he found Llywelyn in one piece. Dropping to his knees, his hands trembled as he cupped Llywelyn’s face, needing to touch him. Needing to know he was real. In turn, Llywelyn visibly breathed in Griffith’s scent, his eyes dropping to half-mast. Griffith wanted to kiss him more than he could stand. He licked his dry lips.
“Are you okay? That shouldn’t have happened.” None of this should have happened.
“Eyes sting, but I’m okay. What was that? The mark?”
“I think you exaggerated the effects. I wonder what might happen if you run the lines as you are now? They seem to be—awake. For me, even.”
“I’m not sure I should try.”
They spoke in whispers, like confessions, so close together Griffith could taste each word from Llywelyn’s lips. He could taste Llywelyn’s fear, but also his excitement at the display of power. Griffith allowed himself to stroke Llywelyn’s cheekbones with his thumbs, rewarded with Llywelyn’s gaze meeting his.
“You should try,” Griffith said.
Llywelyn smiled. “I should kiss you.”
“Now? I mean, really?”
Griffith needed to work on the warding for the ground-swallowing. It could be a project. He liked research.
Llywelyn laughed softly. “Now. Really. If you want? I know—I know there must have been others. And I know this is a terrible time. But I can’t stop thinking about when you left.” He sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about you. Kissing you. Even when I hated you, I couldn’t stop.”
Heart twisting at the reminder of his mistakes, Griffith dropped his hands from Llywelyn’s face and wrung them together. More nervous than the first time he used a warding, he studied Llywelyn from beneath his lashes, unable to look directly at him. Llywelyn had been brave, and Griffith wanted to respond in kind.
He took a breath. “There’s been no one. There’s never been anyone for me but you.”
Llywelyn’s blush stained his chest like paint, flowing up his throat and across his face, right to the tips of his ears. The sight sparked a memory but Griffith pushed it aside, more concerned with the moment unfolding in front of him.
The moment where Llywelyn reached for Griffith’s hand and tangled their fingers together. Where he cupped Griffith’s jaw and drew him closer, back to their confessional space.
“Can I kiss you?” Llywelyn asked, the question cracking in the middle.
With his last scrap of courage, Griffith nodded and pressed forward to slide their lips together. He held Llywelyn’s side for balance, feeling warm skin and the promise of muscle, but nearly all his attention went to the softness of Llywelyn’s lips and his careful kiss. Opening his mouth in invitation, Griffith heard himself whimper when Llywelyn took it and they tasted one another. They kissed until Griffith ran out of breath and pulled away, resenting his human lungs.
Llywelyn smoothed back Griffith’s hair and brushed his thumb across Griffith’s lips. “Thank you.”
“The hounds of Annwn!”
Llywelyn’s hand faltered. His dreamy look disappeared. “I—what?”
The redness of Llywelyn’s ears had brought the memory of a legend. The hounds of Annwn were a death omen, dogs with white bodies and red ears. Griffith had carried the legends of his home around the continent with him, expounding his knowledge as he researched under Morgan’s tutelage. Morgan collected omens and superstitions like other men collected memories, holding them as close. He’d been obsessed with them. He’d asked Griffith time and again to tell him stories from the Mabinogion in particular, like Griffith might know something the text didn’t.
“I know how we can drive Morgan away,” Griffith said, pressing a kiss to Llywelyn’s cheek. To his temple. To his lips, because he could. “I’ve had an idea.”
Llywelyn’s eyes narrowed. He still held Griffith’s hand. “Will I like this one?”
Griffith grinned.
Chapter Six
Llywelyn’s blood fizzed with joy. He wanted to howl until the sun rose early from her bed.
And he wanted to hide. To crawl into the hill with his tail tucked beneath his belly and dig through the earth to the other side.
He rubbed his face and set his shoulders, cracking his neck from side to side and jumping lightly, trying to relieve the tension singing in his body. Nothing helped, but he shook again like a dog shedding water. If only magic could be as easily shed.
“You look ridiculous,” Ifanwy said, from her place leaning against a tree. She folded her arms. “Is this what you asked me here for? Jonno’s leaving today. I need to see him off.”
As part of her responsibilities as alpha, she meant. Jonno was one of the last to go, leaving the three Hywels, and Efa and Bethan, a mother and daughter waiting on confirmation from a pack in Yorkshire. They’d been waiting weeks. Good news travelled slow.
“I need you to see something. Will you follow me? On the lines?”
“Christ above, not this again.”
Llywelyn’s mouth tightened. “Please. It might be important.”
When have I asked you for anything? But he couldn’t say that. Besides, it wasn’t true. Llywelyn had been begging his family for years, though he didn’t know for what until he found Griffith sitting at Warden Jones’s memorial. A wish too impossible to voice even in his own heart, and someone had made it true.
That Griffith had reappeared as everyone looked to leave was fitting, somehow.
Wishes always turn sour in stories.
Llywelyn chewed his lip. If he wasn’t imagining things—if Ifanwy agreed with him—their story might change. They might thwart the genie after all.
He lifted his weight to his toes and glanced at Ifanwy. Despite the nerves thrumming in his heart like music, he grinned.
“Catch me if you can.”
Llywelyn ran like one of the red-eared hounds from Griffith’s stories, toes barely landing before lifting again. Paws would be faster but he needed his human brain to focus on the wider picture, instead of running for the joy. Human brains were excellent at losing joy from little things.
Ifanwy’s fingers brushed his elbow, her laugh high and bright, and Llywelyn upped his pace to brush closer to the boundary lines. The instant he
did, a frisson of something rippled over his skin, emanating from the mark on his back. Light flashed. A sound, heard more with heart than ears, struck a low note, dissonant, like falling over a table in the dark. A force pushed him from the boundary but gently, like a mother’s guiding hand.
“What was that?” Ifanwy shouted from behind, scuffling as she stumbled.
Instead of answering, Llywelyn pressed against the invisible line again. Again the light, the sound, the push. He let himself be moved, slowing to a stop and waiting for Ifanwy. They’d finished their run at the far reaches of packlands, where an unfriendly wall of jagged stone and overgrown nettles encouraged any stray visitors to find another way. Not that anyone had farmed the nearby land for years, thanks to arrangements made by their father.
Llywelyn gestured at Ifanwy, back the way they’d came.
“Did you see?”
Ifanwy’s eyes were wide. She jabbed shortly at him. “Did I see? Great flashes of light like a star going out, of course I bloody saw!”
“Good. I’m not going mad.”
“Or else both of us are,” Ifanwy muttered.
Deciding not to pursue that avenue of explanation, Llywelyn dropped to his arse a few feet from the wall. Though night held Aberarth, he could see the worry on Ifanwy’s face and the way her hands curled into and out of claws. She’d been quick to temper all their lives, but being alpha cooled the head. “Else you’ll lose it,” their father used to say.
Not for the first or twenty-first time, Llywelyn wondered what their lives would’ve been like if that damn ship had reached port.
But it hadn’t.
But it hadn’t. And so he sat on dewy grass with magic itching his skin. For that’s what it was. Llywelyn hadn’t the temperament to indulge Griffith when they were younger, wanting to prise magic from the earth like men mined for coal in the valleys, when Llywelyn and the wolves could smell magic ringing packlands like children skipping in a ring. They’d worked at cross-purposes, Griffith searching for something tangible and Llywelyn convinced magic was anything but. Angharad’s exile had shown Llywelyn how wrong he was, but Griffith hadn’t been right, either. Though he hadn’t Griffith’s study, Llywelyn knew the boundary wardings were more complex than simply protection. Else how could Griffith come and go so easily while Angharad had been blown to the treeline when she’d tried to return?
