Lord of the Wolfyn

chapter 7

“Seriously, Benz, what is taking so long?” Reda killed the cruiser’s engine, pocketed the keys and climbed out, slamming the door harder than she really needed to. “Did you have to grow the coffee beans or milk the half-and-half cow yourself?”

More likely he was chatting up the pretty brunette who worked the counter at the Porthole Packie. Normally, it didn’t bother Reda when her good-looking, easygoing partner went into casual-flirt mode, even when the flirtee was a good ten years younger than him and a coed at the nearby state college. Tonight, though, the thought set her teeth on edge. She might not have been all that into the guy who had just “it’s not you, it’s me”’d her, but being newly dumped—again—really ought to earn her some priority in the coffee department. Maybe even a bonus Snickers.

Which, apparently, she was going to have to get for herself. Muttering under her breath and ignoring the curious looks of a couple of passersby—what, never seen a girl cop wearing a uniform and a mood before?—she pushed through the portholed door and into the liquor store, which, like so many of the local places, had recently been forced to diversify to stay afloat, putting in a general store section that boasted damn good serve-yourself coffee.

As she came through the door, she automatically glanced up at the curved overhead mirror, which was angled toward the register area and backed up by video surveillance.

She froze at the sight of Benz standing on the wrong side of the counter with his hands up, a gun in his face and the coed cowering behind him with her eyes closed and her hands covering her ears. Then Reda looked from the mirror to the register, and saw it was for real.

In the nanosecond it took for the perp to look over, go white-eyed and start screaming for her to toss Reda’s gun and lie on the floor, her brain snapshotted the scene—assessed the lines of sight, possible cover and the positions of the three other people in the store. She instantly saw herself pretending to follow orders but instead launching herself into a nearby display, saw it fall into the gunman, saw Benz come over the counter and take the guy down. It was training, planning and instinct all wrapped into one. And it didn’t happen anywhere but in her mind.

In reality, she just stood there.

“Get down!” The perp jumped back a step and shifted his gun from Benz to her. She saw the panic in his eyes and knew she had to react, had to get the hell out of the line of fire, but she freaking couldn’t. Her brain wouldn’t work; her body wouldn’t move.

The guy’s eyes changed. And Reda saw her own death.

“No!” Benz lunged over the counter and went for the guy, just as she had pictured, but she hadn’t provided a distraction, hadn’t done anything.

The perp spun back and fired as Benz hit him. The .38’s sharp report jolted her from her paralysis as the men went down together, but she was too slow in fumbling her weapon from its holster. The gunman got up, scrambling out from underneath Benz and bolting for the back exit.

“Stop!” she yelled. “Freeze, police!” Which just wasted time.

Besides, he was already gone, the door swinging into place behind him.

She hesitated another gutless moment—chase or stay? One look back at Benz made the decision for her. Blood pooled dark ruby red on the hardwood floor. She grabbed her radio and called in an officer down, assistance and an ambulance needed, then crouched beside him, skidding in his blood and seeing the ragged tear in his neck.

She clapped a hand over the wound, putting on pressure like crazy, telling him to hang on, that help was on its way.

None of it mattered, though, because like the man who had killed him, Benz was long gone.

“And when the detectives started asking me about the perp, I couldn’t remember a damn thing,” she finished, oblivious now to the dark forest pressing in on either side of them, seeing only the liquor store, the blood, the expressions on the faces of the other cops afterward. “The other wits hadn’t seen his face and the video was useless. If I could have given them something…but, no. It was all gone, pfft, total fog, like my mind had locked up along with my body. I couldn’t even help that way. I was deadweight. Useless.” She glanced over at Dayn. “Just like I have been pretty much since I got here.”

He met her eyes, though his expression was lost in the darkness of the predawn that had started lightening the horizon to a deep, rich blue. “You’re expecting me to say it wasn’t your fault.”

Her stomach gave an ugly-feeling lurch. “You think it was.”

“I think it won’t matter worth a damn what I think. You’ve got to work it out for yourself and find a way to make peace. Or not.” But although his words put up barriers, the soft rasp of regret in his voice went right through them, and reminded her who she was talking to and what he’d been through. He hadn’t just lost a partner; he’d lost his family, his life, his heritage.

“Sorry,” she said, blush coming on hard and fast. “You were just asking to be nice, and I rambled on, and—”

He reached over and took her hand. “Reda, stop. That’s not what I meant.”

She swallowed, trying not to cling too hard to his hand. “Sorry. I’m not good at reading cues. My brothers say it’s because I spend too much time by myself.” Or they had before they moved away to start new jobs, new families, leaving her behind.

“I’m familiar with the concept.” He let go of her hand, but they were walking closer than before, their shoulders and arms brushing in rhythm as he said, “I’ve spent twenty years dying to get back to Elden, reconnect with my brothers and sister and kick the Blood Sorcerer’s ass, not necessarily in that order. But I’ve also spent most of that time blaming myself for not being in the castle when the attack came.”

“You wouldn’t have been able to,” she trailed off, getting it.

“Exactly. Right or wrong, what matters is that I feel responsible.” He paused. “There was a girl, Twilla. She was a guardsman’s daughter, and planned to train for the queen’s guard.”

“Oh.” It was ridiculous to feel a twinge. But she did.

“My parents didn’t approve because she was common-born and they had plans for me. We argued and I stormed out, and was gone when the castle fell. Worse, the last things between us in their lifetime were angry words and accusations.” He spread his hands; the gesture was visible now in the pink light of a new day. “I’m not proud of myself. I wish I had been a better man, a better son. Hell, a better prince. But I can’t go back and change that. All I can do is be better the next time, whatever form that next time takes.”

“Oh,” she said again, only this time it was a softer noise, one of understanding that was what he meant when he talked about moving forward and looking ahead. He wasn’t trying to get away from the past, or ignore it. He was trying to fix the future.

And in that, he was nothing like her father and brothers, who spent so much time looking ahead of themselves that they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.

Her opinion of him, which was already dangerously high, notched up again. And that, combined with the wolfsbene, made her far too aware of the way their arms brushed now and then as they walked. The contact was almost undetectable through the layers of sweaters and leather, but she knew. She knew.

Yet even though the heat of arousal stayed high in her bloodstream, her energy—at least for hiking—was rapidly fading. She didn’t say anything, though, just pushed onward until Dayn nudged her with his elbow and pointed to a narrow game trail leading away from the main track. “There. That’s what I was looking for. It leads to a hunting cabin about a mile in.” His teeth flashed. “It’s Kenar’s, and we know for a fact that he’s way behind us. The pack will need to rest, so we should be safe. I brought a couple of wards. I’ll set one down here to warn us if someone’s coming up the trail, then set the other to surround the cabin.”

She nodded and said, “Okay.” But what she really meant was, Thank God.

The sun was coming up over the horizon, signaling the end of a nearly interminable night, but she didn’t look around, didn’t care where they were or what it looked like in the light of day. Her focus narrowed to the few feet in front of her as she followed Dayn up an incline that at times turned so steep that they were going almost vertical, using roots and rocky outcroppings as hand and footholds.

Then, finally, he crested the climb and turned back to her. “Come on. We’re here.”

She gave him her hand, trusting his strong grip to pull her up onto what proved to be a wide ledge at the base of a rock-strewn mountain face. Near the back, snugged up against the rock ledge, a small log cabin was nearly hidden among squat, scrubby pine trees that looked short, proportion-wise, but towered over the small structure.

Barely even registering that reminder that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, she followed Dayn to the cabin and obediently hung back at his gesture, too tired to insist on helping him scout the area and set the wards. As he rejoined her, he was mixing some sort of powder into the contents of the waterskin he’d carried over his shoulder.

As he reached her side, he tipped his head back and drank deeply.

Reda’s attention was caught far too thoroughly by the way his throat worked, her eyes locking on a rivulet that escaped and tracked down. She felt the tickle against her own flesh, and the sensation reached inside her to stroke the kernel of heat that was all that was left of the wolfsbene’s power.

She quivered slightly as he lowered the waterskin and offered it to her. “It’s a mild stimulant. It’ll clear the fog and keep you from going so deeply unconscious that you can’t run if we need to.”

As she took the potion, the quiver grew claws, dug in and spread through her body—a potent combination of fear and arousal that instead of freezing her in place made her want to move into him, curl against him. She didn’t let her hand shake, but as she downed the mixture, which had a mellow citrus flavor but the aftertaste of too-strong black tea, she was entirely aware of Dayn staring at her, watching her as she had watched him.

She wondered whether he was feeling the afterburn, whether his skin felt singed as hers did, gone suddenly prickly and sensitive beneath her clothing.

Lowering the waterskin, she deliberately met his gaze. And was nearly scorched by it. His pupils were dilated, his body tense and somehow seeming larger than it had only moments before, as if he had puffed up with the same atavistic mating urge that suddenly surged within her.

Her face fired with an intense flush that quickly washed down her throat to heat the skin of her upper chest, then her breasts. Her nipples crinkled in an excitement that was echoed in her core, until her entire body thrummed with sensual awareness.

It’s just the drug, that lame-ass, cautious part of her said, but only weakly because the reality was that it was Dayn. And she was so damn tired of being rational, practical or logical.

He wasn’t the woodsman, wasn’t the lover she had seen in her dreams. But that hadn’t stopped her from wanting him from the first moment she had awakened and looked into his eyes. More, as they stood there on a hidden rock ledge, as safe as they could be under the circumstances, rebellion rose up within her. Greed. And, oddly, logic.

She might not be stuck in a dream, but this sure as hell wasn’t her real life. And given that, as long as she guided her prince to the archway on time, what was the harm in taking what she wanted for the next forty-eight hours?



Dayn saw the change in her eyes, saw awareness followed by understanding, then determination, and knew she was going to be the smarter of the two of them, and back away. Which was probably a good thing, because now he was the one who found himself paralyzed, locked in place not by fear, but by desire. Perhaps there was some fear in there, too, brought by the knowledge that this wasn’t just about the potions, at least not for him.

Yes, lust pounded through him, throbbing beneath his skin, hardening his flesh and making him want to close the distance between them and take her mouth, her body, her sex. But there was also the tenderness and respect that had come to life through the night as he watched her struggle to deal with the situation she had found herself in.

She thought herself a coward, but he saw a survivor who had been forced to rebuild her life too many times alone and had stopped believing—in herself, in luck, in faith. And that part of her reached out to the same part of him and made him feel, for the moment at least, a little less alone.

She was his guide. But she was also a woman in her own right…and that woman drew him, compelled him, made him want. And that, combined with the potions, meant that she would have to be the one to walk away.

Instead, she took a step toward him.

The breath stilled in his lungs. “Reda.” That was all he could get out. Just her name.

Her lips curved; her eyes darkened to the gorgeous blue he had seen in his dreams. “Dayn.”

And she took another step. One more and she could be touching him.

Even his heartbeat seemed to hesitate, and in that moment, it was like he was back in Elden woods, lying in wait for a fierce and dangerous creature that at the same time was beautiful and oddly timid. There was that same hum of anticipation in his bloodstream, that same sense of dawning wonder and the inner whisper of, Yes, that’s it. Another step or two, my beauty, and I’ll have you.

“The drug,” he began, then fell silent when she took that last step, putting them face-to-face, not touching but close enough to touch. To kiss. To do more. Even through the heavy layers of his clothing and coat, he was aware of her body, her warmth.

She pressed a finger to his lips. “It’s not just the drug for me. And even if it is, I don’t care.” Her eyes flashed. “I’ve been stuck in a rut, not just because of what happened to Benz, but because I haven’t found what I want—in a man, a job or a life. It wasn’t all bad, but I keep thinking it could be better. And now—” She broke off, pressing her lips together for a second before she said, “What matters is that, right now, I feel alive.”

Yes, he thought. Alive. That was the word for the awareness that raced through him, making everything seem fresh and bright as the sun crested the horizon and a single songbird trilled from the trees surrounding the cabin. Had he spent the past twenty years sleepwalking through life, only half living because he had been waiting for her?

He thought so. Now, though, he was awake. Gods and the Abyss, he was awake.

Then, suddenly, he could move again. He wanted to rush, to wrap her around him and plunge. Because of that, and because of the way he felt his temper slip and fray, he made himself go slowly.

Achingly, sweetly, slowly.

Framing her face in his hands, he leaned in and touched his lips to hers. He lingered there, drinking in the feel of her soft skin and the way it went from cool to warm against him, hearing the faint catch of her breath, tasting magic and smelling flowers and spice.

The rising heat washed through his body and soul, making the skin at his gums itch. No, he said to the magic, not now. Not with her. The thought brought a tug because he didn’t know where he would be when he next fed, or even if he would get that chance. But he knew he wouldn’t be with her, because when they reached Meriden Arch, they would go their separate ways.

“Listen,” he began, needing to say something but not entirely sure what. “When we get to Meriden—”

“I don’t want to think about that now.” She brushed her mouth across his and moved past him toward the cabin, then turned back and held out her hand. “I’d rather think about you.”

Heat and need lashed through him as the sunlight brightened from dawn to day and he saw her in living color for the first time: her wild copper riot of hair catching the sunlight, her full lips soft from his own and a flush of desire on her skin.

More, her words moved through him, echoed inside him in a stark reminder that he had been many things—a son, a prince, a sibling, a hunter, a guest—but rarely himself. There were other sons, other princes, other siblings, hunters and guests. But Reda was looking at him, reaching out to him, desiring him alone.

He reached out in return. Their fingers met. Curled. Clung.

And he followed her to the cabin, feeling as if his entire existence had just shifted on its axis.