Page 15

A shadow fell over Maewyn, but there were no feathers on the outstretched limbs swooping above her. Skeletal with skin drawn taut from bone to bone, the wings contracted as the creature dove between the pikes of ashen trees, jaws open.

Maewyn shrieked, the sound she made foreign and shrill, and all four of her limbs took her on instinct. She darted from tree to tree as the leathery-winged monster screeched behind her. A regretful look back only made her heart pound harder. How could anything have that many teeth?

Another shadow joined the first overhead, and there was a gnashing so close she could feel the wind off its fangs snapping at her back feet.

Maewyn abruptly changed course, running deeper into the dead forest where the trees retained their limbs.

Her heart pumped with a speed she’d never experienced, eyes searching for safety but finding none.

One of the creatures slammed into a branch, the limb toppling through the dried-out wood, trees splintering as it crashed before her.

She skidded to a stop and turned just as a leathery-winged beast landed only paces away.

Maewyn tumbled, her control over four limbs tenuous, and fell just at the taloned feet of the ghastly creature. It was sickly skinny and only that much more terrifying when every bone in its long neck jutted up against its skin. Its jaws snapped, but she scrambled just out of their reach.

Her tail was not so lucky as the rest of her, and she was wrenched to a stop before she could flee.

Her fox voice screamed as a searing pain ran through her from the tip of her tail to her skull.

With but one recourse left, Maewyn turned and snapped her own jaws at the beast, and surely it would have snapped back if its head was not summarily severed from its neck.

Black blood spurted as the body fell, a golden sickle glinting in that terrible yellow light where her attacker had just been.

Roan stood to his full height, impossibly tall from Maewyn’s place on the ground.

Anger cut across his face in cruel lines as he took a steadying breath.

In his hand, the sickle pulsed with magic, and then he spun, graceful and effortless, striking out and slicing the head off the second creature.

More blood, another thump, and then the bleak forest fell quiet.

Roan turned back to her, and Maewyn’s fur-covered body went cold.

He had lost every ounce of carefree self-indulgence and was painted instead with deadly terror.

Free of the dress coat he’d worn to the party, he stood in an undone tunic so that his muscled chest expanded with each deep breath.

Though her own body was different, the shiver that ran through it was remarkably familiar, and she would have gone all swoony if she didn’t fear she would soon be on the pointy end of his golden sickle.

“You’ve gotten yourself into a fair bit of trouble, Pumpkin.” The weapon disappeared from Roan’s hand in a swirl of black magic, and he scooped her up in one swift move.

While she was relieved to not become the next headless corpse, it was almost as bad suffering the way he held her.

His hands were firmly under her front legs, and her tail end dangled as his face shifted from murderous menace to only annoying menace.

She scrambled her back paws, but the pain made her fall lax again.

“Lucky thing that you have me. Those were some nasty faelings,” he mused.

Faelings? She’d thought surely those horrible things were the umbrabrutes she kept hearing about.

Roan frowned as he lifted her higher, green eyes taking in her injuries. “They got what was coming to them for hurting my human.”

Maewyn drew in a sharp breath through her snout.

Roan’s head cocked, and a grin crawled up the side of his face, telling her he knew exactly how her heart skipped when he called her his . “Are you stuck like that, Pumpkin?”

Oh, damn it, she was! Maewyn flicked her aching tail and whimpered. She had no idea how she’d even gotten herself into the fox form; how was she to get out of it?

“That’s all right. This is often how it goes the first time.

The second and third too.” He began to walk, her fear replaced with indignation at being carried.

“Fascinating you found this form at all. I suppose you were right about humans having magic when you come here. If only you could use it to actually protect yourself.”

Embarrassment coursed through her, and as if compelled by instinct, she chomped down on his arm with the pointy fangs of her snout.

Roan gasped, and she expected to be dropped, but instead an arm wrapped around her underside, and she was cradled right up against his chest. “Now, now, is that any way to treat your savior?” His voice was a purr against her ear as fingers massaged the fur under her chin.

“I know you are frightened and overwhelmed, but I think I’m owed at least a little gratitude. ”

Maewyn grumbled with the only voice she had, humiliation deep in her belly, but with his arms safely around her, the horror of the bleak place he carried her through fell away.

She may not be able to protect herself very well, not yet, but if she had him, she supposed there was nothing really to fear.

And she did have him, or rather he had her, evident in the tenderness of his hold and the warmth in his eyes. At least fur hid the flush blazing all over her body.

Nothing approached them on their return, and the door she had used made itself much bigger at Roan’s command.

He stepped through into the silence of the manor and carried her confidently back to the chamber where she’d left him drunk hours before.

When he lifted her and said, “You are lucky that I missed your body beside mine and this damn tether told me exactly where to find you,” there was no hint of alcohol left on his breath.

Roan brought her into the bed still wrapped in his arms and slid them both beneath the blankets.

Maewyn thought she should protest, nip at his fingers and wriggle herself away, but the beating of her heart had calmed, and he was just so warm in the wake of that cold, desolate place.

Maybe it was all right to stay, just for a little.

“Be still, my furry little fiend,” he said with a chuckle into the back of her head, an arm wrapped gently around her.

“I too have had my share of being stranded in a body that is not my own. I was trapped as a raven for three whole days once, overwrought and out of sorts. I had to eat a mouse. It was awful .”

A snicker echoed in Maewyn’s mind in her human voice, but the sound that came out of her snout was only a huff.

Roan’s hand smoothed the fur between her ears as he settled fully on his side with her tucked up against his chest. “But you can transform back if you understand who you are and what you want to be.”

Oh, gods, I’ll be trapped as a fox forever.

“You are human,” he said into the quiet of the darkened chamber, nothing snide in his words. “And humans, I think, might not be so different from fae after all. At least, I believe you and I share more than either is willing to admit.”

She could feel the pull of the tether then, tugging her backward and closer to his chest. She could never get close enough, it seemed to say, not like this.

“Our existences are so full of yearning that maybe nothing will ever satisfy either of us.” He sighed, but the wistfulness wasn’t as somber as she thought it should be. “Perhaps it’s our shared fate to always be shut out of the affection we long for most.”

The hot sting of tears burned at Maewyn’s eyes though none fell. She had only ever wanted someone to favor her as she was—curious, strange, irritable—whatever others thought she might be. But she had never said, never even hinted…yet the tether knew.

Roan let out a heavy sigh, his breath caressing her ear. “Now, listen, you will need that human face of yours to properly scowl at me,” he whispered with more mirth. “And that human body to barge in and force me into doing whatever work I’m trying to avoid.”

Warmth built in her chest again, and her nose twitched.

“Your true body will also be necessary to enjoy the delights of this realm. Those fingers of yours especially, to lift teacups and turn pages. I know I would miss them if they never came back even though you refuse to use them on me the way I wish you would.”

Maewyn shivered, and she could smell another kind of magic with her snout then, something compassionate and comforting.

“But I suppose I haven’t done much to deserve your softest touches,” he murmured, voice dreamy as his hand slid down from her chest to her belly, the smoothness of her skin lighting up under his fingertips. “Come back to me, Maewyn. Give me a chance to earn your favor.”

She was floating then, yet anchored, free and safe at once as that warm magic encircled them both.

“Ah, you’re a quick study, aren’t you?” Roan’s hand trailed over the swell of her hip, nothing between their skin, not even fur. “Well done, Pumpkin.”

The warmth in Maewyn’s chest surged down between her legs at his intimate touch, fingers encircling her hip bone.

She had returned to her human body but completely naked.

At least her back was pressed against him and they were beneath the linens, but his exploring hand caressed her thigh, and her shuddering breath barely concealed a moan.

Traitor , she thought of her own body, but it had only done what she’d wished it to do: return her to a form that fit perfectly in Roan’s arms. His hand slid back up to her stomach and wrapped carefully below her breasts as his knees cradled behind hers, fitting them together just how she wanted.

Maybe Maewyn should have fought off his hold instead of sinking into his warmth, and maybe she should have discouraged the passionate thoughts corrupting her mind and tickling at her skin, but it was so much nicer to not be at odds, if only for a night.

Even if it was foolish and temporary and as make believe as a fae tale, to be held by someone who understood her was all she could ask for as she fell asleep.