Page 25 of Master Wolf
Drew nodded. “I—yes, I can control it for a little, but I will need to shift soon. Tonight.Christ.” He shook his head unhappily. “I usually only shift on the full moon. I try to keep it in check the rest of the time.” And then he remembered what Lindsay had just said about the Wolfsbane stopping him from shifting at all. “Oh God, Lindsaycan’tshift, can he? Not even at full moon. How does he bear it?” He covered his face with his hands and rubbed hard, then took several deep breaths before he glanced at Wynne again. “I’m sorry, I must go.”
Wynne nodded and reached past him to open the door. “You know where we are. I was not welcoming earlier—I’m sorry, Drew. But youcanalways come here. At any time, in any form. I’ve put a charm on the house that lets me know when a wolf is near. I will be looking out for you.”
“Don’t say that,” Drew said desperately. “I need to stay away from him.” And without waiting to hear another word, he stumbled out the open door and ran off into the night.
Chapter Seven
Somehow,he made it back to Rankeillor Street without shifting.
It was late, and the house was dark and quiet, the servants abed for the night. Drew hadn’t brought the key, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going inside. He went straight to the narrow-walled garden at the back of the house and stripped his clothes off, then unlatched the gate that gave onto the shadowy mews lane where he moved into the deeper shadows to shift.
He had never enjoyed shifting and he didn’t enjoy it now. The sense of being taken over by some alien thing had always troubled him and he fought it, every time. Francis said he seemed to find it harder than most. To Drew, it felt like being born and every time was a difficult birth, with the wolf inside him rushing up aggressively to take over his mind and body.
Was it worse for Drew because he was generally strict about only shifting when he absolutely had to? Sometimes he wondered whether, if he let his wolf out more often, it might be easier. But when he’d asked Francis, Francis had said there were other wolves who, like Drew, only shifted at full moon, so perhaps not. Perhaps it was only that his beast-self was an ungovernable, undisciplined thing.
Drew leaned over, placing his hands on his knees, as though readying himself to vomit—and he did feel nauseous, sick with nerves and sharp, demanding need. He fixed his gaze on the slick cobbles beneath his feet and tried to open up the tight, clenched part of himself that kept the wolf contained, readying himself for the usual painfully slow transition—but this time, his wolfsurged, rushing up like a geyser, fast and brutal and powerful, taking over his body with unfamiliar swiftness.
The agony was intense but it passed in a moment, and when he opened his wolf eyes, the world was new. The adamantine glitter of a thousand stars had been hurled across the soft blanket of the night sky, and high overhead a milky moon glowed, one night away from being whole again.
The lure of that moon made his throat ache with an unborn howl.
He had to run.
With a quick, wary glance around, he began to trot down the lane. When he reached the end of it, it was as though he’d come to the end of the human world. The next few yards of ground had some foundations dug, and a few marker stones protruding from the dirt like broken teeth—but then there was nothing.
Ahead of him, Arthur’s Seat loomed darkly, a massive, densely black and hulking shadow.
He began to run in earnest, on light, silent paws, holding in his howl. Soon he was running flat out, bounding up the hill over stony crags and through clumps of gorse, ignoring the distracting scents of rabbits and small scurrying creatures in the undergrowth.
He ran up and up, till he was panting and his tongue lolled from his mouth and he thought he’d fall. And then he ran some more, until his legs did give out and he stumbled, falling hard on his side. He lay there, panting, and still the howl hadn’t come and now it was a hard stone of agony in his belly.
He whimpered. Or rather, his wolf whimpered.
His wolf wasmourning.
He pictured Lindsay again, pale and frail. Remembered the disconcerting shocking sense of…absence.
It came to him then. To the wolf.
His mate was dying.
Dumbly, miserably, Drew staggered to his feet and as he did so, the howl finally came, arcing from his throat in a desolate, heartsick song. He lifted his head and out it soared, bleak and sorrowful.
A wild, animal song with teeth and claws and darkness to it.
He began to run again.
He ran blindly, heedlessly, tumbling once down a patch of scree, only to scramble back to his feet and throw himself headlong onwards.
He was not running in the direction of Rankeillor Street now. He was careering down the other side of the hill with a new destination in mind. He ran through the parade grounds at Holyrood then looped around the back of the Calton hill before carefully sidling back into the human world, making for the New Town.
Finally, exhausted, he limped onto Albany Street, and made his way to Lindsay’s neat townhouse. Slinking into the shadows, he sat back on his haunches and stared at the shining front door.
He did not try to shift back to his human form. It was better like this. Everything was much easier.
Time passed. He didn’t know how long, but after a while the shadow of a man appeared at a window and a whine escaped him, soft and pleading.
The figure gazed out into the night for a moment, then turned and vanished.