Page 103 of Shifting Hearts

SIX

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I woke wrapped in a warm, gray blanket that snored. Where my bed should have been semi-lumpy beneath me, strong arms tucked me into the cuddliest, thrumming quilt in history.

No, that wasn’t quite right.

Not arms–legs with paws and claws, the thrumming matched a slow, methodic heartbeat of the man who both scared and loved me.

Forest. Floor. Tree.

Wolf.

Last night was about far more than sex. I saw that in the adoration lighting his eyes as he brought me pleasure over and over but never took his own, at least not that I saw before I passed out in his embrace.

My tears flowed as he kissed me slowly, sweetly, massaging my scalp with those same claws that never seemed to retract.

That he loved me was never in question. From what he said, he could— should —have killed me, and taken me away for whatever reward he claimed.

But he didn’t. Instead, Wolf played with me, worshiping at Dagan’s strange altar.

And somewhere in the midst of the forest’s taboo melee, I fell for him right back.

Or maybe I always had, knowing he was by my window each night, unafraid for his presence. Having seen those eyes when he chose to show himself, and not taken me then. He protected me, and now it was time to protect him right back.

Because I wasn’t certain if he was right, but I was scared that he might be.

That seed of doubt took root as I slipped my bared body from his protective embrace, sliding onto the hard earth and grabbed for what remained of my cloak.

My dress was a moot point—the bundle of thin blue cloth that never held warmth anyway was a mess of ragged strips where his claws ripped it from me.

I wrapped the last of the material around me, though it didn't carry the residual warmth of Wolf’s furry cuddle.

I missed his heartbeat immediately, but refused not to dwell on that thought.

Keeping my steps quiet, I left the clearing through a slim gap between two trunks I was certain was how my furry lover entered the clearing the night before.

I was halfway to Gran’s when the rustles started, a trail of shivering leaves that followed my path, keeping up with me.

“You’re not right,” I muttered, walking faster. My feet pounded the ground harder, knowing I couldn't escape Dagan’s omnipresent eyes. “You’re not .”

The rustles grew louder, closer. Something brushed my hair. I broke into a run, stubbornly trying to outwit a forest god who tracked my progress with ease, rumbling his disapproval in grasping twigs that plucked at my cloak and snared my hair when my hood fell back.

So engrossed was I in my defense of Dagan’s wrath, knowing in my heart that he meant well, cared even, in his own stoic way, that I barely noticed the forest’s end. I burst out of the trees a panting mess, my cloak barely covering my naked legs, my unruly hair likely sticking out at all angles.

Which was exactly how Gran found me, a wild child standing at the edge of the trees, just beyond Dagan’s protective shield between the forest dwellers and the rest of the world.

Maybe I was one of them now. Or maybe I was about to blow our fragile, new found trust all to hell.

“Sweetheart. What are you doing here this early?” Gran’s bushy gray brows lowered in a hard frown that changed her soft, grandmotherly face to something far more formidable.

This is where I get my stubborn streak. At least enough to defy Wolf. He’d be so angry when he woke and found me gone, and it was too hard to admit that Dagan’s quiet disapproval hurt. A lot.

“And what are you wearing?” The eyebrows dived lower with the sort of disapproval I could deal with.

“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” I muttered, attempting to tug the twigs out of my hair that stayed just as stubborn as me. I cast the forest a side eye, unsure if Dagan could see me outside the edge of his realm.

And now I sound like them.

“Perhaps. Now, why did your mother send you through alone and at this hour? When did you get up?” Gran shooed me inside the house, pulling the door shut as a blistering icy blast whipped into the small, stone cottage and she flicked the lock for good measure.

The fire that was never out raged cheerfully in the stone fireplace. I sighed, stepping closer, and pulled my cloak apart to ease the frostbite nipping at my toes. “I went last night,” I murmured, not really thinking.

“And you just got here?” Gran snapped, picking at the corner of my cloak. “Where are your clothes, Bryn?”

I stared at her guilty, heat that had nothing to do with the fire behind me crawling up my chest in an unspoken admission. “I–” I faltered. “I fell asleep,” I whispered, omitting most of the night, my aching legs, and running, running, running.

“Did you.” She fixed me with a hard stare. “And you survived.” Her tone was flat, and that was most definitely not a question.

“Yes?” I grimaced.

“Hmmph.” Gran made a rude noise at the back of her throat and turned away from me, but not before I spotted a shadow emerge from the corner of the room.

“Wolf?” I frowned, taking a step closer.

So did the shadow.

But when he emerged, this wolf wasn’t gray and lush and beautifully marked like my Wolf. This man was covered in coarse, sparse black hairs that left him half changed and half…

Not.

The effect was grotesque. More so when he smiled, exposing a mouthful of pointed teeth in a partially transformed snout that left him something far more than otherworldly.

Horrific. Monstrous.

And I realized how generous and kind my lovers of last night were.

I ached for them both in different ways than I had in both their arms and wished I never left.

“Such a pretty morsel,” he rasped through a ruined throat. Scar tissue created a bald spot where fur should have grown. “I was here for the new children, but you…you might do nicely.” He licked his lips.

“Gran?” I twisted, flattening my back to the hot stones encasing the fireplace. Fear rippled through me as my mind refused to acknowledge what I saw, put it into a logical pattern.

Run run run run run

A snort not unlike Wolf’s met my eyes. Thick, pale gray fur flowed over a mutating shape to become far more canine, but those eyebrows…those were utterly recognizable, and completely Gran’s.

Wolf isn’t my only adversary.

If he ever had been one to start with. I should have trusted him, and Dagan, and taken the kids away from this place, not waltz straight into it and refuse to recognize what was right in front of me.

They were right .

Hot fireplace stones seared my back through my cloak, a meager barrier between skin and rock. But with the dose of adrenaline the terror doused me in, I barely felt anything at all.

“How long have you been doing this?” I whispered, gripping my cloak tighter.

“All your life,” Gran smiled, a toothy smile. Her eyes widened, her wolf form larger than ever.

My, what big teeth you have, Grandma.

“Why didn’t I know?” I hissed, sliding along the fireplace wall.

They followed me, their wolf pads silent in their pursuit. Gran didn’t answer, her humanity waning with every muted step.

All the better to hunt you with.

A shadow flashed by one of the windows, and a branch slammed into the frame, rattling it. A crack formed, letting in a deluge of sleet that reduced the cloying temperature in the room, not that any of us much noticed or cared.

My back hit a chair, and I stumbled over it. My timing couldn’t have been worse. The monstrous black wolfman lunged forward, His mangled lips were drawn back in a horrific snarl. I threw up an arm, still wrapped beneath my cloak, and waited for teeth to rip through my flesh.

But the pain never came.

The wolf gurgled. I peered over my red wrapped arm as the black and broken object that protruded from his chest. Blood and tatty fur dripped from its end, and when the branch retracted from the house it took its victim with it, tearing them both through the remnants of the locked door.

Sleet whipped past the exit in Dagan’s wake, cold air entering the cottage, stealing the warmth that had only ever been a facade.

Gran growled, a sound that grated at my bones with the wrongness of it.

“You loved them, cared for them,” I whispered.

Tears stung my eyes. Somehow I was still waiting like a child for someone to tell me I got it all wrong and this nightmare was just that.

I’d wake in a moment, in my lumpy bed at the starlight cottage, and be back in my normal life or too many children in the house I didn’t know, my grandmother directing them all and being terribly, horribly alone in a mass of moving bodies, not belonging anywhere.

But it was all a facade of the darkness that wound its way through an illusion of pretty mirrors and precious things that came crashing down the moment that veil was pierced.

The illusion I lived in for so long.

Gran stalked toward me, a wolfish smile twisting her lips. One claw slashed at my cloak, shredding it as Wolf had my dress. Cold air iced my body as she raised her giant, deadly paw a second time.

“Goodbye,” a voice whispered.

Then Gran was gone, too. In her place stood a different shadow, one of gray fur and dark markings.

Swirls changed the patterns beneath his fur, and around his eyes.

Perfect lips glistened, but I didn’t stop to study the dark trails matting his fur, or look at the body slumped on the floor at his human feet.

“Wolf!” I shrieked, launching at him. My arms wrapped around his shoulders that changed beneath my hands, smoothing out.

I squeezed the hard planes of muscle, burying my face in the crook of his neck as he held me to him too tight.

Breaths came hard, but I didn't care. “I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I should have trusted you.”

“And what baseline did we give you for that?” he demanded, cupping my face in one large hand. He lifted my chin so I couldn't avoid his eyes if I tried. Their blackness swirled, shot through with slivers of hypnotic gray. “How could you trust us when fear was all we offered you?”

“But last night—” I whimpered, twisting to look over my shoulder.

A different hand caught my cheek and turned my face away.

“Best not,” whispered Dagan. His skin softened at the contact, his patterns forming something slightly more human. He stood a head above me. Chestnut hair tumbled over his face. High cheekbones set off rough lips that called to me.

I leaned into his touch, stretching on my toes, and tipped my head back.

Wolf growled his approval as Dagan watched me through impossible eyes that told the history of the world in a single glance.

All the truths I didn't want to see, all the lives that passed beneath his forest. Even as I watched, his skin hardened and he cursed in his whispery, dry voice, dropping his mouth to mine in a tearing, desperate kiss.

“I cannot stay here,” he whispered. “I need my trees.”

I nodded, resting my cheek to his. “Then we go to your trees,” I said simply.

Wolf huffed and let me go, passing me regretfully into Dagan’s arms. “I ‘spose I’m on clean-up crew, then,” he muttered, the slightest hint of annoyance tainting his voice.

He gripped the back of my neck, squeezing hard enough for a whimper to slip from my lips, his cruel smile was back in place.

It looked beautiful on him. “I’ll be a little while.

Then I’ll have an offering for your new house. ”

“My house?” I frowned, staring between them.

“Dagan will explain,” Wolf murmured, pressing his mouth gently over mine.

Jolts of need rioted through me and before I could think it through I reached for him, tangling my arms around his neck and kissed him hungrily.

“Alright, princess. I won’t be long.” He tweaked my nose. “I promise.” Something else rang true in the way he stared down at me, hungry and needy and…uncertain.

I smiled, wrapping an arm around both of them as the cliff’s winds whipped around us, drawing us together.

“I’ll be waiting,” I whispered.