The Danger of Destiny (11 page)

For crap's sake, I'd been moving toward meeting my wolf ever since my first orgasm with Trowbridge. My inner-bitch's presence had progressed from a mild salivation issue whenever I passed a deli to an entity I'd struggled with tooth and nail. Every time I'd come close to letting her go, I'd pulled back, frightened that her presence would diminish the Fae in me.

However, my inner-wolf had claws too. And she wanted out.

I was exhausted. My defenses were down. In this flat-earth world, there was no physical interference to mute the moon's voice. No electrical cables buried underground. No cell-phone towers. No satellites. However well I blocked my Fae pointed ears with my fingers, I'd still hear the moon's siren song.

I could plug my hearing. Or, for the first time in my life, I could open my ears and listen.

Fae have no scent. But wolves do.

Come find me, Trowbridge.

*   *   *

The bleeding sun that had briefly rimmed the trees had disappeared, and the wash of gray that had stolen the color from the shadows had deepened.

I shivered, though I was not cold.

Once I'd made the decision not to fight my transformation, I'd moved fast. From my treetop, I'd scanned the area for a safe place to change into my wolf. The pickings had been slim, and the spot I'd chosen for the event was elected chiefly because it was close and offered some shelter. It wasn't so much of a cave as an overhang of rock, which was open on three sides. It smelled ripe with musk. That excited me.

All scents did. Every breath I took through my nose was a sensual feast.

I blew on my fingers. Payback pain hadn't found my hands and I was becoming increasingly convinced it never would. Maybe that's why Fae in this world use magic so easily and dismiss its effects so readily. There are no consequences for using it.

“On or off?” I asked Merry, my tone clipped and hurried.

With a deliberation to match my own, she tightened her chain until she sat near the base of my throat.

“You planning to choke me? I'm pretty sure”—I paused to shudder—“that my wolf's neck is thicker than mine.”

Faster than I could blink, she zip-lined down to my mid-chest, where she gave a throb of orange. Then, with equal speed, she ratcheted herself back to her former position.

“Got it,” I said. “You'll go with the flow.”

Tears burned my eyes.

Stop it. They are useless.

My skin crawled. The base of my spine ached.

There remained the problem of Ralph. At the best of times, he was an unhappy passenger, prone to peevishness. While I was in mortal form I could deal with his nonsense, but all bets were off when I wore fur. I'd been around wolves enough to know they didn't tamp down on minor irritations. They dealt with them. Immediately and, in most cases, with little thought to the future. Unless Ralph was in the mood to cooperate with my wolf, things could go foul very fast.

“What about you, Ralph?” I tested. “You with me or without me?”

With stilted distaste, he unwound three strands from his Celtic knot. Two of them became thin legs; the third became an arm. He gripped his chain, kind of like a woman grabbing the edge of her dress's train, and walked up the slope of my breast until he'd reached my shoulder. There he gave his chain an upward jerk—a very clear indication that he wanted “Off” with a capital
O
.

Typical.

I removed him and placed him in the corner, near the wall. “Stay,” I said, knowing that the ungrateful sod planned to bail on me as soon as I had a tail. That was not going to happen. He was not going to ditch Merry or me. I turned, searching for something heavy, and immediately spied a rock about the size of a bowling ball. Just sitting there. Waiting to be pressed into service. How providential. Grunting, I rolled it to where Ralph glowered. I flitted briefly with the idea of flattening him with it, but in the end I simply rolled its weight onto his chain.

He gave me an indignant flash of light.

“Make yourself comfortable, chum,” I told him, hoping he'd figure out that meant “stay put, asshole.”

Clothing next.

I caught the hem of my shirt and lifted it over my head. Another shiver racked me. I gritted my chattering teeth waiting for it to pass, then took time to fold my shirt and place it by my feet. My jeans followed. Denim is slow to dry; they were still faintly damp from my swan dive off the waterfall and they put up a fight to stay where they were. It took effort to yank them off my hips and more work to shimmy them down my legs.

Given their clamminess, it was absurd to fold them too, but I did it anyhow. My jeans and shirt were talismans to a life I wanted to go back to.

I turned my back from Ralph to remove my bra. My fingers felt thick, and I had the violent urge to rip the thing off, instead of taking time to unhook it.
Breathe. Just breathe
. Two deep inhales steadied me. Methodically, hook by freakin' hook, I removed my bra. Again, I folded it neatly, cup inside cup, and placed it on the thin stack of my clothing.

Cold air beaded my nipples.

I was naked; I was anxious. A virgin about to be deflowered.

My Fae was utterly still. I could sense her watching my wolf and me. I could intuit her fascination warring with her jealousy. She did not want me to join my wolf. She did not wish to be minimized. Not here, in
her
realm.

But she could not squash my growing moon-lust.

Here's what I'd never understood when I'd stood among the Creemore pack and watched them staring at the moon with the gap-jawed lust of the class nerd poleaxed by the hypnotic bounce of a cheerleader's breasts—that bitch in the sky is a beautiful singer.

So foolish me for being deaf to her. Every time I'd stood there, vaguely superior with my less than superior thoughts, they'd been listening to this—

No words, no chorus, no melody line.

Just pure beauty. A lyrical call, sweet and high. Full of movement—up a scale, down a scale. Each dip, a feather stroke of solace to unbearable pressure at the base of my spine; each rise, a tug inside me.

I pressed my shaking hands against my skull and paced.

I wanted it to go on forever. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it to get louder until I couldn't think anymore, until the fear inside me, and the fright and the uncertainties and the—

“Oh Goddess!” I howled as the first stab of agony skewered me.

I fell to my knees.

I thought I knew pain. Thought I knew every word for it, every nuance to it.

I knew nothing.

Don't scream. They might find you if you do.

Shaking like a woman with a fever, I rolled on my side, stretching for the pile of neatly folded clothing. I hooked my jeans, dragged them to me. Another spasm. Another stab. Moaning, I stuffed the pant leg into my mouth and bit down on it.

Let it be fast.

Escape. That's all I wanted. Escape from the bite, the gnawing teeth, the chew, the stinking stretch, the blood, the awful, horrible split second when I knew I was poised to go, that I couldn't hold on any longer, that being here—human, grunting, legs kicking, back breaking—had to be worse than hovering on the brink of the threshold.

I toppled, mentally at least.

And went there. To where my transformation would kill me—
Goddess, just let me die
—or it all stopped.

*   *   *

Alive. Free. Hungry.

Who's that?

Free.

Who's free?

Hungry. Thirsty.

Geez. That's my wolf talking. I can understand her. Wow, that's so—oh, look at that, I can hear me too. That's so weird. I'm talking to myself, and I can hear—

Hungry.

Both freaking conversations. My internal one and hers. Does Trowbridge think like himself when he's got a tail?

Food.

Hey … I'm pacing … Son of a bitch!… I'm pacing on
four
legs. Goddess, I'm furry! Sweet heavens, I did it! I am wolf. Did I pass out? I must have. How long have I been pacing around my pile of clothing?

Alive.

Yes, you are. We both are. Well, slap me on my furry rump and call me stupid. I haven't lost me. I've just
merged
me and she. And look at the bonuses. I feel so light on my feet. And powerful. Gad, I'm so powerful. I'm not short and round. I'm not the spaz who never got picked for school yard dodgeball … This is amazing. I am balance; I am muscle; I am strength. I am …

A girl with a really long tongue.

Geez Louise, I'm such a fur ball. What color is that? Black? I'm a black wolf? Huh. I always thought I'd be a gray wolf. Black, eh? It's kind of a rich ebony, though, isn't it? Oh, what's this? I have a silver-tipped ruff? That's an upgrade, isn't? Damn, I really won the wolf lottery. I've got deliciously pretty fur. Take that, League of Extraordinary Bitches. I am—

Hungry.

Okay, I'm a hungry wolf, that's what I am. With silver-tipped fur.

Prey. Fox. Fox. Fox.

Yes, it does stink of fox in here.

Run.

No. Not safe. We have to stay here. We can't wander.

Hungry.

Geez. My nose is command central. Inhales are explosions of knowledge, emotion, response, thought—

Prey.

Okay, enough about the fox. I know its lingering stink is hugely annoying to our sensitive nose—an itch we need to take care of—but the fox hasn't been here in a long time. It had its kits; it ate a rodent or two. Even the scent of its pee is old. Ignore it …

Fox.

Hey! I said, “Ignore it.”

Oh shit, I'm squatting. I'm peeing on the pee.

Hunt.

No, we'll go back into the den area. We'll just pace and pee over everything that bugs us, okay? Got plenty of pee.

Hunt.

No. We'll stay here. Geez, what's that movement? Squirrel? Oh shit—

*   *   *

My wolf took off, and this time I got to experience what it feels like to sit as a passenger, hanging on to the seat belt, hoping doofus in the driver seat doesn't steer us into trouble.

Hell-on-wheels fun, that's what it is.

Being a ride-along is a whole lot of good times.

The faster she ran, the more her joy flooded into me. And the longer she ran, the less I feared. Because wolves don't care jack about what's up ahead. They're all about the moment. They live in the now, not the back there or up ahead. That mind-set had to suck if you were a sixty-pound Chow Chow stuck in a two-room city condo, but it was beyond wonderful if you a were a wolf in the wild.

The chase. The sheer joy of hunting.

Somehow in the running and hunting, the union between my wolf and Hedi self changed. A new form of soul merge. I didn't fight, or swim against the current of her needs. For the moment I let her be—let her run, let her think, let her lead us over hill and dale—while I floated on her emotions.

We lost that prey, which as it turned out was not a squirrel but a chipmunk that very sensibly went down a hole. A few moments later, we picked up another trail. It was faded, forty-eight hours or older, possibly that of a female porcupine. Not particularly tasty. Whatever. We set off in pursuit for no other reason than the sheer inexpressible pleasure of running free.

I had a body, a perfect instrument of balance and grace, and I enjoyed using it. As a mortal, I'd never been able to so much as jog to the kitchen before without being aware of my weight, of the heavy bounce of my breasts, of my feet slapping on the hardwood floors. But this was so much different. I knew my paws must have touched the ground.

I
knew
I didn't fly.

Physically impossible, right? And yet running as a wolf was a very similar sensory experience to those times in Threall when I effortlessly skimmed the air above the ground, a bird without wings, a mortal without the fetters of gravity holding me earthbound.

Also? Nothing beat lupine concentration.

That's the second thing that hooked my fascination. A wolf intent on hunt thought of little else, and let's be honest. Mortal-me had the attention of a gnat.

Make no mistake. It was strangely addictive to be so single-mindedly focused. When you poured everything you had into one single activity, all the other crap was silenced.

No questions.

No anxiety.

No wandering down paths of needless speculation. I found the utter purity of unwavering commitment to be cleansing. I clung to that single-mindedness, diving deep into her mind-set, because the alternative was pacing under an overhang of rock. Glancing at the sky. Wondering where he was … No, not where, but if.

If
he was still safe.

I sank deep inside her, and I let her carry me. We pursued the scent of the porcupine, snout to ground, tail fat with excitement. We ran; we veered; we crisscrossed our own path.

That is, until our prey found a tree.

And then, oh man, what I'd have done for a pair of opposable thumbs.

*   *   *

Enough; eighteen times around a tree does not make the porcupine fall from it. Once I recognized that, my joyous lupine moment deflated. What the hell was I doing? I shoved her out of the control seat and, with a heavy sigh, sat down, prepared to bring her to heel.

We'd covered an amazing amount of ground in that short spree and she and I were tired and very thirsty by the time we'd backtracked to the point where I could see the outcrop of rock again.

For the record, a thirsty wolf is far thirstier than a dry-parched mortal. I could smell water, and its scent struck me as sweeter than the honey the farmer's market used to sell. I made a short detour, seeking to slake the ache in my throat. I found running water. Shallow, not very wide. Another one of Merenwyn's freaking rivers or, more likely, another annoying tributary that led to the River of Penance.