Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
He loathes that about her, too. She’s always so well put together, but he’s been able to sense the violence that simmers beneath her skin since he first set eyes on her. It makes him want to provoke her.
When he was a child, some of the older boys from the village used to throw stones at the ducks in the river. He didn’t understand why they did it-even at six years old it had seemed juvenile to him-until he met her.
He’d do anything to ruffle her feathers. He wants to see what happens when she unleashes herself.
Perhaps he loathes her so much because he knows, deep down, he’s the same. He wears many masks, too. He hasn’t been given the luxury of losing control. He knows what dark secrets lurk within his soul, but he doesn’t know what lies behind the mask she wears. He thinks it might be magnificent.
She faces him and he steps closer to her. He studies her face, her cheekbones, her blue eyes that peer up at him through thick eyelashes. Fuck, she’s beautiful.
“Are you really here?” he asks.
She frowns. “Of course I’m here.” Her forehead only reaches his chin, yet she manages to speak to him as if he’s smaller. A dazed look flickers over her features. “Are you?”
Footsteps approach the cell door behind her, and he sighs. “You should go. I’d rather you didn’t see this next bit.”
She glances over her shoulder. When she turns her attention to him once more, his damned subconscious has dressed him in a blood-drenched shirt. His feet are bare and dirty, and his breeches are torn.
“Are you hurt?” There’s a hint of concern in her voice, and he adds another thing to the list of things he loathes about her: she sounds like she might actually give a shit.
“Time to wake up, little rabbit.”
“Where are we?” Her eyebrows knit together. “Where were we?”
“If you remember this in the morning, I’ll tell you.”
He grabs her arms, and shuts his eyes. He needs to wake up.
He pushes her into the wall.
They fall into endless darkness once more.
***
Blake’s eyes jolt open.
He’s in his bed at Lowfell, and the crescent moon shines through his window. His heart is pounding. He’s not sure what is more disturbing: the location of his dreams, or Aurora’s presence.
He slides out of the sheets, grabs the breeches and shirt that are folded on his armchair, and pulls them on. He puts on his boots, not bothering to fasten them, and slips out of his chambers.
He pads through his castle. The darkness is almost as thick as it was in the prison. He passes the room he put Aurora and Callum in. Callum is talking in hushed tones, and he feels a twinge of her panic. She has woken as unsettled as him.
When he’s outside, he crosses the small courtyard to the land outside the castle walls. The loch that surrounds Lowfell is as black as the sky, and the mountains on either side of it are shrouded with shadow.
Cold wind ruffling his hair, he delves into woodland, and wanders through the ash trees until a chapel comes into view.
He enters. The gloom is thick within. Fragments of glass crunch beneath his boots as he passes the rotting pews and makes his way down the aisle. The stained windows once showed the story of Night’s triumph over the Moon Goddess, and how he trapped her within his prison.
He tenses when a flapping sound echoes around the space, but it’s just a bird nesting in the rafters. He pulls himself onto the altar. He lies back on the hard stone, his knees raised, and clasps his hands behind his head.
He stares up at the emblem carved into the stone arch that supports the ceiling.
The door creaks open.
“I thought I heard you walking around.” Jack’s low voice rumbles around the small chapel as he strolls toward him. Blake’s second in command drops onto one of the pews at the front, stretching his legs out and crossing them at the ankles. “Trouble sleeping?”
Blake makes a noncommittal sound before turning his head. Jack’s dreadlocks are tied back from his face, revealing fading bruising around one of his eyes. Callum’s handiwork, no doubt. Jack was responsible for keeping Callum out of the way while Blake persuaded James-the Wolf King-to ask for Aurora’s hand in marriage. His sleeves are rolled up so Blake can see the tattoos curling around his corded forearms. Blake knows what that ink hides.
“She was in my dream.”
Jack releases a soft chuckle. “You shouldn’t have done it, you know.”
Blake sighs. “Probably not.”
Jack runs a hand over his mouth. “There are reports that Night’s acolytes are gathering. Whispers that the Night Prince is creating an army in the Northlands for him to command.”
Blake pulls a face. “The Night Prince? Fenrir, perhaps?”
“Still in the Snowlands. Last I heard, he killed an alpha and married her wife. Ingrid, I think her name was.”
“Alex, then.”
“Probably. I’ll send someone to monitor the Grey Keep. He could make things difficult for us.”
The thread of light that Aurora gave Blake wraps around his soul and pulses inside him. He shifts on the stone, stretching one of his legs and arching his back slightly.
Jack frowns. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I can feel her.”
Jack’s nostrils flare, then he chuckles. “Luckily for you, she’s not a half-wolf who’s just about to go through the transition . . . oh, wait. . .”
“Piss off, Jack.”
“I remember when I was first bitten. I didn’t leave my bed for a week.”
“Spend some quality time with your right hand, did you?”
Jack laughs as he stands. “And the left.” He walks over to Blake and clasps his shoulder. Concern flickers across his expression. “Learn to block it out or it’ll drive you insane.”
Blake grunts, and Jack strolls to the door of the chapel.
“Get some rest,” says Jack.
He steps outside and the door swings shut, sealing Blake and the darkness within. Blake rubs his face with both hands. He imagines a cage around his soul, so that Aurora’s thread of light cannot touch the rawest parts of him. The worst of the feeling eases, though his blood still runs hotter than usual.
Exhaling, he stares at the carving in the stone above his head-the key with two crescent moons within. The symbol for Night’s prison.
The Northlands wind slips through the caved-in roof, stirring the scent of old blood. He wonders how many people were sacrificed on this altar. It was known that the former alpha of Lowfell secretly worshipped the God of Night. The fool thought he could offer up innocent blood in exchange for power.
Night doesn’t want blood, though. He wants souls.
More than anything, he wants the key to his prison so he can escape it and unleash his violence upon the world.
Night wants the Heart of the Moon.
He would offer unimaginable power to whoever brought it to him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
There’s a light drizzle in the air.
It washes over me as soon as I walk through the tunnel leading to the courtyard and out onto the grounds surrounding Lowfell. It’s dark, and the windows of the castle behind me flicker with soft orange light. Despite the rain, the air is crisp and smells like mud and woodsmoke. I pull my coat tighter, and, boots sinking into the earth, approach the figure who looks out onto the loch.
If he’s embarrassed about what happened last night, or how we woke up this morning, he gives no indication of it.
“You feel different today.” My voice is almost swallowed by the sound of the branches swaying overhead, and the rain hitting the loch.