The Longing of Lone Wolves

by Lana Pecherczyk

  She squeezed Caraway’s hand, intending to let go, but a sudden spark of electricity zapped into Clarke’s palm and she jolted. As the tingling intensified, her sight darkened around the edges. The sounds of the tavern filtered away to be replaced by a nightjar calling as a vision took hold of her.

  Sun shone brightly in her eyes, and she lifted her hand to shield. When she took her hand away, it wasn’t the sun, but a bright ring sparking with lightning and warping the vision inside. Through the ring, three dark human sized silhouettes formed. It was like she stared at something from a fantasy movie. A portal. Silhouettes stepped through. A shudder ran through Clarke’s body when she recognized Thaddeus. Her vision swung to the side and landed on the stout soldier from the gate. He made a disgruntled face before he threw his feathered drumstick down.

  Then Clarke was back in the tavern, blinking at both Caraway and Anise, who in turn looked at her with wary surprise.

  “Your eyes went white,” Anise murmured. “You truly are a Seer.”

  “It was a true-dream, wasn’t it?” Caraway added, eyes dark and stern. “What did you see?”

  “Um. I think the Lord of Crescent Hollow has returned. I should go.” She shoved the blue vial his way. “Here. It’s a gift. For when you meet that longtime friend.”

  His complete mortification took Clarke by surprise. Caraway darted a glance to Anise and then made a hasty exit with his stein. He didn’t even say goodbye. He rejoined his ragtag group of male fae, still arm wrestling, and belched loud enough to cover the laughter. Then he made some crude comment. They all raucously cheered and lifted their steins.

  Clarke looked to Anise. “What did I do wrong?”

  She only laughed until tears glistened in her eyes. “You insulted his masculinity, you numb-nuts. Elves might be a bit liberal with their use of elixirs, but it’s still a secret stimulant everywhere else… or maybe a private agreement. Also some use it when they’re having trouble between the sheets, if you know what I mean. It’s not exactly encouraged considering the laws about breeding.”

  “Oh.” This conversation wasn’t going so well.

  Anise’s humor dropped. “I’d keep the blue vial out of view if I were you. He wasn’t wrong with not wanting to do this in public. If word gets around to the alpha that I’m dealing under the bar…” She bit her lip. “But with the taxes here, a wolf has to do what a wolf has to do.”

  “Say no more.” Clarke swiped the tiny vials and tucked them down her blouse and wedged them under the pressure of the belt. She would find a way to get rid of them later… well, her cheeks heated, maybe she would keep the contraception elixir. That unsanctioned breeding law was savage.

  Clarke looked at Caraway with a frown. “He left before giving me that extra information.”

  Anise collected an empty stein and wiped the wooden table with a rag. “What do you need? Maybe I can help.”

  “I think I’ve Seen something.” Once again, a side of the truth was always the best lie. “I think it could endanger everyone and I’m not sure who to go to it with. Caraway gave me a few names from the Order, but now...” Clarke fumbled with a tie on her belt.

  “You think they won’t stick their noses into business that isn’t theirs?” Anise finished for her.

  Clarke nodded.

  “Well,” Anise continued. “If what you saw has to do with magic, then they’ll help, no doubt about it. If not...” Anise glanced back to the bar where the red-coats still made trouble. “I don’t know who else to suggest. I’m sorry. How will you get there?”

  “To the Order? I guess I’ll walk.”

  “It’s a long way. Seems you could afford a decent portal stone.”

  A portal. Of course. “And where do I get one of those at this hour?”

  “Just so happens I have a friend who sells them. Ask for Peytr at the markets. His stall is the one with the blue pix on the sign. If he’s closed, just go around the back. He lives behind.”

  Clarke made the “thank you” hand sign just as someone shouted Anise’s name from the bar.

  “I need to go,” she said. “Nice to meet you, Clarke.”

  “You too, Anise.”

  It was time for Clarke to leave. The vision she’d had worried her. It was hard to tell from the vision, but the soldier had been the same one she’d seen at the gate. Thaddeus was either in town, or he would be soon. And then he’d probably find her at the inn. She needed to track Rush down and alert him, or better yet, secure herself a portal stone. If it did what the name suggested, then it could be her ticket out of there and to safety.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Rush whittled the finishing touches on a small carving as he stood quietly in a corner of a room at the barracks, watching a clandestine meeting take place. The meditative act of his hands cast his mind into the past, and the changes he’d gone through since his curse.

  It had taken him most of his life to realize the benefit of understatement. From a young age he’d been enraptured with the power of the Guardians, the strength of his father, the alpha, or the glitz and glamor of the Seelie King in his castle of glass. To a young wolf, this attention and power had meant dominance. Worth. Righteousness. But it wasn’t until Rush’s identity was stripped from him did he realize the magic of being overlooked. No pressure to perform. No heightened ridicule. No gilded cage of expectation. For the first time, he’d been free.

  The joy of it had lasted only a short while, and then he’d started learning things. Secrets. Lies. Manipulations. He’d seen the true colors of the fae he’d dedicated his life to protecting, and not all of it was pretty. He’d learned how much stock the castle kept in their cellars. Money, food, health elixirs. Enough to feed an army and more. Enough to supply their entire realm. The Winter Queen—the High Queen of the Unseelie—hoarded in the same way. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Fae believed they were the better race because they had survived the ravaged world the original humans had left behind. But the thing was, fae were descended from humans. They’d inherited the same intrinsic desire for war and that driving urge to be on top of the food chain, no matter what the cost. Greed ran in the veins of both races.

  So what made one better than the other?

  Nothing.

  Rush had to become a ghost to learn the fact. He’d seen inside the human city, how they acted and followed their leaders… exactly the same way fae did in Elphyne. Shadow copies of each other. Fae weren’t the better race. They were the lucky race. Through no fault of their own did fae evolve from mixed human and animal DNA. It was a freak skip in evolution, possibly brought about through the nuclear cataclysm that saw the extinction of most other beings. But it also involved the magic of the Well. The planet didn’t want to die, and it needed someone to fight for it, so the fae were born, and they were given magic. And now they thrived. An undercurrent ran in the collective minds of complacent fae: they were the real gods. They were on top of the food chain. And they deserved to say who lived, who died, and how they went about doing it.

  They talked a lot of shit.

  It wasn’t until Clarke came along that Rush was reminded not all were the reflection of their label. That he didn’t have to stay indoctrinated to the beliefs forced onto him. That he could think for himself.

  And right now, he was staring at a mislabeled mistake, thinking some terrible things. Thaddeus. Supposedly the town’s protector, their alpha… their wannabe lord. Bullshit. Here he was having secret talks with three other underhanded fae: the Captain of King Mithras’s Royal Guard; a dishonored Dark Mage of the Order; and a vampire of the Unseelie gentry. From what Rush gathered, they waited on a human.

  Here were the most depraved beings on this land he could conjure, and that included the monsters he fought in the wild. Rush couldn’t even say he was surprised by their collusion.

  It made sense they’d picked this location. Crescent Hollow was the last fae settlement this far west, and it sat isolated between a mountain range and a dangerous forest. The barracks were
near the gate. No one came down to these dank and shoddy stone buildings except for the sentinels and Nightstalk militia.

  “I’m not willing to stake my reputation on the promises of a human who can’t even turn up on time,” the vampire said, folding his wiry arms across his chest.

  “What reputation,” Rush scoffed aloud. “You can’t even keep your shirt free from meal stains, let alone keep your colony safe.”

  This was the only part of his curse he enjoyed. He could mouth off to anyone, to their face, and they knew nothing. As a Guardian, he’d had to hold his peace on more than one occasion, especially when it involved opinions of kings and queens.

  Rush snorted and gave the vamp a scathing once over. From his luxurious clothing, the vampire was clearly a lord of some kind. The vampires in the Order were brutal and lethal, but this one… he smelled weak willed. He looked entitled. He was nothing but a sleep-feeder, praying on the helpless and docile for his sustenance.

  If Clarke were there, she’d probably tell him she had bad vibes about the fae.

  A slight smile lifted Rush’s lips when he thought of Clarke in his Guardian jacket, and how she’d mended it. For him.

  He scrubbed his hand over his face. His world was turning upside down, and the worst part was that he was finally in a position to be smart enough to know which things needed changing, and that maybe Clarke was right, and he did want to do something about it, but his time was running out. Soon he wouldn’t be changing anything, and the world he was leaving for his son was on the same path of destruction as the one that was destroyed millennia ago.

  Casting his gaze around the small barracks room, Rush tried to commit their appearances to memory. This illicit meeting clearly had undertones of subterfuge. Every single person in this tiny room was a traitor to the Well, and potentially to the Elphyne as a whole.

  Next to the vampire stood the Dark Mage. Once a member of the Order, he was now banished and exiled for using mana in twisted and unnatural ways. Like a drug, mana could take hold of one’s logic and convince them their underhanded ways were acceptable. The wings peeking from beneath the Mage’s long robe were skeletal-thin, just like his body. If there had been feathers there once, there weren’t now. Rush would be surprised if those wings flew at all. Mana-addiction had a tendency to drain the body of all other nutrition, and the user often forgot to sustain themself. It’s why the monsters they hunted were so ferocious. Many of them hunted to eat mana and nothing else. Malnutrition gave the Mage’s long hook nose a more sinister appearance. He was probably striking once.

  Shifting his gaze to the right, Rush surveyed the other two fae. A red-coated captain of the Seelie Royal Guard, and Thaddeus looking smug and content with his arms folded as he leaned against a small desk.

  “I agree,” the captain said, his one ear twitching. “I don’t enjoy waiting, Thaddeus. You said this human would be here, and he’s not.”

  “Relax,” Thaddeus replied. He flicked a piece of lint from his navy woolen coat. “We didn’t go to the effort of staging a murder just to get you out here for a game of three-stroke cards. He’s on his way.”

  Rush’s ears pricked up. So he had been right. The murdered satyr was a pretense for subterfuge.

  “And the rest?” the captain asked.

  “We’ve deployed a handful of monsters around this realm. Soon word will get out that the Winter Queen is encouraging her subjects to take up residence in Seelie land. King Mithras will take the bait.”

  “Good.”

  Disgust simmered beneath Rush’s skin. He’d always known Thaddeus was underhanded, but he’d never believed he would commit treason. And to hear he was the reason for the White Woman. Clarke had almost died. Again. Everything about this situation was off.

  Including, he realized with a start, that he cared whether Clarke lived or died. But once his mind had gone there, the feeling lodged with certainty in his gut. No. He wasn’t prepared to put her in harm’s way again. So… where did that leave them?

  The door opened. A dark hooded silhouette stood in the threshold, his face hidden within the recess of the cowl.

  “Ah,” Thaddeus said. “Come in. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  The hooded figure walked in. From the breadth of the shoulders and the sheer size of him, Rush knew it was a man. And—he sniffed—the bastard had metal on him, in thick and heavy quantities. Forbidden weapons. War machines.

  Two shifters walked in behind the human. Rush recognized them from Thaddeus’s hunting party. And then Rush looked ten feet beyond the two fae, to further down the street. A familiar face made his heart stop. Pale skin. Beautiful red hair. Clarke stood in the alley outside the door, looking just as surprised as he. What the hell was she doing here?

  No one seemed to notice she was there. He threw his gaze back to Thaddeus who had gone still, like a predator stalking its prey, eyes locked on the distance—outside the open door.

  No.

  Thaddeus turned to the hooded human. “Did you bring someone with you?”

  The hood shook his head.

  “Not a female? A woman with red hair?”

  “No,” came the gruff voice from inside the shadow of the cowl. “I came alone.”

  “Stay here,” Thaddeus ordered his crew, and then flicked his right hand out until claws protracted from his fingers. He gave a low warning snarl. “Out of my way.”

  He moved, shouldering through his two wolf shifters. Rush stood no chance of getting between Thaddeus and Clarke. He pursued all the same. The moment he entered the dark stone cobbled lane, Rush caught a whiff of lavender soap and Clarke’s unique musk on the wind. Dread unfurled in his gut. She’d just signed her own death warrant. There would be nowhere she could hide. Not now that Thaddeus had her scent a second time. It was too unique.

  “Did you dress up for me?” Thaddeus’s voice had a wicked lilt as he prowled toward Clarke.

  Her eyes widened. She glanced at Rush helplessly, then spun on her heels and ran. Red hair streamed behind her.

  She got a few doors down and then Thaddeus launched, pushing her up against the stone wall of an adjacent building.

  “Well-damn it.” Rush put on a burst of speed.

  Thaddeus’s claws went for Clarke’s throat, but Rush reached around him and took her wrist. He yanked her body to him and found another piece of bare skin to put his other hand on—her sternum. With Clarke in his arms, Rush backed up cautiously until his own back hit a wall, praying to the Well that his curse would extend to blanket her temporarily as it did all things he touched.

  Thaddeus shook his head as if clearing it. He blinked at Clarke, head cocking, eyes flaring. With every breath Thaddeus took, it was clear he fought the curse trying to cloud his mind. Rush wanted to laugh in his scarred face. The very punishment that Thaddeus had called down on Rush was now working against him.

  Except the curse wasn’t strong enough. Rush’s bond with Clarke wasn’t strong enough. She was a living thing, not an object.

  Thaddeus’s hands went to his head. He shook it, and refocused on the woman in Rush’s arms with a growl. “I’ve been hunting your kind for years. You won’t get away this time.”

  Clarke struggled in Rush’s arms. “We need to run.”

  “Trust me,” he said, gritting his teeth. “Don’t move.”

  She stilled until it was only her chest heaving beneath his touch.

  This would work. It had to. But their connection needed to be stronger. Only one other bond he knew of linked a female and a male so completely—the mating bond. Rush sank his teeth into the tender flesh between Clarke’s neck and shoulder, just enough to mark and trigger the mating ritual. Scent glands around his body swelled and released pheromones to coat her, marking her.

  The wolf inside him unfurled from its long slumber. It sniffed the air, caught Clarke’s scent and battered itself against the cage of Rush’s body. Mine.

  Thaddeus twirled around, dazed. His yellow eyes darted about the street. If the curse worked, he
saw an empty street. Most had retired for the night, or were safely ensconced indoors. Rush kept his teeth and grip on Clarke, willing his curse to hold and ignoring the painful urge to complete the mating ritual and take something she hadn’t made the choice to give. She must have guessed a little of what he was doing because she leaned back into him and gripped his forearm over her sternum.

  A haunting howl of frustration tore out of Thaddeus, and he paced the area before them.

  They were standing not five feet away, yet Thaddeus couldn’t see them. He couldn’t scent them, and he couldn’t remember them, but a part of him knew he’d been robbed. Shaking his head with a growl, Thaddeus stalked back to the room near the gate. The fae inside looked out, but Thaddeus only shook his head. He took one look back out at the street and then went in, closing the door behind him.

  If the curse did its job properly, none of them would remember.

  But now Rush had another problem. With immediate danger gone, his mating instincts were taking over, becoming all consuming. Once triggered they were hard to stop. Mine. His jaw tightened, teeth still on Clarke’s flesh. He pressed down with the undeniable urge to deepen his mark on her because if he’d done this a long time ago, she’d have never disobeyed him and left the inn. She would have been safe.

  Stay.

  That’s what he’d said.

  Stay in the room until he came back for her. Any wolf would bow under the will of an alpha’s energy like his. But she was frustratingly not wolf. Not pack. And not the kind who enjoyed submitting. She was a strong-willed woman who would make the perfect mate for an alpha like him. A partner. A matriarch of their own pack. The mindless primal instincts of his inner wolf battled with human logic inside his mind.

  Take her. Make her submit.

  She won’t submit. She’s loyal. Feisty. Fierce.

  She’s everything you want in a mate. Claim her.