by Roxanne Lee
I shook my head and sighed at him, I don't even know how to begin again, if I could begin again. I gave him his chance and he failed, how many more must I offer?
"I'm not sorry for marking you."
I growled at him, my wolf as affronted as the human. She seared within, burning rage that ignited and spread and flourished in the fury the human fed her. She may preen over the gifts he gave her but she was a different kind of animal. One that could take selfishly without remorse and leave the captains wolf with nothing. She had yet to properly meet that beast and gave me no indication she wished to.
"I could never be sorry for making you mine cherry, you are faultless and unequalled to both myself and the wolf inside. I apologise for how it happened I have no excuse for that." His eyes were a never-ending pit of honesty and against my will I found that connected part of myself swirl in a heated flush of gratitude for this man that saw nothing but perfection in an otherwise blemished soul. And yet I could not force that forgiveness, even in the face of such true appreciation.
He smiled at me, a look that was nothing but chasing love, searching for feelings I couldn't give. "I will spend my life making that right Arya, but I won't apologise for having you next to me while doing it."
My face was flushed from heat. The constant emerging and receding anger that had taken over my body. I was a mess of contradicting emotion. How Charlie must feel at all times, it was exhausting.
I met his gaze for a long moment, "And the visions you'll have of me? Will you apologise for that? For taking what I wasn't ready to show you?"
He gripped the table in a white knuckled fist and the cracks of wood made me roll my eyes, another piece of furniture to add to the pile. He hissed out a breath, "that'll be my punishment...to see what you went through and know I couldn't stop it, to see my failures as your mate."
I quirked my eyebrow at him,"it'll be a long punishment Carver," those cracks became more prominent through the otherwise silent room. "I don't want your anger or your pity, you'll see everything that made me but you'll allow me my retribution, I need it."
He nodded, a tight grip on the table, his lips white as he clasped them shut, keeping his words inside before they forced an even bigger gap between us.
A knock a the door made Carver stand instantly. "It's Duncan, he has some information for me."
Carver passed my chair on the way to the door, I felt a slight breeze where his hand passed lightly over the air surrounding my hair. Not touching but close enough that should I want to, I could lean back into it. I stayed rigid in my seat and his sigh was audible in the quiet.
Sam dropped a bottle on the table, a magician's trick of illusion by making the whiskey appear from seemingly nowhere. I frowned at his cheerful grin. "Wha'? Ain't nuthin' wrong wit' celebratin'."
I screwed my face up at him,"What are we celebrating?"
A shocked expression fell over his face before he answered seriously, "Why...you no' killin' tha Captain yet obviously."
Fraser chuckled and held up his glass for Sam to fill. I sighed and tipped mine in his direction, rolling my eyes at his amusement. As the two men talked softly between themselves I sipped at my glass and narrowed my hearing, blocking out the two laughing quietly at the table and focusing entirely on the whispers from the front room. A husky gravelled voice and one with a hint of Gaelic.
"We should make our move soon Ceann, they're suspicious. Asking questions they know I won't answer, maybe while they're all still in town?"
"No, not yet I still need to find out who did it." A growl from his angry wolf. "Someone knew and I won't do anything until find out which one, he'll be made an example of, his head will swing from the courtyard."
I heard Duncan’s confirmation and then swift steps towards to kitchen. The redhead zeroed in on me and a smile lit up his face.
"Arya, good ta see ya lass."
I peered at him and nodded an acknowledgement, I could not work that wolf out and it bothered me, how I couldn't predict his actions.
Carver clapped Duncan on the back and offered him glass full of smooth amber which he gratefully accepted. I looked to see Sam watching Duncan with a thoughtful expression, very different to how he originally greeted the man.
Fraser tipped his glass in greeting and I had a feeling these men were long time allies, a group of hardened warriors who knew each others darkest secrets and buried skeletons. Something I would soon have in common with them. Something I had no choice but to now share with the Captain standing slightly behind my chair. He reached out again, while the others were caught up in meaningless conversation, a small, insignificant touch to my shoulder. I think it was more his wolf than the man and yet I treated them both the same and gave no leeway to the human that made the move. I stood from my chair taking my glass with me and turned to face the Captain. I leaned close so my words would be swallowed by the livening conversation from the three others at the table.
I whispered in his ear the truth of our situation, "Don’t think you have the right to touch me wolf. You lost that, now you have to earn it back." I enforced my words with a show of claws that my beast flashed before him, we were in agreement and it was dazzling in its synchronisation.
I stepped around the large figure he presented and took my drink to the living room, Remy padding behind me. Leaving a trodden man staring at the spot I'd been standing in, nothing but anguish plain on his perfect face.
I sat on the sofa, glass rapidly emptying and slowly on my way to the drunken state I'd hoped to be well into by now. I heard the door swing open and looked up while patting the mastiff's strong, soft head; at least one animal in this household I had absolute trust in.
Sam grinned at me from the doorway and waggled the bottle at me as if he'd gotten away with the perfect crime.
"Need a refill?"
I huffed at the old man and raised a brow, "won't say no."
He chuckled and made his way to the couch turning on a radio I'd not previously noticed. A haunting rendition of La traviata came from the speakers. Loud enough to drown out the conversation from the kitchen. Loud enough to drown out any words he said to me.
He sat beside me and leaned in while topping up my glass.
He still whispered, despite the music, and I thought that maybe those wolves had better hearing then even I did.
"Watch ya back girlie, no' all is righ' In your Captains house."
I stared into Sam’s brown eyes and saw fear flash for a moment, not for himself but for me I think. My wolf rumbled away, not liking the look of fear from people she considered hers. Sam had bought himself not just a forever companion in me but a manically possessive animal as part of the package.
I thought about his words and stewed them around in my mind, not all was right in this place.
What a twisted Web we weave.
Chapter 34.
I think Sam put me to bed that night. I lost all motor reflexes sometime after the second bottle. That old man winning yet again, I should really just give up on trying to beat him at his own games. I fell into the deepest sleep quicker and more fully than I ever remember previously. All that alcohol proving to both the human and the beast that we were not as invincible as we thought.
It was the oddest feeling. A dream I was in full awareness of, watching a film inside my own head; the life and works of one Captain Carver. Even in a floating state of consciousness, suspended on a cloud of unbelievable imagination, a director in a chair of someone else's script, that reaching bond worked it's way beneath my skin. Taking my preformed opinions and twisting them into something new, something polished. Picking up the tatters my soul had become and dusting off the filth, making it shine like stars in the thickened, black backdrop.
He'd always been a large wolf, a strong wolf. Even as a young boy he'd known he was different. Very quickly I came to the conclusion that this bond would show me only important moments in the Captain's life. I saw the first time he defended his honour, a young boy of six showing the neighbouring
children in their ratted clothes that he was not the piss-pot they accused him of being. I couldn't help the twitch to my lips as I saw his starkly drawn face contort in barely contained rage at the human boys ridiculing him in old English slang.
I saw the time he truly connected with his father for the first time. A man he'd grown to idolise from an early age. I noticed Fraser had calmed somewhat in his older years, not so quick to temper or so dominating a presence. Three hundred years ago, he'd been a heavily influential Alpha and hard task master in his only sons training. Carver's mother seemed to soothe the dynamic somewhat, regular glimpses of her soft nature cutting through the harsh early life he'd lived. That period, a different time to the one I'd lived through. A time when birth rates were low and mortality rates high. I suppose his father had good reason for his disciplined upbringing, perhaps just ensuring his son's survival.
I saw his first shift. At only ten years old it was young for a wolf's first appearance. I winced at the strain on the boy's face and the burst of animal forcing it's way out. The feral quality in that small wolf's eyes only served to show how long he'd been struggling with the power hidden so precariously inside.
I saw his first kill. Both as wolf and human. The first time he slaughtered for food and the first time he slaughtered for gain.
His appointment to the guard and the training he endured. His fast track rise through the ranks and the opposition he encountered as a still young wolf, at only one hundred years old. His meteoric rise was impressive to me, I think I finally understood the animal he was. A power so great that those Kings he'd defended could, not only fail to match, but also envied for the aptitude that their titles should have been.
What a traitorous fault. That a Captain should become more powerful than the King that rules.
I saw his first glimpse of Lane. A poor copy of the man he was today. Skin and bones attached to a steel pole in the centre of a mud and straw village in a vacant wood. I saw the wild Lane had been, a red haze of fury so great it turned the teenage boy into a skeleton of demon, ruined and despaired, attacking wolves that attempted to free his bonds from where they'd sunken into the skin at his wrists, embedded into flesh and becoming a part of his very structure. I saw Carver and Duncan wrestle with the boy, a river of pain running down their faces as they held the snapping and snarling body on the floor.
I saw his first meeting with Charlie. Sword to sword on the Battlefield, they fought face to face for hours as the day darkened to night, and warriors from both sides looked on in awe at neither man giving an inch to the other. I saw as fierce pride turned to fierce respect and a slow smile spread over Carver's face as this opponent finally, gave him a fight worth losing. It was a new angle on the both the Captain and his second.
I saw the training room at the governor's camp. The walk my father made on that long stretch of black carpet running the halls length. A twelve year old girl clinging to his arm as he hastened them past the open doors to the fighting guards. I saw the moment the girl looked up and met his eyes, black on green, innocent on worn. I frowned in confusion as a thunderous roar broke through the image, a flickering in that final picture as it blinked in and out of view. It lingered in my head as my dreams receded and I heard the roars as reality encroached on fantasy. It flickered in and out as I woke, a question on the tip of my tongue, a thought encased in a hazy trance. Why did I see that day?
I snapped my eyes open to a wolf's roar shaking the house. A black head nudging my own from sleep. I patted Remy's hard skull and pushed his nose away from my own as I sat up and winced at the sounds coming from Carver's room. I felt shame as he roared. A deep sleep in my own nightmares, living the life I'd hoped to remain my own madness. That heated rush of embarrassment as I remembered the moments he would see, the weakness I'd been so full of then. It became so obvious to me at that point, exactly why I didn't want him to see this. Not because he'd steal my kill, not because he'd pity me or that those secrets were mine to tell. But simply because the man that had been given to me, so full of strength and promise, would see how easily I'd been beaten down and just how far I'd fallen. It was pure shame that filled the human and made the wolf push through. Forced the animal to take over so that I could hide away in the muscled body that would never have allowed such degradation.
She pushed open balcony doors that led to Sam’s own little corner of fresh air. I heard his soft steps whispering around on the kitchen floor, no doubt woken from the sofa by Carver's wolf crying out his anger. She stepped into the early morning, still black as night and cold as grave but a softness on the horizon indicating an approaching dawn. Her leap from the balcony was swift with ease and soundless as she landed. Her head turned once to the window that shook with a wolf's rage before she turned to the path that would lead her behind the hall, only one destination in mind, only those small animals that would need to be faster than light to escape her turbulent emotions.
I rocked in my throne. Safely encased in wolf, momentarily lost to the protection she offered. If anything, those visions of Carver had only reiterated how wrong I was for this man. Maybe the match had been made at birth, when I was still that Arya, and not the shell of the original I had become. Now, I don't think we fit, now we were so very different that it failed to force that feeling within, that I could make him better in this match just as he should make me better. There wasn't a whole lot left I had to offer that Captain that he didn't already have.
We burst through the wood in a flurry of fur and claws that scattered rabbits and the foxes already stalking them. She took over as the predator on site and slowly made her way through the population until, once again, the area was cleared of night-time critters.
She sank to the forest floor and heaved a sated breath. She was more morose then I'd ever known, a silent, melancholic version of the usual raging beast. I sat staring out of gold at the forest floor attempting to work through the emptiness emanating from such a prideful creature. The suddenness of a dawning light like a birth after many years of impotence, brought with it a new revelation. Without the simmering animosity, beneath the furore and wrath, my wolf was empty of feeling. A space that could not be filled by scampering rabbits and could not be sated by the human that housed her. She was simply an animal without its counterpart. It was misery in motion.
I spent a long while in my ineptitude. Soothing a beast I was only just beginning to understand. Until crashing came from the tree line, rumbles and grunts of a calling mate. She turned her head to his oncoming thunderous steps, a preceding cinnamon scent catching her nose and filling her lungs. She sat in wait, a predator meeting her perfect match, a wildness meeting the barbarian that coveted. I allowed her this moment, I would not intrude on this time. Whatever the outcome I found I couldn't deny the part of me that was without doubt, my better half.
He stalked the Wolf that lay still on the floor. It was an overt action of his intent to possess. As much as we both disliked the notion, neither the human nor the animal could summon the usual outrage. She followed the beast with her eyes, watching as he dropped to his knees and crawled towards her. He reached her fur with his nose first, breathing deep lungfuls of scented coat. Closing those black eyes as he tasted cherries on each inhale.
She flopped to her side and lay staring at the distant trees, a wolf lazy in her gloom. As the Captain slid alongside her she snapped a warning, but continued to lay still until the animal he'd become understood her needs. He wrapped her in one solid arm, encased her thick chest in a steel embrace and relaxed against her thickly furred back. His wolf heaved a breath behind her and blew the air out at her neck, shivers followed the motion and she curled slightly, just a little, into the solid chest he gave her to lean on.
I think the moment gave me pause. A look at the person I was, a thought that I had projected my feelings onto the wolf inside. And just maybe, I hadn't given that newly born animal a choice to decide her own fate, to make her own ending without interference from the stilted human.
A mome
nt to treasure for the coming days. A little bit of diamond sparkle before coal eclipses with a destructive cave in. It was letting a wall down without having to show myself in full view, and in the lightening gloom, in a private cocoon all our own, it was a little piece of normal that was addicting in its brilliance.
Chapter 35.
"He's in that house?"
It was a question I didn't need to answer. Of course he was in that house, why else would Carver have found me there?
I'd left him on that forest floor, my animal having had enough of the wolf he'd let out. I think she enjoyed the comfort he provided, but was unsure what else to do with him. Like a demon child learning for the first time, she had a brand new toy she had yet to find a use for. I smiled a little, she was an ever evolving amazement to me.
Carver had followed me back to the house, keeping a decent distance, allowing her some space. I was now, forever aware of exactly where that Captain was. It was both an annoying and satisfying little quirk of this bond, one that no doubt would prove to be a beacon for him as well, one more block in my road, one more way for him to never lose track of me. It seemed our short respite would turn out to be exactly that, a 'time out' on the battlefield, one pure moment of surrender from both sides before warfare resumed.
"I don't think I can let you go."
I snarled at him, an automatic reaction that he only nodded sadly at.
"I'm not saying I won't, just that I'm finding it hard to let you go."
I couldn't stand that gravelly voice. How beautiful I found it when all I wanted to feel was repelled. It was a hard thing to ask of oneself, to find such a man repulsive. He'd been made to turn heads, carved in images of faultlessness, moulded in precision, one simple example of utter superiority. I was a failing student in my own teachings; how to force my eyes away from their own addiction.
"We need to talk cherry... I have some things I need to tell you." He closed his eyes on his words and I held my breath. The light streaming through the kitchen window only highlighted his tense features and I found the shadows under his cheekbones mesmerising.