by Beast
“Don’t be. Staying with me will probably get you killed.”
“I trust you,” Wren said, and those words felt like a terrible portent, riding the air on the whispers of the dryads’ leaves. “I trust you to keep me safe.”
Don’t, Ero thought again, but kept it to himself. Wren had no reason to trust him; no reason to put his faith in Ero as a stranger, for all that Ero felt the most bizarre pull toward the little omega. Wren was only gravitating to someone strong enough to protect him, this sheltered innocent needing some sort of stability after Ero had ripped his world out from underneath him and destroyed his understanding of his place in the natural order of things. And Ero…
It had been a long time since he’d been with anyone. Longer still since he’d taken a mate.
Was it any wonder that the wolf under his skin was rousing to the presence of such a beautiful omega, teased and tantalized by that luscious, ever-present scent?
Yet Ero refused to follow in the path of alphas who may have used Wren before; who taught him that his body was currency and his only value. And he kept his thoughts firmly on those darkened paths whose shadows clouded and dimmed the heat in the back of his thoughts, cooling the urges that burned in his muscles and curled in the pit of his stomach.
“Do you know how we chose alphas, at first?” he asked.
“Tell me…?”
“The ones who could resist human blood.” He turned his head, looking down at the omega resting against him so sweetly, Wren’s head tilted against Ero’s shoulder to look up at him. “That was the sole reason we were needed. We could resist the blood, and not turn feral like other wolves; not turn dangerous. We were supposed to be stable. Stable enough to have a calming effect on others. It had nothing to do with outer strength, and everything to do with the inner strength necessary to bring other wolves back to themselves when the blood madness had them.” He lingered on the questioning parting of Wren’s lips; the way he breathed so shallowly, as if hypnotized. “But there’s one thing that pushes us over the edge. One thing that strips away our control and turns us into the worst of monsters.”
“An omega’s blood,” Wren breathed, proving he hadn’t been kept wholly ignorant. Not enough to be dangerous.
Just enough to be subservient.
“An omega’s blood,” Ero confirmed. “So be very careful around me, Wren.” He couldn’t resist, then—and what he let himself be drawn to so bordered on taboo, on sin, when an omega’s hair was off-limits to all but their mate, that glorious spill never to be let down in the presence of any other. But Ero lifted a hand to brush a few stray strands of Wren’s hair back, tucking it behind his ear, grazing that fine, soft skin; a blush trailed after his touch, as if he painted on Wren’s smooth flesh. “I won’t hurt you. But when I’m like that…I’m not myself, and any promises I make don’t hold.” He let his hand fall away, but lingered on those liquid-hazed, pale green eyes. “That’s the only way you’ll be safe around me. To remember that. I don’t ever…ever want that monster to hurt you.”
With a soft sound, Wren leaned after his hand—then pulled back as if catching himself, gasping softly. He looked away, gathering his robe tighter around himself. “You call it a monster like it’s something other than you. You don’t think your wolf side is a part of you? A reflection of who you are?”
“I hope it’s not.”
“Why not?”
“Because if that’s who I am…” Ero tore his gaze from Wren. From that soft, fragile body; from those delicate limbs; from that pert little doll-like face. “…I don’t deserve to live.”
T
Although Ero had meant to hunt, somehow he found himself staying. Staying with Wren; staying at their little camp as the moon rose, a thin sickle crescent in the sky, its song quiet and weaving in with the ululating, dirge-like keen of the Echo. The fire began to die down, only for Wren to tentatively add more branches to it, glancing at Ero as if for approval. Ero only nodded briefly; Wren had to learn to make decisions on his own, but a little guidance at first wouldn’t hurt.
And what? the Echo mocked. You think you’ll teach him anything of value, monster that you are?
Touched. Corrupted. Unclean even among the Impure.
The only thing you can teach him is how to be lonely.
And how to die.
Yet there was solace, in this silence. In companionship. They said nothing, but the attunement of lupine senses meant they didn’t need to. Ero could feel so many things, from Wren—from his wonder as he stared up at the sky and watched the stars come out, to his apprehension at the smallest sound in the woods. Yet one such sound caught Ero’s attention: the sound of small soft hopping paws in the leaves, the sniffs of a twitching nose. He fell completely still, one hand slipping out in a cautionary gesture, warning Wren to stillness as well. Wren tensed, fear rippling through his scent, but Ero only shook his head, holding a fingertip to his lips, then cutting his gaze toward the forest beyond the dryads’ twisting bodies.
Wren turned slowly, watching as, through the trunks, a thickly furred brown rabbit came sniffing, its wide, dark eyes reflecting back the firelight. Wren’s pack must not have hunted out this far, if the rabbit didn’t know to be wary of the unique scent of werewolf. Ero tensed himself to move, as the rabbit hopped closer and closer to the dryad-trees, until it was out in the open, completely exposed.
Ero lunged, covering the last few yards in quick steps, angling through the dryads to pounce. The rabbit barely had a chance to tense its hindquarters, preparing to leap, before Ero clamped a hand around its neck and squeezed, snapping in an instant. Its death was quick, painless; it didn’t even make so much as a sound, as bone went soft under his grip and its eyes went dull. He relaxed his hold…and came away with his fingertips stained crimson, his claws lengthened and curving and piercing fur and flesh.
He turned back with the rabbit dangling from his grip—and found Wren watching him with both hands clapped over his mouth, his eyes wide and liquid, his breaths shallow. As Ero stepped closer, Wren stumbled back, moving his hands up to cover his nose, his heartbeat pounding over the night in frantic drumbeats.
Ero stopped, frowning, and shifted the rabbit to his clean hand, shaking his bloody one out and flexing his fingers until his claws retracted. “Wren…?”
Wren gulped thickly, staring not at Ero…but at the rabbit in pure and utter loathing, horror. “S-stay back…I…I don’t…want to smell it…”
Ah. Ero sighed, stepping closer. “Calm down. Breathe.” He slipped between two dryads, ducking under the arch where their upper branches interlaced in twining lovers’ limbs, and sank into a crouch next to the fire. “It’s only animal blood.”
Wren skittered around to the other side of the fire, moving with animal quickness. “I don’t—I don’t want to—”
“You won’t. If you were going to, you would have by now.” Ero unsheathed his knife from his belt and began skinning the rabbit, inserting the knife carefully to loosen the hide and peel it away from the flesh without damaging it too much. “I told you. Only human blood can do that to you. That’s why they fear us.”
He glanced up, watching Wren across the fire, his pale face bathed in flickering light. There was terror in those stark green eyes, but something more, too.
Hunger.
Wren’s nostrils flared, his lips parted, his tongue flicking against them as if catching a scent. Ero paused, studying him.
“Rabbit blood won’t do anything,” he said. “Other than make you hungry.” He offered one hand. “Here. Taste it.”
Wren stared at him—then crept closer, moving on all fours, his disarrayed robes dragging around him; he circled the fire warily, as if he might bolt away at any moment, lithe limbs moving smoothly. His tongue traced his lips again, as he leaned closer and sniffed Ero’s blood-streaked fingertips, then jerked back…then leaned in again, breathing in deeper, his eyes lidding. Ero let him; let him get the scent off Ero’s fingertips, let him acclimate until he was ready
to taste blood fresh from the rabbit’s body.
Yet he wasn’t expecting that pink tongue to dart out…
And brazenly lick the blood from Ero’s fingertip.
Nor did he expect the soft, needy sound Wren made, a whisper of “E-Ero…” before he closed his mouth over Ero’s fingertip, suckling at it with steady, drawing pressure that he felt deep down in the base of his cock, phantom echoes of sensation hitting hot, hitting hard, burning in his gut and racing in his blood. He watched, mouth dry, as Wren dragged that luscious mouth over each of his fingertips, sucking and licking, all heat and the soft inner texture of his mouth and the grip of his lip sand the wet slick of his tongue, and fuck if he didn’t smell like the sharp tantalizing scent of a mating heat, damp and musky and rousing Ero to a throbbing, aching hardness.
Yet even if Wren’s scent said he was drowning in his first taste of blood, that first fresh hot red saltiness on the tongue…he seemed utterly oblivious to the effect he had on Ero, as he drew back slowly, leaving Ero’s fingertips clean and glistening wet. With a shaking hand, Wren wiped at his reddened mouth, looking at Ero with wide eyes.
“O-oh,” he whispered.
Ero swallowed thickly and looked away from the pretty little vision Wren made, this beautiful omega with his mouth stained with blood and his robes falling off one pale shoulder, temptation in slender limbs. Dropping his hand, he wiped it on his thigh, keeping far away from his painfully hard cock, then picked up the knife and rabbit again and resumed skinning it, ripping the hide off with satisfying little jerks that let him divert some of the energy bristling through him.
“That wasn’t quite what I meant, but it serves,” he muttered, keeping his gaze on the rabbit and only on the rabbit. “You liked it?”
In his peripheral vision, Wren nodded, shrinking in on himself. “Yes,” he whispered, and the uncertainty, the confusion, the fear in his scent were enough to help damp some of that rampant arousal burning through Ero.
“Don’t sound so afraid of that,” he said. “You’re a wolf, Wren. There’s still wildness in you, even if your alpha tried to tame it and make you docile.”
“I…I’m confused.”
“Why is that?”
Wren shrugged stiffly, wrapping his arms around himself. “Connaught…always taught me omegas aren’t full wolves.”
“And why would he lie to you like that?”
“I don’t…I don’t know,” Wren answered, his voice breaking, and Ero set the knife down once more, focusing on the trembling omega in front of him, this wisp who looked as though he might blow away if something else shook his world and the things he thought he knew.
“Do you feel the moon?” Ero asked gently, and Wren looked up, at that glowing silver sickle hovering low in the sky.
“Yes.”
“And can you change?”
“…yes,” Wren breathed.
“Then you’re a full wolf.” A thought struck Ero, then, and he frowned. “Haven’t you ever…?”
“No. Not since I was a pup.” Wren shook his head quickly. “It was forbidden, for us. Even if we were in fear for our lives.”
Ah, god, no wonder Wren was constantly bouncing between trepidation and defiance, fear and fury, shyness and curiosity. He was a wolf who had never been allowed to be a wolf, raised as this domesticated thing tamed to his alpha’s hand.
“We should change that,” Ero said, and pulled a long, thin, straight stick from the pile of firewood to spit the rabbit on. “We’ll camp early tonight.”
Wren cocked his head. “Why?”
“Because,” Ero answered, and offered a smile. “I want you to run with me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Wren bit into a crispy bite of juicy seared rabbit and tried not to be too painfully obvious about watching Ero.
Even if he couldn’t seem to help himself, when Ero Wake was a fascinating man.
With every word they said to each other, Wren was realizing more and more that Ero was from a wholly different world than the one Wren knew—and not just because he was old enough to remember what the world was like before the Disc, and the voice he called the Echo. Ero was full of fascinating knowledge, things he’d seemed to have gathered from every corner of the earth…while all Wren had was the knowledge inside fortress walls, passed down over generations and warped again and again until he didn’t know what was true or what was real anymore.
He only knew that he had tasted blood for the first time tonight, and it had been metallic and pure and hot and bright, bursting through him and lighting up his veins and doing things to him that made him feel like a little animal in heat.
And he couldn’t let himself think about it, right now. If he did his body would respond and Ero would smell it on him, and know he was restless and hungry and needy after shamelessly licking blood from a stranger’s fingertips in ways that he’d never been over years spent beneath Connaught’s heaving, grunting weight.
It was just…something about Ero. Something that seemed part and parcel of the strange whispers coming from the entwined woman-trees; something like music that compelled Wren’s heart to dance. He just…he just wanted to be close to Ero.
And that was why he made himself stay on the far side of the fire as they ate, keeping the masking scent of woodsmoke between them as a safe barrier.
Ero had given him an even portion of the rabbit, but Wren couldn’t even hope to hold it all—while Ero, with his greater bulk, needed more fuel. Wren swallowed the last bite he needed to fill himself up, then crept around the edge of the fire to offer Ero the other half, still skewered on the stick.
“Here,” he said softly.
Ero pulled from his contemplative staring at the fire; it turned his eyes into witchlight fire, and they glowed as he looked down at Wren. “Not hungry?”
“I’m full,” Wren said. “And you’re bigger.”
With an amused sound, Ero took the rabbit. “Thank you,” he said, but then levered to his feet and crossed to his pack to fish out a bit of waxy cloth to wrap the rabbit. “But we’ll save it for later. I’m used to living on slim pickings, and we need to cover more ground.”
Wren sat back on his heels and watched as Ero began rolling up their bedding with quick, practiced movements. “Are you in a hurry to go south?”
“In a hurry to beat winter,” Ero answered, tucking the blankets away into his pack, powerful body flexing with easy strength as he compressed everything down small again. “I tend to follow where the hunting is. The animals move south with winter, and so do I.”
“You don’t have a home?”
“No,” Ero said quietly. “Not anymore.”
Privately, Wren thought that was a rather melancholy thing, not to have a home—but he kept his thoughts to himself when he was the same as Ero now, homeless and packless, just hugging his knees to his chest and watching as, in less than five minutes, Ero erased nearly all trace of their camp—scuffing out the fire with dirt, scattering fallen leaves, tossing the burnt branches out into the river until the only thing that remained of them was their scent. It was impressive how quickly Ero moved, and how deftly, but Wren felt completely useless leaving Ero to do everything. He didn’t know how to help—but he vowed, when they made camp again, to ask.
Ero wrapped his scarf around his shoulders again, then, fashioning it into a hood and wrapping it across the lower half of his face once more. But when he picked up the packs and waterskins, rather than sling him on he instead offered them to Wren.
“Think you can carry these?” he asked. “If I’m carrying you, it’s easier if you’re on my back and the packs are on yours.”
Wren flushed, hunching down into his shoulders. “You don’t have to carry me.”
“You still don’t have shoes. The ground is cold, and we’ll be getting into rocky terrain soon.” Ero rustled the packs even as he sank down to one knee. “So climb on.”
Closing his eyes, Wren breathed in deep and told himself not to think about anything at all. The
whispers all around, the dryads coaxing listen, child, listen to the beating of the drum were a welcome distraction, as he opened his eyes and straggled to his feet, slipping closer and taking the packs. He was awkward slinging them on his back; they were bigger than they looked, small against Ero but cumbersome for Wren even if they weren’t particularly heavy. But he managed to wrestle them to his back, Ero watching with that silent patience the entire time, before Wren slipped around behind Ero and braced his hands to his shoulders.
“Ready?” Ero asked.
“Yes.”
Strong hands reached back, grasped the undersides of his thighs, pulled Wren forward. Suddenly he was far too aware of the breadth of Ero’s body spreading his legs wide; the heat of him pressed against every inch of Wren; the powerful flex of muscles against his chest, his hips, his inner thighs as Ero stood, hefting Wren as if he weighed nothing, brutish hands firm against his thighs and fingertips grazing against their insides. Wren whimpered, pressing his face against the back of Ero’s shoulder; Ero’s movements had sent Wren’s layered robes tumbling to either side, until only the thin wrapped layer of his underthings kept him from being spread open and pressed naked against the tight, trim muscle of Ero’s waist.
“Is something wrong?” Ero asked softly, and his voice vibrated through Wren’s entire body; his heart was that beating of the drum, thumping through Wren, listen, listen, listen child.
“I’m all right,” Wren whispered, and curled his fingers tighter against Ero’s leathers. “Go.”
Go, and hope that the wind of Ero’s passing would rush Wren’s scent away on the air currents before he gave himself away.
Something sparked in Ero’s scent…before he nodded, shifting to adjust Wren’s weight slightly and then breaking into a loping, ground-eating run, smooth and swift and so very effortlessly strong. He spanned the creek in a single leap without even splashing, and was up the slope on the other side and into the trees within seconds. Wren wrapped his arms tight around Ero’s neck and closed his eyes against the wind slapping at his cheeks; he was cold, but Ero kept him warm, this burning heat of a churning, powerful body between his legs, soaking into him and melting him from the inside out.