by Beast
With his back turned it was easier to ignore the urge to bury his fingers in that knot of hair and tear it loose until it spilled down in a luxuriant waterfall all over his hands.
“Thank you,” Wren said, followed by the sounds of rummaging in the pack, a faint clack of wood that he would guess were combs, a brush handle.
Ero tilted his head back, looking up at the stars, the constellations, to avoid the need to look at Wren. “Has anyone but your mate ever seen you with your hair down, Wren?”
“No!” Wren gasped, then amended, “Well…my birth-father.” The fall of his hair was near-silent, just a cool silk whisper…but the scent of it was unmistakable, like fresh rain. “He taught me why we grow it. How to care for it. He wanted…he wanted me to know what it felt like, when my mate saw me with my hair down and found me beautiful.”
Ero closed his eyes against the pang in his chest. Because he wanted to tell Wren he was beautiful; wanted to look at him and see him and say those words, and he shouldn’t and couldn’t want those things from an omega he’d practically kidnapped just two nights ago.
“Did your mate find you beautiful, then?” he asked, throat dry.
“Maybe,” Wren said pensively, as the comb hissed through his hair like rainfall. “I don’t know.”
“If he did, he should have told you every day.”
“I think…” Those soft strokes paused. “I think he found me pretty like a…like a thing. Not as a person. He picked me because I was the most beautiful of the unmated omegas, but not because I was beautiful. Me.” Wren made a bitter sound in the back of his throat. “Just…because he was the alpha, he had to have the best.”
“That’s no way to choose a mate.”
“How are you supposed to choose, then?”
“If you’re lucky…” Ero followed the constellations through the lights of Ursa Minor, Ursa Major, searching for the North Star. “Fate chooses for you,” he whispered, and remembered tumbling in blankets and the scent of soft fur and cinnamon, the laughter of children and the rightness that came with that one familiar touch that always felt like home. “You just know. Sometimes right away, sometimes one day you see someone you’ve always known in a different light, or their scent his just the right way…and you just know.” His throat hurt, and he rubbed his fingers against it. “That’s the person you’re meant to be with. That’s your mate.”
Wren’s low, hurt sound shouldn’t ache to hear as much as it did. “You’ve been mated before?”
“I’ve been in love before,” Ero said. “That’s what being mated should mean, in the end. Love. Being bonded as wolves just reinforces that.”
“What happened to your mate?” Wren asked tentatively.
“He died,” Ero answered, and rose to lift the stew pot from the stove.
There were no words, then, for the tense silence between them, as Ero ladled out bowls of stew and divvied them between them. Wren had managed to bind his hair up neatly, but a few strands slithered and licked against his pale throat as he poked morosely at his stew. Ero let the silence hold, because if he spoke he might wonder things he shouldn’t be wondering.
Like whether or not a wolf could have only one mate in their lives, or if it was possible to heal enough to ever feel that connection with others again.
He held his tongue and applied himself to eating, though, but kept finding his gaze drifting back to Wren. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he said.
Wren didn’t look up, just turning his spoon over in his stew. “What?”
“How long had your pack been on that land?”
“Since before I was born. About four hundred years.”
That might explain the almost cult-like isolation, Ero thought. Insulated and separate, a world and a law in and unto themselves. “How old are you, then?”
“Twenty,” Wren said, and Ero swore, cursing both himself, Connaught Striker, and anything that would even listen.
“You aren’t even old enough to be mated,” he growled.
Wren lifted his head, eyes flashing. “I’m—”
“A child,” Ero said firmly. “It doesn’t matter that your body is mature enough for breeding. You’re a child.”
Or so he desperately told himself, while Wren glared at him with his pink lower lip thrust out sullenly. Wren was barely an infant in the span of wolven lives, for all that they reached physical maturity at the same rate as a human. Twenty was no age. Not for that alpha to have forced him into a mating.
And not for Ero to be having these wayward and wondering thoughts.
T
Wren glowered at Ero while the older wolf cleaned up the debris of dinner.
While Ero completely ignored it—and Wren.
And after what Ero had done to him, that hard body weighing him down, fingers thick and rough inside him, shameful and intimate…
Wren didn’t like being ignored.
Even less than he liked being called a child. He might be sheltered, but he’d been mated to the pack’s alpha since he was sixteen, with everything that entailed; if he was old enough to be the alpha’s mate, he was old enough for…for…
What?
What was he even thinking, as he watched that powerful, beautiful beast of a man stalk around the fire with his easy, prowling movements?
“You’re sulking,” Ero said mildly, as he scrubbed the stew pot out with a damp rag.
Wren sniffed, turning his nose up and looking away. “I’m not sulking. I’m offended.”
“So I’ve offended you, then?”
“I’m not a child.”
“Of course you’re not,” Ero answered with deceptive neutrality. “Children sulk, and you’re not sulking.”
“Don’t.” That stung more than it should, and Wren wrapped his arms closely around himself, sucking in a hiccupping breath that tasted a little too salty and thin for his liking. “You can dismiss me if you want, but don’t mock me.”
Ero said nothing.
Fine. Silence it was, then. Wren bowed his head—only for his breaths to catch as Ero’s fingers gently gripped his chin. He hadn’t even felt Ero coming, but suddenly he was there, hovering over Wren and looking down at him with intense, gleaming eyes that burned hot and strange, those fingers holding him captured with the lightest touch.
Wren was no stranger to rough, coarse touches; Connaught’s hands were thick and work-worn and littered with scars. Ero’s hands were no different, heavy and callused, the hands of a man who made his living in the wilderness, who fought the land every day for another day of survival even as the rocks and earth scraped his hands raw. Yet where Connaught had always handled him with a brutal touch, Ero clasped him with an unfamiliar gentleness, a touch that exhibited so much pure and utter control over himself that Wren could feel his strength as much as he could feel him restraining it. Ero wasn’t weak—Wren knew that, after watching him leave Connaught a bloodied and broken mess against the flagstones.
But he didn’t need to use his strength to capture Wren’s attention, when that one gentle touch completely arrested him, stopped his breaths, stilled his heart.
Ero looked down at him with darkened blue eyes that seemed to look right through him, searching deep, slipping down inside him and tangling invisible fingers up in the raw delicate places of Wren and pulling. He could blame the heat in his face on the warmth of the flames, but if he was honest with himself that heat was solely the sudden unfamiliar rush of being looked at by someone who seemed to see him, and not simply his place in the pack as an omega and the alpha’s property.
“You’re not made to be so timid,” Ero murmured, a thoughtful rumble darkening his voice. His grasp on Wren’s chin relaxed, and he curled rough knuckles against his jaw, stirring fine tremors of sensation as rough skin stroked smooth. “You don’t have to lower your eyes. Don’t swallow your pride around me.”
That touch quivered something low in the pit of Wren’s stomach—but he forced it down and fought the urge to lean into the frict
ion and stroke of Ero’s fingers, instead pulling back and away. He took a shaky breath, smoothing his robes. “Then don’t manhandle me.”
“Is that what I’m doing? Manhandling you?” Ero’s hand fell to drape lazily on his thigh, and he made an amused sound. “My apologies, your majesty.”
Wren sniffed and looked away, pulling his robes tighter around himself and wrapping himself up. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be.”
Ero fell silent, then, and from the corner of his eye Wren watched Ero as Ero settled once more by the fireside stared into the flames, firelight crackling over his face and catching in the silver streaks at his temples, in his beard, to turn them into gold. Even if he was a wolf, Ero made Wren think more of a bear, large and thick-set and rough earthen brown and black all over, a solid slab of muscle that was impossible to move from its place but once it began charging at you, was just as impossible to stop. Flickers of gold picked out the bristles of hair on his swarthy forearm, turning them into little glowing filament arcs. Wren caught himself lingering, watching in fascination—until Ero’s gaze suddenly cut to the side, locking eyes with Wren before he could look away, catching him in a frozen moment that skipped his heart through several shallow beats.
“Don’t sulk,” Ero murmured, and Wren lifted his chin.
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“I’m not telling you what to do.” That simmering blue gaze dipped to Wren’s mouth, and he couldn’t resist licking his lips, as if that could ease their sudden pulse and throb. “I’m warning you. I’m no one’s alpha, Wren. But I’m not dead. You think it won’t catch my attention if you pout that way?”
Wren’s breaths caught as he realized what Ero meant. When the man had said he didn’t want to mate him, when he called him a child, when he’d apologized for touching him in ways that left Wren raw…he’d thought…
He’d thought Ero was so very immune to him, neutral.
Only to realize that the other wolf was restraining himself, and the thought shouldn’t make Wren burn.
“But you won’t do anything,” he challenged.
“I won’t,” Ero said, husky, intense. “But do you want to torment me, Wren?”
Torment him.
Wren’s cheeks burned, and he curled himself up into a ball. Somehow it was worse, knowing this stranger who had torn his world apart desired him, when these frustrating, strange feelings were so raw inside him. Biting his lip, he whispered, “You promised me you would tell me about the Silk Islands tonight.”
A long, meaningful silence…and then Ero settled next to him, his scent a hot thing filling the space between them, as he dragged his bag over. From inside he withdrew a massively thick leatherbound book, with many pages creased and folded, many others with loose pages stuck in between. Even if he wanted to keep glaring—not sulking—Wren couldn’t help peeking over, as Ero laid the book open on his thighs.
He opened to a map—one that looked as if it had been drawn on another map, massive land masses colored in some places in blue. “Do you recognize this, Wren?”
Wren shook his head, biting his tongue.
“This is what the world used to be.” Ero’s thick, blunt fingertip traced the outlines of large shapes against the blue, before following in the newly shaded parts of blue that obscured some of them. “Here, now…there’s water all over these places, now.”
Wren leaned in, shoulder brushing Ero’s, and peered down at the map, and the letters crossing one big continent. “What does that say?”
Ero stilled, looking at him. “You can’t read, can’t you.”
“I…no.” Wren found himself blushing again, face frustratingly hot. “I can spell out the letters. I don’t…know how they make words.”
“Then we can start here.” That odd gentleness roughened the edges of Ero’s voice again, as he traced handwritten letters following a chain of dots through the blue. “The Silk Islands.”
Wren leaned in closer, biting his lip, looking at the letters and trying to match how they made sounds. He almost didn’t realize when Ero began to lean back against him, until somehow they were propping each other up as Ero read to him, showed him words…and told him of a place where wolves had made artificial islands out of floating nets of silk, and poled low boats between them; a place where humans almost never went, while wolves cast fishing nets and made an entire world without the species that had given birth to them, floating down near the south pole. It sounded like a dream, to Wren.
And then it was a dream, drifting away into his imagination as he fell asleep, his head resting to Ero’s shoulder. And in his dreams, Wren poled a boat over an ocean colored like a sunrise.
While Ero called him beautiful, again and again and again.
CHAPTER SIX
For Ero, the next few days were an exercise in bizarre fascination. They roved far afield while Ero checked every dead car on the side of the road to see if it would run, and had been converted to operate on solar cells; vehicle manufacturing hadn’t fully shut down until six or seven centuries after Discfall, even if the difficulties of fueling them made them a luxury and often an encumbrance that meant once the solar cells were dead, perfectly good cars were left on the side of the road.
It was still nearly a day and a half of walking the highway by night before he found a Jeep Cherokee that would take the cells in his pack, and loaded Wren into it along with the rest of their supplies. Wren was like a pup, the entire time; drifting away from Ero as some strange new scent caught his attention and his wonder, coming back to heel sheepishly when Ero warned him not to wander into anything dangerous. The first time Ero started the Jeep, the engine had roared and Wren had half-shifted, fur bristling, hackles raising as he tumbled back and skittered away, baring his teeth at the thing—and then baring his teeth at Ero sullenly when Ero burst into laughter, unable to help himself.
He’d taken so much in this world for granted, but it was beautifully refreshing watching Wren discover it with new eyes.
They were en route to Birmingham, now, skipping past Chattanooga when the other night had proved it wasn’t safe for wolves anymore. They might have more luck with Birmingham; a few centuries ago he remembered a few wolves living in cohabitation with the humans there, but that might have changed.
Birmingham might not even be there anymore, he realized—as the farther they drove, the more derelict cars piled up on the side of the road. He averted his eyes when he realized many had the dry, desiccated remains of people inside, and Wren only peered once before covering his mouth with both hands and looking firmly away.
Something wasn’t right here.
He pulled the Jeep to a safe parking spot about a mile and a half outside the turn-off for Birmingham, hidden by a large tanker truck that had spilled on its side, its contents long gone and evaporated. “We’ll make camp here,” he said, killing the engine and getting out. “Investigate Birmingham on foot.”
Wren frowned, climbing out of the Jeep and looking around curiously. “Why not drive there?”
“Because we don’t want them to hear us coming.” Ero checked the sword at his waist, the pistol, the spare magazine clipped to his belt. “Something doesn’t feel right. Do you hear the sounds of a city like you heard at Chattanooga?”
Wren turned slowly, the wind teasing at a few loose strands of his hair, then shook his head. “I don’t hear anything except the Echo,” he whispered. “And it’s loud.”
It was. Buzzing in the back of Ero’s mind, digging at his skin with little teeth, and he didn’t like the feel of that at all. “Do you want to stay behind?”
“No.” Wren wrapped his arms around himself, shaking his head quickly. “I’d feel safer with you.”
“Then let’s go.”
He set off across the grass with Wren following close behind him, cutting a parallel to the road and keeping his ears pricked for anything that sounded off. That smelled off, too, and it wasn’t long before he picked up the scent of old char
and dead flesh.
He didn’t need to go any farther to know that something had happened to Birmingham years ago, and it had been burned out and left to flake away to ash.
He didn’t need to see it. And he didn’t want Wren to see it. He stopped, holding an arm out to stop the little omega. “We don’t go any farther. Birmingham’s not there anymore.”
Even as he spoke, the Echo grew louder, keening and hissing, and Wren winced, clearly hearing it too, pressing his hands over his ears. “Something’s bad here,” he said. “Something dead. I can smell it.”
“Birmingham probably burned out,” Ero said—but Wren shook his head.
“No…its…it’s different.”
Different.
Then Ero realized what he meant. What that smell of dead flesh really was.
“Back to the car,” he gasped, already turning away, hand falling to his hip, his pistol as he gave Wren a push ahead of him, sending the omega stumbling, running. “Quickly!”
As out of the tall grass on the far side of the road, shambling shapes seemed to sprout like strange blooming flowers out of the earth, straggling to their feet with their eyes vacant empty sockets that nonetheless seemed to see, locked straight on Ero and Wren as they staggered forward with their jaws hanging slack and their mouths just black pits of nothingness that spat the Echo out like a radio transmission from hell.
That was why it had been so loud.
The howling dead were this far south, and that didn’t bode well for the human settlements here.
Wren froze in his tracks, going white, fear a thick mist around him, choking Ero. “Wh-what are those?”
“What happens when humans touch the Disc,” Ero said grimly. “Go!”
With a hitching sound, Wren turned, ran, while Ero retreated backward, never taking his eyes off the shamblers. They could move quickly when they wanted to, and one proved that by darting forward, cutting on an angling path toward Wren, leaving trails in the grass like a snake. Wren screamed, and Ero snapped his pistol to hand, took aim, and fired.