Don't Call the Wolf by Aleksandra Ross

Author:Aleksandra Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

23

REN COULD NOT MOVE. SHE could hear herself breathing. She could hear her heart beating. She couldn’t hear them talking. They were talking, all at once.

He wasn’t. He was quiet.

He was looking at her. But he was quiet.

No, she thought, feeling dazed. No, her lynxes were her parents. It had just taken her longer to act like one—to look like one—it had just taken until she’d been twelve, and no one had ever thought it strange that she could change between the two. So maybe she’d always had just a little bit more magic than Rys—the forest did strange things, the magic was unpredictable . . . no one had ever thought—she had never thought—it was because . . .

A human?

A weak, pathetic, helpless human? Like them?

No. Her eyes darted around the table. Not like them.

They were villagers. They were soldiers. They were Wolf-Lords. And she was not a queen at all . . . she was . . .

A princess?

Ren’s stomach dropped through the earth.

She was a princess?

Her mind was a blur. Disappointment welled up in her. And even then, even frozen at the Leszy’s table, she wasn’t quite sure if she was disappointed in her own origin, or in the fact that he had lied.

“Is it true?” she whispered.

Silence fell over the table.

Lukasz met her gaze.

“We didn’t know for sure,” he said.

Ren nodded.

Very slowly, she rose from the table. Czarn and Ryś stood with her. Claws pushed out of her fingertips and dug into the table, where her long human hands rested. Two of the Leshonki made little eek sounds and slipped under the tablecloth. The wolf and the lynx pulled their lips back and growled at every human and monster at the table.

It occurred to Ren, for the first time, that she didn’t know which of those things she was.

“No games,” she said quietly.

She saw Lukasz swallow, but his expression was unchanged.

“No games,” she repeated. “You promised to do what you said. You asked me to forgive you.”

Tears started in her eyes.

She could feel them brimming, spilling over. She didn’t care. It wasn’t fair. She should have seen this coming. This man shared blood with the creatures who had thrown rocks at her. With everyone who had happily laid the sins of the forest at her feet. With every bloodthirsty, rotten-hearted, selfish human who had come before him.

With her.

“You shook my hand,” she said, and her voice trembled.

Lukasz’s gaze wavered. Then it came back to her. His dark brows were still raised a little too far over hollowed-out eyes. The hungry gleam had intensified. Ren instinctively knew that all the enchanted lanterns in the world couldn’t have taken the darkness out of that face.

“I had to,” he said. “I had to find my brother.”

Ren blinked.

“What difference would it have made?”

He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but it seemed that he could not find the words. Ren watched, feeling her eyelashes growing wet and sticky.

“I see,” she said at last. “You thought that if I found out, I would leave.

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