Maria Vale - Forever Wolf by Maria Vale

Author:Maria Vale [Vale, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Adult
ISBN: 9781492661931
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 40597253
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

Despite what she thinks and Lorcan thinks, I don’t want Tonia to die. So I keep watch over her, making sure she isn’t eaten by a coyote during the change.

It doesn’t take long to find the moose. First, the smell draws me, then the rustle of tiny animals.

Tonia lowers herself, her tail between her legs, her ears pulled down, her head scraping the ground before me, until one eye looks up, begging for understanding.

She is slow, and I am impatient. She tries to pick through the insects, but that just makes the whole process longer, and the insects are hardly the worst part. Snarling, I show my teeth and she eats faster, holding her breath. She isn’t starving, so she gags with every swallowed mouthful and vomits a fair amount back up.

It feels like forever before the rotted carcass is gone and Tonia staggers off gagging and vomiting. Still, the Great North will smell the rot on her muzzle and will think twice before wasting another life.

Past the High Pines and across the rough, sloped terrain of the Gin, I go through hardwoods that haven’t woken yet, and the canopy is an open lacework for the moon on leaf-flecked snow until I reach the rock pond where I’d first learned what an endling was. I lie down on the rock still warm from the sun.

I feel sullied. My obligatory couplings usually leave me impatient and irritable, but not like this. I push back into my hips, and when the change comes, I slide into the icy water, feeling the play of the moon’s gravity against my naked spine until my lungs are near bursting. I scrub hard at my teeth, my mouth, my hair, and hardest of all between my thighs and at the join of my neck. I break through the black surface and suck long, deep breaths before diving under again.

When I come up for breath, I hook my arm over the ledge and pull myself above the surface, water draining into my eyes.

“Do you love him?”

I push my hair back with my wrist.

“Love who?”

Above me on the overhang of schist that glints in the moonlight, Eyulf sits naked save for a few last windblown hairs of his undercoat.

“The one who did that.” He beats one finger at the join of his neck and shoulder, mirroring where the layered marks of Lorcan’s teeth will always be, no matter how hard I scrub.

“No.”

Bracing one hand against the rock, he leans forward, his hand wrapping tight around my wrist, and helps me clamber out. The cold water puddles around me, and he moves away.

“It is very hard for us to get pregnant.” I twist my hair tight, squeezing water into a stream from the black rope. “So strong wolves try to breed stronger wolves. It’s meaningless. A duty; nothing else.”

Even as I say it, I feel how weak it all is. I have never felt anything for Lorcan except vague exasperation, and yet I let him touch me because it is my responsibility.

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