I didn’t know what I was still doing there, hours later, sitting in my car on the side of that narrow, twisting road at the base of the mountain. I should have been home, sleeping off my injuries. I should have been anywhere but here, with my car smelling like a rotting corpse, unable to drive away.
Why did Juniper want to stay in that wretched place anyway? The windows were broken, and it smelled like mold and rat shit. It was isolated, a prime location for the beasts to find her. Yet she wanted to be alone up there with her half-eaten dead brother. She’d wanted to dig his grave in the encroaching dark without any help.
“Fucking hell.” I rolled my head back, groaning. I needed to drive away. I needed to go out and fuck someone, remind myself that a bargain was merely a business transaction, mutually beneficial but completely impersonal. At this point, “mutually beneficial” was a stretch to say anyway. Diving into mines where Gods slept, fighting Gollums, fucking with the cult that had practically built Abelaum — the amount of work and danger ahead of us was outrageous.
I should have been half-assing this. If Juniper died, she died. I’d still get her soul. There were plenty more souls out there to claim.
But leaving her up there didn’t feel right. That was why I was still sitting here, that was why I couldn’t just suck it up and go home.
It was cold out, and there was no way in hell she was warm enough in that little shack. She was likely still digging, even though it was dark and she really should have been inside. That look in her eyes before I’d left had been so broken, so wretchedly hurt — it fucking haunted me. I knew the reason she’d told me to leave was so she could weep alone.
Her sorrow was her business, not mine. But the bond between our beings still left me aching, it left me feeling hollow since I’d left her. There was no reason to be so attached, no point in being overly involved.
“Fuck. Fucking fuck. Fuck.” I got out and slammed the car door, stalking back up the rutted dirt road. There was no harm in checking if she’d changed her mind about staying out here. She was a fool if she hadn’t. What sense did it make to be alone anyway? None. None at all. It was simply more convenient for her to stay with me. We could plan things easier. We could get this deal done quicker.
And if she didn’t want to come after all? Fine. I didn’t care.
That ache in my chest tightened, and I clenched my teeth. I just needed her back at the house; that was the end of it. It made no sense for her to be out here. It made no sense for her to suffer in some cold, shitty little shack, instead of staying with me.
I paused, sniffing the air. Pine, damp earth, a deer somewhere nearby, and…blood.
I listened. The boughs above creaked, animals scurried through the ferns, but no crickets were chirping.
And in the distance…howling. Barking. Those wretched, scream-like cries of the Eldbeasts.
My veins went cold. It wasn’t only the beasts I heard screaming.
I sprinted up the mountainside, reaching her yard in mere minutes. When I broke through the trees next to that miserable little cabin and saw the swelling horde of beasts fighting over something on the ground, it felt like someone had stabbed a hot knife into my chest and twisted it.
Nothing, nothing could touch my little wolf and live.
I yelled so loud that the beasts startled, half of them scurrying back from their prize just enough for me to see her. She was lying limp on the ground, her clothing torn to shreds, her blood pooling around her.
There were no cohesive thoughts left in my mind when I saw that. Only vicious, feral bloodlust that dug down to my deepest strength and demanded I use it. The beasts snapped at me uselessly as I grabbed them, crushing skulls and cracking bones, flinging their filthy bodies across the yard. I gathered energy around me, condensed it, and used it to push them back, push them down, and then burst their heads with the pressure. I commanded the energy around me as easily as breathing, far more easily than I’d ever been able to before.
Every soul I claimed increased my strength, but rarely did I flex my full power. But in those moments, that felt like an eternity, I would have done anything to get them off her. Even as I crushed them, tore them apart, their rancid blood splattering my face, I looked back at her continually, desperately, hoping I’d see her move, see her struggle or…or open her eyes.
I didn’t let a single beast escape. When they realized they were outmatched, and tried to run into the trees, I still caught them, crushing their rotten heads in my hands. Finally, as I dropped yet another corpse at my feet, utter silence fell as its body rapidly decayed into mud and worms.
Not one remained alive.
Juniper lay on the ground, curled on her side, her bleeding arms wrapped around her head. The tightness in my chest grew heavier. My hands were covered with gore, my claws drenched with it. But I reached out, carefully, and laid my hand against her side.
She took one slow, shallow breath, and the tightness in my chest burst.
I picked her up, moving quickly. She groaned, her arms falling away from her face, her fist pounding weakly against my chest. The beasts had torn at her back, bitten her arms and legs. What did a human need to heal wounds like this? A doctor, of course, but who the hell was I to trust with her in Abelaum? The thought of someone else taking her, touching her — fuck, I’d rip their fucking hands off before I let them.
I lay her in the car. I raised her limp head, wiping blood and dirt away from her mouth. Somehow, she’d managed to protect her stomach, but her arms and legs had been torn as a result.
Her lips moved, and I froze. She shuddered, her fingers twitching, her limp arms moving to wrap around her stomach again. Her eyes fluttered, squeezed…and opened.
She looked at me with utter confusion, blinking slowly. Then she looked down, at my hand on her wrist, and around the inside of the car, as if she couldn’t figure out where she was. I moved my hand off her, but I had to grip the doorframe to keep it away from her as she looked back at me.
“What…what happened…to Marcus?”
I wanted to shake her for being more worried about a corpse when she was bleeding all over my car. I wanted to shake myself for being worried about her at all, for being so breathless with relief that I couldn’t even respond to her for a moment.
When I finally managed to say something, it was, “What the hell were you doing fighting that many Eld alone?”
She tried to sit up, but quickly winced and collapsed back again. “What…what the hell…was I supposed to do?” she hissed, closing her eyes against the pain. “They dug him up. They…they were eating him…”
“They nearly ate you.” I had to pause again and calm myself. I was still balancing on the edge of rage. “You need stitches, Juniper.”
“No doctors,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “Please. Please, no doctors.”
She didn’t trust them, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t fucking trust them to touch her either. I slammed the car door and got into the driver’s seat, starting the engine. She was breathing deeper now, breathing quickly, the scent of her fear growing.
“No doctors.” She grasped my arm, squeezing weakly. “Don’t…don’t take me to a hospital…I can’t…”
“I’m not taking you to a doctor,” I said roughly, the tires skidding out as I pulled onto the road. “I’m taking you home.”
I didn’t have anything at the house I’d need to care for her, so I stopped at a 24-hour pharmacy on the way. Her eyes were closed, and her head had drooped down, but her breathing was still rapid and frightened even in her sleep. The longer I looked at her, the tighter my hand got on the wheel.
I never should have left her up there. Damn her pride, fuck her determination that she had to do everything herself.
She was mine, and I took care of what was mine.
The clerk gave me a long, wary look as I came up to the register with an arm full of various bandages and disinfectants. I’d already slipped behind the pharmacy counter and snatched a few pill bottles that would be useful for an injured human. The clerk’s hands fumbled as he rang me up, unable to stop staring at me.
“Are you, uh…having a good night?” he said. I gave an impatient nod of my head. “You, uh…you got a little something…on your face.”
I glanced up at myself on the CCTV. I was smeared with blood from head-to-toe. I smiled tightly as I looked back at the wide-eyed clerk. “You’d better just forget I was here.”
He nodded quickly, shoving my things into a plastic bag. “Oh yeah. Yeah. No problem.”
